Cherished by You: A Found by You Finale Novella

by Victoria H. Smith

  I turned, moving on the couch cushion. Kerry had clear glass so I could see quite well across the office, the women moving amongst the other employees and busy attorneys bustling by. Through the pack of it all, I could see the ladies well. Kerry had her hand behind Cassidy, guiding her out.

  But the women weren’t coming out of that room alone.

  A man came out directly after them, tall with well-oiled hair. He’d been quick to smile when he came in, but it had always been a short-lived expression. Like he did it only out of politeness or formality. He made his handshakes short, too. He gave one to Kerry, then her second chair Edina, nodding at Cassidy only briefly before his client joined the party, the final member of the procession line.

  He turned heads like he’d done when he came in, Cassidy’s ex-husband. Skin deep with color and hair of a dark, even tone, Cassidy’s ex was everything I imagined someone like her would be with. He was equally beautiful to her, stunning from his expensive-looking suit to well-polished shoes.

  His eyes revealed something else, though. They were still beautiful just like the rest of him, but the way he used them made me see past the surface. I think it was the way he watched Cassidy, slick and even borderline leering. The entire gaze made Cassidy’s body tight and her eye contact shifted away, her hands wrestling beneath herself.

  But that didn’t stop her ex’s pursuit.

  He actually stepped forward, attempting to say something to her.

  Too bad my friend got there first.

  Kerry was quite polite about it, professional, but she wasn’t having him talking to her client without permission.

  She stepped slightly in front of Cassidy and through the spaces of the passing people in her office, I noticed her smile, a few words passing from her lips. I had no idea what they were, but whatever they consisted of broke the illusion for only a moment, that beauty of a man who sported such perfection a moment ago.

  A cruelty hit his eyes then, making them narrow, and for a second, the expression shocked me still. That was how powerful it had been, tense.

  With a shift of his shoes, the man stepped away, his lawyer in tow. Kerry only watched him for a second before turning to her own client. She spoke a few words to Cassidy and whatever they’d been made Cassidy’s head lift. She nodded, shaking Cassidy’s hand before releasing her to Edina. Her second chair escorted Cassidy away and my friend headed in the direction of her office.

  Turning around, I took a few short breaths, my heart racing for some reason. I’d been fine before, and I would be fine now. All of this would be over soon. I had friends behind me, and soon, things would go back to the way they were. Cassidy would be out of my life again and I… I’d have closure.

  Kerry Donavon quite literally brightened up a room when she came in, so glamorous in even the plain brown suit of an attorney. Her black pumps with red bottoms clicked the floor when she entered, and I was graced with the kindest smile, my dear friend always good for one of those.

  Forcing bravery into my limbs, I made myself stand. I wanted to know how everything went in there if everything was okay.

  “How’d it go?” I asked her, the confidence I knew I held. What I was doing was the right thing. It had to be.

  Coming further into her office, Kerry placed a file on her desk. That smile remained on her face, but I couldn’t help noticing the tightness of it.

  She sat back against her desk.

  “It’s a rough situation, Roxie,” she said, sighing. She shook her head, the length of her haircut modest, but always pristine. “That woman’s ex-husband is a character. Did you know, he’s a mob affiliate?”

  I had no idea. In fact, the very notion shocked me.

  How could she end up with someone like that?

  “Though he hides it under the guise of legitimate business practices,” she went on. “He’s hard, tough. He wants Cassidy’s child, and he just might get what he’s after. The courts usually favor the mother, but not when they have nothing. And she doesn’t have anything, Roxie. Her inheritance was significant, but she didn’t think to get protection. He took it all in the divorce.”

  I didn’t know how I felt about that, turning away. This didn’t sound like Cassidy—she was always so smart. She had always been I thought… better. She was better than this no matter how things went down between us.

  She was beautiful, confident, and top of her class. Cassidy had always been someone I aspired to be, even when she was hurting me.

  Lifting my head, I could still see her. Edina had given her a seat in the foyer, Cassidy’s head down with her hands in her lap.

  What had happened to her? Was it that guy or…

  I didn’t know. I just knew the woman out there wasn’t the one I knew. Something had happened to her. Something had changed.

  “I feel bad for her,” Kerry chimed in, coming to my side. She watched Cassidy as I was, my friend, shaking her head. “He’s a real piece of work and wouldn’t even let her get a word in edgewise. I had to intercede several times.”

  “What can you do for her?” I asked.

  I think I needed that. I needed that for her and for myself. When I originally went to see my former step-sister, I had no idea why. It had been on impulse, sheer curiosity driven by pain. But at some point, it became something else, and I think I realized that after I spoke to her. Something made me fight to help her and that same something even made me challenge the man I loved.

  It wasn’t a mystery to me Griffin didn’t want me to help Cassidy, and his objection was the same reason he went out to her in the first place. He wanted to fix this, fix it for me. But I didn’t need him to fix it. I needed him to step back and let me get a handle on this myself. That was the only way I’d be at peace, my heart at peace.

  I needed to know I had the strength to overcome Cassidy and our history together. This woman had been my world once upon a time. I went to sleep by her taunts, and though she hadn’t been the fire starter like her sister Radha, she did nothing to stop the flame. She was there for all of it, every word, every chant. She had been my misery, yes, but she would no longer be my pain.

  And that was a promise I made to myself.

  Kerry and I both watched the woman outside her office. Edina had returned to Cassidy, a cup of coffee in her hand for the woman.

  “I’ll make it so she keeps her child,” Kerry said, answering my question. Then her hand lifted, waving through the glass with one of her kind smiles.

  Facing forward, I noticed who she waved at, Cassidy, her coffee cup in hand.

  I froze, standing there without reaction. Before, the distance had been so far between us, and the busy people in Kerry’s office concealed my gaze, but there was none of that anymore. There was Cassidy and there was me—the two of us without distraction.

  I didn’t know how to react. Much like that day at my office, I was left without words or thought. Cassidy, on the other hand, made no effort not to react.

  She made no effort, not to thank me.

  She lifted her hand, but she didn’t do so to Kerry who stood beside me. She lifted her hand to me. I know because she mouthed something, three words: “Thank you, Roxie.”

  Her back faced me after that, still no reaction from me. Edina escorted her out, and Kerry turned, pressing a finger to her intercom.

  “Yes, Ms. Donavon,” a voice sounded from the room. I assumed her receptionist.

  Kerry bent over the speaker. “Can you put Ms. Davis into a car?” she asked referring to Cassidy. “She lives in South Ridge.”

  “Of course, Ms. Donavon, right away.”

  “Join me for lunch,” Kerry said to me, rising up. She went behind her desk, picking up her purse.

  A wide smile highlighted her brown eyes. “We could go to that quaint little sandwich shop down the street. Take a load off.”

  Thoughts of Cassidy lingering fresh in my mind, I blinked, nearly missing what my friend said.

  “Sandwich shop?”

  Kerry nodded. “Mmhmm. My sta
ff and I used to go all the time when I was at the office.”

  “Sure, yeah. That’s fine.”

  After taking a few moments, I got my purse, using the couch to steady myself when I bent to pick it up off the floor. I placed it next to the couch but struggled a little on my way back up, all this belly throwing off my equilibrium a bit.

  A hand came to my arm.

  “Aren’t you just the cutest little pregnant woman?” my friend said, laughing when she helped to stabilize me.

  “I’m glad someone thinks so,” I told her smiling a little. “I feel huge, my feet swollen.”

  “It all comes with the territory. Come on. We’ll get you in a car soon, so you don’t have to walk anymore.”

  I nodded at her, ready to go when she was. Kerry opened the door to her office. I followed her but hesitated when someone else re-entered the room directly in front of me, the foyer outside of Kerry’s office.

  Cassidy didn’t notice me, her head down, has been her M.O. since she came back into my life. Her lidded coffee cup still in hand, she headed back over to the seat she’d been at. She must have forgotten something because when she bent, reaching next to the chair, she came back with a lightly-colored sweater in her hands.

  But that wasn’t the only thing I observed.

  She had a bandage under her arm, easily concealed when she rested it by her side. I guess that’s why I hadn’t noticed it before.

  By this time, Edina had come back into the room. She placed her hand behind Cassidy, smiling as she guided her out again.

  “Roxie?”

  I walked past Kerry at her door, following Cassidy until she fell out of my sight. She entered an elevator, amongst many when she pushed onto it in the busy office building.

  “Roxie? What’s wrong, honey?”

  I blinked, my view cut off from Cassidy as the elevator doors closed.

  “Did you see that bandage?” I asked Kerry, still in wonder of it. I didn’t remember that the day I saw her at her house.

  Had she had that before?

  I wondered if she had and if so when she’d gotten it.

  As well as how.

  My friend coming in beside me put me off by her expression. Kerry loved to smile. That was just her way. But she wasn’t smiling anymore.

  Not at all.

  She put her hand on my arm. “Roxie… knowing what happened will just sit heavy on your heart. It did mine, which was why I advised a shelter for her. She seems to have too much pride though for that.”

  “A shelter? What? Why would she need to go there?”

  Her hand moved down my arm. “Because she got that wound at that place she currently lives at. Someone cut her.”

  Cut her…

  My hand smoothed over my belly, a little wonder inside, one not unlike Cassidy’s. I was further along, but she had one, too. She had a baby, too.

  I swallowed. “What do you mean she was cut? What happened?”

  “I just know there was an altercation. She got in the wrong person’s way. Those things happen.”

  “She’s pregnant, Kerry.”

  “I know, sweetie. Which is why I said knowing what happened will just sit heavy on your heart. You can’t do anything for her, and she won’t stay at a shelter. My hands are tied.”

  Her hands are tied.

  “We’ll win for her,” Kerry said, coming around me. She took my hands. “That will get her out. The finalizing of her case will come with a healthy child support settlement. She and the baby will be well taken care of. I’m making sure of that, fighting for her.”

  She was right, winning would get Cassidy out, out this situation and whatever mess she’d gotten herself into. But my dear friend, as amazing as she was had been wrong about something, too. The information may have sat heavy on my heart.

  But I wasn’t without the means to do something for my ex-step-sister.

  Griffin

  The production schedule will be 6-9 months, as well as time scheduled for reshoots. The production schedule will begin…

  The contract curled in my hands, affecting me deep in my gut. Call a guy simple, but movies taking this much time to make quite epically, blew my mind. I hadn't anticipated spending this much time away from Roxie, the baby too after he was born…

  This really is impossible, is it?

  That knocked the wind out of my sails a little, the knowledge of that. I started to get a little excited about it all, the talk of it all…

  Roddy Price’s movie offer floated over my head like a dark cloud since the day of the offer, when in the beginning it had been such an opportunity.

  That’d been the day so much drama came into our lives, Roxie’s former sister coming out of nowhere. My wife was handling all of that now, closing the door to a bunch of stuff that had no business flurrying around us. I wasn’t happy with the ultimate decision she made, but as this seemed to be a temporary situation, a temporary inconvenience, I let the issue go at the moment. From what my wife told me, her friend Kerry would be handling most of the situation, her former step-sister's actual attorney in all this, while Roxie waited on the sidelines. There shouldn’t be really any interaction between the two of them, and that set my heart at ease a little. We’d be waiting while Kerry handled all this and then my wife could let go. We could move on.

  I thought the next step might have been the contract in my hands. I had no idea how I’d make this work, with my wife’s busy schedule and of course mine. Adding a newborn to the mix was just another level in regards to the complications that would keep me from going away for months at a time to shoot a movie, but I thought maybe, just maybe we’d have a miracle. I could fly in and out. I could make it work. But it was just too much time, too much…

  Roxie and the baby would just need me too much. This wasn’t how things were with my basketball schedule, where I could cut events and swap out opportunities for my job with those of my family obligations. It had been a juggling act over the years, but I always managed to make it work come hell or high water.

  But this is just too much…

  The contract felt heavy in my hands, my agent reminding of it this morning. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to tell Roxie about the opportunity yet, too much going on and with the odds of me not even taking it, I didn't see the point in telling her.

  Putting the contract down, I stared out the window, my travels taking me above the clouds today. I was headed home to Texas for a few hours and was always glad for them.

  I had these check-ins with my pop more and more these days and what was now known to be the family business, all three of my brothers involved in something my pop started once upon a time. We all had our hands in Chandler & Sons Furniture Co. and what a business it had become over the years.

  The beginnings had all been my pop, a hardworking man who started in construction himself. After years of back-breaking work, he decided to start his own business, and I had been happy to be one of the early benefactors. That commitment went on well after the loan was paid, though. This business was just as much mine as anyone else who had a direct role in the business’ foundation, and I was proud to say I had my hands in the company quite a bit.

  I liked it that way, being involved. Not because I was anal-retentive or anything, but because I truly liked working with my family. I really did see myself doing something like this in the future, being a businessman or something. That only helped that I got to do so with some of the people I cared about the most.

  My pop was in charge, but the rest of my brothers were well in deep and just as committed as our pop was. My oldest brother Hayden held some of the management roles at the place and my brother Brody, well, he did deliveries along with his fiancée, Alexa, or I guess Alex for short. He met this girl out of the blue one day, and she rightly changed his life. The two had been inseparable since she managed to work her way into his heart and were expecting a child, too. Though, not as far along as Roxie. Perhaps, that had been the sign my brother needed to finally stop making hi
s woman sweat and pop the question to her. But my brother and his committing definitely hadn’t been the reason for the proposal layoff. The two had been living like they were married for years along with two members of her family, her nephew, Aiden and sister Elena. Honestly, getting married was something my brother probably just hadn’t slowed down enough to think about. He and Alex kept busy, her just as much involved in my family business as the rest of us.

  As excited as I was to see my family today, check-in, I had all this contract stuff sitting on my shoulders. I just had to tell Deanna no, and that was that. I had no time for the commitment.

  No matter how truly awesome it did sound.

  The wheels of the plane hitting the tarmac brought me back into reality. Deanna had set the flight up, as well as the private car waiting for me when I got out. I really hated being chauffeured around my old stomping grounds, but it made sense, as I wasn’t in town often enough to justify keeping my own ride here. I got inside the car and then sat back, letting my driver do his job.

  My pop’s furniture shop resided deep in the country, a truly awesome backdrop of rolling hills and scenic landscapes behind it. I had lived here a big chunk of my life, in Texas, and as much as I loved the beautiful home and life I’d made for myself and my family, nothing took a guy’s breath away better than being back where he grew up. When pop debated where he’d put his business there hadn’t really been one, a debate that is. This was home. Here was where it needed to be, and the rest of my family had been completely on board with him.

  My driver pulled up in front of a modest-sized warehouse, those picturesque hills behind it. My driver got out and went to open the door for me, but I beat him to it. Something about them doing that part of the job made me feel kinda entitled. I could get my own door and did, thanking the man with a tip before getting my things together. I pushed the contract into my back pocket, then got out, heading toward the sizable production my pop had going on.