A muscle in my cheek ticked. It shouldn’t have been surprising that Grant had found a way to jump the line, but I was still shocked at how quickly he’d managed to get on the court docket. “I guess those relationships run deep, even though they’ve been gone for over a decade.”

“Or their pockets run deep,” she muttered.

“Do you think they’d try to bribe court officials?”

Kenna looked up at me, her gaze full of a mix of pain and determination. “I think they’d do whatever they had to do to get what they want.”

23

Kenna

The trembling in my fingers was the only thing that gave me away. That tiny little shake as I smoothed my hands over the gray pencil skirt I wore. Everything else was a carefully crafted lie that said I had it all together.

“You look beautiful and business-like. I promise.” Caelyn gave my elbow a little tug. “We need to get going.”

I let out a shaky breath. A week had flown by. After work each day, I split my time between visiting Zoe and giving Crosby every last morsel of information that might be helpful in his fight against the Abbots. Every night, Crosby and I ended up tangled in my sheets, and I lost the will to ask him to leave. His presence, when so much else was up in the air, was calming. The feel of his body wrapped around mine was the only thing that seemed to lull me to sleep.

“Kenna?” Bell waved a hand in front of my face. “Earth to Kenna?”

“Sorry, what?”

She grinned at Caelyn. “I said I had to fight Crosby pretty hard to be the one to drive you to the courthouse.”

I stiffened as I took in my two best friends, who both wore cat-that-got-the-canary smiles on their faces. “He probably just wanted to go over what would happen today.” Despite the time Crosby and I had been spending together, we hadn’t been overt about it. And that was by design. I didn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea about what this was between us. But even as I had the thought, something inside me rebelled against it. This thing between us…it was already turning into more.

“You two have been spending a lot of time together,” Caelyn hedged.

I gave a shrug that I’d intended to look casual but was far too forced to be convincing. “We’re just hanging out.”

“Hanging out, huh?” Bell drummed her fingers against her lips. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

I groaned. I should’ve known that I’d never be able to hide something like this from these two. “I might’ve misjudged him a little.”

Bell’s brows flew up. “That’s a hell of a one-eighty from calling him a slacker lawyer.”