Page 8 of Laws of Love
Knox sighed again, before reaching out and stopping the recording. He saved it with the date and topic of discussion before locking the tablet and putting it away.
He leaned back into the couch cushion and rubbed his temple. He would be happy when he could cut most ties with her. They’d always be connected because of Yasmine, and he wouldn’t change the fact that he was blessed with his daughter for anything in the world. Not even the fact that Mia was her mother because it would mean he’d have a different daughter.
Knox wasn’t foolish enough to think that just because the two were divorced, it meant that Mia wouldn’t still call and text him multiple times a day. He realized she enjoyed making him her verbal punching bag. The difference would be that he didn’t have to answer her calls or read her texts, wondering if they were about Yasmine because he planned on having custody.
He’d spoken to Aiva the day before, and she informed him she would have the paperwork ready to file in a couple of days, but she wanted to go over it with him again. She stated she could call him, or he could come in. Knox had agreed to go to her office and meet her, if for no other reason than he wanted to see her. Regardless of her being his lawyer and the divorce he was about to go through.
It was almost seven in the evening, and he figured he’d get started on dinner. Getting up, Knox went into the kitchen. He’d taken out some chicken breast to thaw earlier in the day.
As he made dinner, he didn’t miss the fact that his phone would ding now and then with a text notification. He knew it was more than likely Mia, and he had no desire to check them because she at least had the decency to call him if something happened with Yasmine. He’d give her that.
Once Knox finished preparing dinner, he plated his food and entered the living room, restarting the movie he’d paused when Mia called. When Yasmine was with him, he allowed her to have her snacks in the living room, but he’d made it a point of eating dinner with her at the dining table. When he was alone, he ate at the bar or in the living room instead.
He settled in with his plate and watched as a group tried to contact an angry spirit in an old house that was haunted.
“Idiots.”
Aiva sat eating her pasta and looking over an email from an opposing lawyer with terms they wanted her client to agree with. As she reviewed them, she only found two that she knew were not acceptable to him. His soon-to-be-ex wanted to give him one weekend a month, but she wanted all holidays and birthdays for herself.
Shaking her head, she marked the email as important, planning to call her client first thing in the morning. Even though she already knew how he was going to react.
Aiva often wondered how people could be so selfish, attempting to punish their exes by using their children as weapons. When ultimately, the only person they were hurting was the child.
Though she didn’t have any children of her own, Aiva knew all too well how a parent could use children as bargaining tools. She and her sister had both been one when they were younger. The situation affected them differently when they began practicing the same type of law.
Aiva dealt with divorces that involved children because she wanted to do what was best for the child. She felt that helping them healed a bit of the pain she had carried around since childhood. Meila tried to steer clear of divorces with children. Her sister had a hard time dealing with it and allowed the terrible memories to be drudged up and take over.
A sigh pulled Aiva’s attention, and she turned to look at Finx, who was sitting at her kitchen table with her. Bowl of pasta in his hand as he went over some flashcards. She assumed that he’d gotten another one wrong.
“You’ve been staring at those cards for almost two hours. Take a break.”
Finx looked up at her. “I would love to, but I have a test on Friday, and I don’t feel like I know all the information.”
Aiva placed her bowl down. “Yes, but if you try to force it, you won’t be able to remember it either way.”
Finx dropped his flashcards onto the table, and leaned back into the chair he occupied, taking a bite of pasta. It was almost eight in the evening. She knew he was worried about his upcoming test, and it was causing a mental block. It was how it often happened when he had a test coming up. He would stress about it. Aiva dreaded to see how he got when it was time for him to take his bar exam.
“Tell you what. We’ll finish eating, watch a movie so you can give your mind a rest, and then I’ll help you study.”
“Yeah,” Finx started with a nod. “That sounds like a good idea.”
Once the two finished eating, Aiva sent Finx into the living room to find a movie while she washed the few dishes. She then poured them both a glass of wine and joined him.
She handed Finx a glass as she took a seat beside him, and he started the movie he’d chosen. She never had to worry about movie choices when she watched with Finx, the way she had to with her sister. The two of them had similar tastes in movies.
As they watched, Aiva’s mind wandered to Knox and the meeting she had scheduled with him for Friday. She’d gotten all the paperwork together to file. She planned to review it again tomorrow before her meeting with him the following day. If everything sounded and looked fine to him, she would file it Monday morning with the court.
Aiva took a drink of her wine, as the woman on the screen fell from a ladder and hit her head on a table before falling onto a pencil that had fallen with the impact, lodging itself through her eye.
“Why was she trying to climb up to get away, anyway?” Aiva questioned with a roll of her eyes.
“It amazes me how many people run past doors to go upstairs,” Finx responded.
“At least now they try the doorknob most times. In older movies, they just ran by being stupid. At that point, they deserved to die.”
The two laughed before clicking their glasses together and taking a drink. Turning their attention back to the screen.
It was after midnight when Aiva finished helping Finx study, and he’d only missed three of the flashcards. She’d known he just needed a break, but he was always one to overwork himself to get things done.
