Waverly's POV
I've been in Nadia Kershaw's office for thirty seconds and I already know three things about the woman Beckett hired to handle my divorce.
She doesn't waste money on décor. She doesn't waste time on sympathy, and the hard-backed chair she's pointed me to is designed to keep meetings short.
I liked her immediately.
She doesn't offer sympathy. Doesn't ask how I'm feeling or if I need water or whether the bruise on my cheek still hurts. She opens a folder, flattens it against her desk with both palms, and starts talking.
The legal picture is bad.
My name was removed from the company operating agreements years ago. I signed the papers myself — Gary slid them across the kitchen table one morning between coffee and a conversation about bathroom tiles for the new build.
I remember the tiles. I don't remember the paperwork.
But my signature is on it, which means contesting ownership will be an uphill fight that could take years.
"The prenup is airtight on Gary's side," Nadia says. Her pen taps the folder once. "His attorneys drafted it. Yours reviewed it, but your representation at the time was chosen by Gary's firm. That's a conflict of interest we can argue, but arguing it takes months."
I stare at the case citations on Nadia's wall and let the words sink through my skin. Chosen by Gary's firm. My own lawyer, handpicked by the man I was signing against, and I sat in that office and shook their hand and thanked them for their time.
You thanked them, Waverly. You thanked the people who were paid to make sure you lost everything, and you did it with a smile.
Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
My thumbnail finds the crack in the armrest leather and digs in. The edge is rough and sharp against the pad of my finger.
You negotiated contracts with investors twice your age before you were twenty-five. And you couldn't be bothered to read the fine print on your own marriage.
"What do I have?" My voice comes out steady, which is a miracle.
Nadia takes her glasses off, sets them on the folder. Without them, her professional mask slips a fraction, and underneath is a woman who has sat across from a hundred versions of me and knows exactly what the next twelve months look like.
"Can I be honest with you?" she asks. "Not as your attorney. Just… honest."
"Please."
"You built that company. Which is remarkable." She pauses, her fingers press flat against the desk. "But none of that matters in court unless we can prove it with documents Gary is currently sitting on. On paper, you handed him everything voluntarily."
"I didn't know what I was signing." The words come out too fast.
I hear the defensiveness in them and so does she.
"I believe you. But a judge needs more than my belief." She leans forward, and her voice drops a little bit. "Here's what I need you to understand, Waverly. You are not stupid. You were manipulated by a man who does this for a living, literally. He's a lawyer. A very good lawyer."
My throat tightens and I press my thumbnail harder into the cracked leather of the armrest.
The crack deepens under the pressure, and I focus on the sensation — the dry edge of it splitting against my skin. It's easier than looking at Nadia's face while she says the thing I haven't been able to say to myself.
"Here's what we do: we prove he mismanaged assets you built. We show the company was worth more under you and less under him." She puts her glasses back on, and the attorney returns. "That takes documentation you can't access right now. So we find another way to get it."
I think of my laptop upstairs in Beckett's guest room. The shared drives that reject my password. The cursor blinking on a blank screen where my life's work used to be.
"Be smart," Nadia says. "Be patient. And don't give Gary a single thing he can use against you."
***
I walk down the hallway toward the master wing to tell Beckett what Nadia said. The house is quiet — late afternoon light coming through the windows in long, warm bars that stripe the hardwood floor.
My bare feet are silent on the wood and I can feel the grain pressing into my soles with each step, smooth and cool in the shaded patches, warm where the sun hits.
His bedroom door is open and I stop in the doorway.
Beckett is changing with his back to me, shirt off and reaching for something on the bed. The light from the window falls across his shoulders, his skin is warm and smooth and I'm not supposed to be looking but my eyes have already moved before my brain can object.
Then I see it. Between his shoulder blades.
A birthmark — dark and uneven, larger than a thumbprint. The edges blurred and asymmetrical. It looks like a spilled drop of ink that someone tried to wipe away and my lungs simply… stop.
The hallway contracts around me. The warm light, the hardwood grain under my feet, the faint smell of laundry detergent from the clean shirt on the bed — all of it collapses into a single point.
I am nineteen years old again in a room I didn't know. In a bed that smelled like detergent and someone else's cologne. Running my fingers across a mark exactly like this one while a boy whose face I can't remember slept beneath my touch.
I touched it. I traced its edge in the dark while he slept, and then I left.
Six weeks later I was pregnant with his child.
My hand is gripping the doorframe. The wood presses hard into my fingers and I can feel every ridge in the paint. My heartbeat has relocated to my throat and my ears while the floor beneath me feels like it's tilting.
It can't be him. It can’t be Beckett who I slept with.
But my body is not interested in logic — my body remembers what my brain forgot. And it is telling me that I have touched that mark before.
I don't know how long I stand there. Three seconds. Five. Long enough that the air in my lungs goes stale and I have to force myself to exhale.
When Beckett turns, he sees me in the doorway and grabs the shirt from the bed. His hands move fast — pulling it on, arms through sleeves — but not fast enough to undo what I've already seen.
"Where did you get that?" My voice sounds like it belongs to someone standing very far away.
I'm pointing at his shoulder and my hand is shaking. I can see it shaking and I can't make it stop.
His face changes, jaw sets as his eyes hold mine, and I see recognition there. Not the kind that forms in real time. The kind that was already there. Waiting.
He doesn't answer immediately.
The silence lasts three seconds. And in those seconds I understand, with a clarity that drops through my stomach like a stone. That Beckett Morrow already knew.
He knew who I was.
He knew what happened that night.
He knew about the birthmark and the party and the girl who left before morning… and he never said a word.
He knew, and he let me walk into his house and eat his food and sleep in his guest room and offer him my company without once telling me that he was the boy I've been trying to forget for eleven years.
I take a step back.