Page 37 of Made for Mayhem

In comparison, I looked like a before photo from those pitiful makeover shows from the early 2000s. Jeans with a coffee stain from last week. A wrinkled Foreigner T-shirt. Hair that had chosen violence after drying without all of my expensive products I’d left behind in Chicago. Everything about me screamed unemployed and unprepared.

If I’d been the one on the judge’s stand, looking down at us, I knew who I’d pick. After all, this wasn’t just some procedural box to check.

This was real.

I was about to walk through those doors and convince strangers I was fit to raise a child. To parent an eight-year-old.

I wasn’t ready for that.

I wasn’t even ready to think about why all of this was happening.

My hands shook, only in part from the energy drinks I’d pounded this morning. “Holy shit,” I whispered.

Ty turned his head toward me. “What?”

“I’m going to be her guardian,” I said, the words slipping out. “I don’t even have on matching socks.”

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t try to fix it with some big speech. He just said, quiet and steady, “She loves you.”

And shit, how did he know the right thing to say? Just like three years ago when he’d stood on the beach, fingers tangled in my hair, telling me to be brave exactly when I needed to hear it.

But today, I didn’t feel brave.

No, today I was terrified and sad and lonely and a hundred other emotions I didn’t want to inspect. Instead, I let out a shaky breath. “Love isn’t a parenting qualification.”

“It’s a good start. You’ll figure it out.”

His voice was so calm it almost made me angry. Because I didn’t feel like I would figure it out. When there was a kid depending on me, time was a luxury I didn’t have.

“Breathe,” he said, somehow sensing I’d forgotten that was important.

I let out a big exhale, gaze fixed on the double doors ahead. “I’m just preparing for them to hand you full custody and send me packing.”

His head tilted my way. I didn’t have to look to feel his steady, infuriatingly patient gaze. “You don’t know that.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t. But what if my good luck was that my car didn’t die coming over Vail Pass? We both know there was a lot of luck involved in that. So then, is this the part where everything else comes crashing down? One: my tragic wardrobe. Two: my tragic everything else. Three: some horrific, unforeseen circumstance I don’t even have the brainpower to conjure right now. Are plagues still a thing?”

“You look fine,” Ty said, looking straight ahead.

I huffed out a laugh. “I look like I’m here for a restraining order instead of a custody hearing.”

His jaw flexed, hands shoved into his pockets. “You’re family. From everything I’ve read, that will go a long way.”

That made me pause. From everything he’d read?

How much time had Ty spent researching family court? Obviously, he’d gone through the steps to be foster certified, and it was clear he loved my niece, but I still didn’t understand the full story between them.

How she looked at him. Why his house already felt like hers.

I opened my mouth to ask, but the doors creaked open and a bailiff stepped into the hall.

“Daisy Winslow and Tyler Hudson. The judge will see you now.”

I stood so fast that the room spun. Sensing my distress, Ty grabbed my elbow, and together we walked through the double doors.

Inside, the courtroom felt too small for the magnitude of the moment. I took a seat at a table meant for attorneys I’d only ever seen on TV, surrounded by papers, files, and words like placement and temporary custody hanging in the air.

Ty sat beside me, calm as a granite statue. I tried to channel that energy, but the closest I could get was a tornado about to touch down.