The Devil You Know (The Devils #3)(53)

“That’s where you’re wrong.” I push my bowl aside and slide my foot between his legs. “I’ll be the kind of person who enjoys doing nothing at all by then.”

He laughs quietly to himself, his hand wrapping around my ankle. “Sure you will, Gemma.”





31





The Roberts case finally goes to trial, though it should not. I love a good fight, but the attorneys are the only ones coming out of this better off for it. Between the extra work we had to put in to get ready and the cost of the trial itself, they’ll each be out a hundred grand by the time this is done.

That’s how men win, because they’re often the only ones with the money to keep going. My mother lost, and she was still paying off the credit card she used for her legal bills by the time I got out of law school.

I throw everything I have at Dennis Roberts: the employee he paid off, the affair, the family trip he no-showed for because of work. Melissa stayed home with the kids—she’s a room parent, she manages the kids’ soccer team—but Dennis doesn’t even know who their pediatrician is. He isn’t the one who took Jaden to the hospital when he broke his arm, he isn’t the one who watched the baby while they were there. He wanted fifty percent custody, but as my questions continue, his shoulders sag, as if he already knows he’s lost.

He gets the kids for two weekends a month, and a two-week block during the summer. I congratulate Melissa, pack my bags, and go to the bathroom. When I walk out, Dennis Roberts is on his phone with someone, his shoulders hunched over.

“I don’t know, Mom,” he says. “I don’t even get to see them for two weeks.” His voice cracks on that last word, this big man with all his money and power. I watch as he covers his face with his hand, and his shoulders shake silently.

And I want to feel good about it, but instead, as I walk away, I’m sick. I hated those attorneys who attacked my mother when I was fifteen. I guess I should’ve known growing into one of them was never going to feel great.





Ben comes over later than normal, following a client dinner. His mouth lands on mine with relief, as if I’m the one part of the day he looked forward to.

The bag he’s got in his left hand presses to my thigh. I laugh against his mouth. “The dinner you’ve brought me feels excessively cold.”

“You told me you ate already. This is dessert.” He steps back and sets the bag on the counter. “You sounded unhappy on the phone, so I thought it might be an ice cream kind of night. I brought three kinds because I didn’t know what you liked.”

He sets the options on the counter and I point at one, fighting a smile. For a heartless lawyer, he’s incredibly sweet sometimes.

He pours himself a glass of wine then leads me to the couch, where I curl up against him with my Cherry Garcia.

He sips his Malbec. “Tell me what happened. It was Roberts today, right? The basketball coach?”

“Yeah.” I slide the spoon over the surface of the ice cream, looking for cherries. “I obliterated him.”

He laughs. “That seems like the kind of thing you’d normally be happy about.”

“I saw him,” I whisper, “crying on the phone to his mom. And—I don’t know. I thought I wanted to practice family law, but sometimes I wonder.”

He presses his lips to the top of my head. “You want to fight for the underdog, Gemma, and divorce is rarely that cut and dry.”

He’s right. Even as terrible as my father was, he wouldn’t have deserved to lose custody either. People are usually neither entirely bad or entirely good. There’s a piece of me tired of pretending they are.

“You could always go to the public defender’s office,” he suggests, and I smile. He sounds a bit like a Hallmark hero right now. Better than a Hallmark hero, because he isn’t trying to steer me toward motherhood or some form of homemaking in lieu of my current profession.

“I like shoes too much to live off a government employee’s salary,” I reply. “And I have to make partner. Men in upper management everywhere go out of their way to keep the circle closed, just like Fiducia has, hoping the women who want in will just give up. Fuck that.”

“Then let’s make sure you get it,” he says, as if he wants it for me as much as I want it for myself.

I blink away tears. It’s felt, for a long time, like I’m in this alone.

I’m scared to let myself think I no longer am.





On Sunday morning, he’s in the process of getting dressed when I wake. “Sorry,” he whispers.

“You’re leaving?” I don’t know why I care. I was going into the office anyway.

He nods. “Brunch at my mom’s. It’s kind of a tradition.”

His gaze flickers to me. For a moment I think he’s going to invite me, and I’ll have to find a way to say no, but he just keeps getting dressed. We’ve been doing this for weeks now, and I’ve still never met anyone he cares about. I’ve still never even gone to his place—I’ve suggested the latter and he alludes to the construction or says it’s too far. I can hardly argue that it’s only twenty minutes away when I’m pretending I neither know nor care where he lives. If we were at all serious, though, it would probably bother me.