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The room was quiet except for the sound of our uneven breathing. My mind and body drained from the wave of pleasure and ecstasy I had just come down from. I knew that Kade Carter was an amazing man but I had no idea that he was an amazing lover as well.
"God, you're amazing." The man of my dreams muttered into my messy hair before he pulled away and plopped on the bed next to me, his heavy breathing music to my ears. We stayed like that for what felt like forever before I chuckled and he followed suit. "That was…" "Amazing?" He finished for me, propping up on one arm to look at me. I gazed into his eyes, touching his face, so happy that I was finally with my knight in shining armor. Kade Carter. After five years of looking for this man. Five years of wanting to be by his side after he shielded me from that staged mugging and saved my life, I was finally in his arms. This was truly amazing. Dreams really do come true. "You can take a picture you know." He poked, twirling my hair in his hand before pecking my cheek and getting off the bed. I blushed, realizing that I had been staring while my mind flitted back to the past for a second. "I just might." I teased, my eyes trailing his ass and then his broad back, nasty thoughts plaguing my mind once more but just as my eyes reached the tip of his right shoulder, everything stopped. I blinked. Then I blinked again. The pleasure drained out of me so fast it was almost physical, like someone had pulled a plug and left me hanging on for dear life. The hell? His right shoulder was smooth. There was no mole. I sat up slowly, a pit slowly forming in my chest. "So, maybe I just freshen up and make you some breakfast or maybe I have you for breakfast again and we order in some room service?" He offered, turning to me with a raised brow and lust in his eyes. I said nothing for a second, just stared into space. My Kade had a mole, so distinct that I had memorised it from the one night I had been close enough to see it during the attack. It was the kind of mark you could not miss and this man did not have it. I swallowed hard. This was not Kade Carter. The realisation set in and all I could do was grimace. I had tracked him down. I had found a way into his bed. My mouth had watered at being so close to him last night and now I felt like I had been through a drought for months. How had I not looked sooner? How had I been so stupid? I chuckled nervously and scooted off the bed, trying to keep my face neutral while my insides were doing somersaults. "I don't think I'll stay for breakfast. I have a long day ahead of me and after that amazing sex, it was just the pick-me-up I needed to get through it." I praised him as I picked up my clothes from the floor, rushing to put them on and get out before he could see past the act but he was perceptive enough to stop me, arms wrapping around my waist and pulling me into that strong chest of his. "Hmm, just stay for a little while. I'll handle work for you." He whispered into my ear, his nose rubbing my neck as his now rock hard dick poked the small of my back. Any other day that might have worked. Today it just made my skin crawl with guilt. I quickly pulled away and shot him a smirk, putting on my best seductress act. "Well, maybe you'll end up seeing me again. Who knows?" "Or I could see you again if you just come for dinner? I can cook a mean alfredo pasta." He said, taking a step towards me as I wore my clothes. I gave him a look and plucked my bag from the floor. "We'll see." The mystery man grinned, running his hand through his hair. "We'll see then." I put on my shoes and rushed towards the door to leave when I paused, my hand on the frame. My mind was still running in circles and there was a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that I could not shake. This man was not Kade Carter but he looked exactly the same, like a perfect copy that it was unsettling. I had to know who he was. I needed it to make sense. I turned to him, his eyes still on me. "By the way, I never did get your name after…" "After you pulled me away from the hotel bar and fucked my brains out?" He finished for me, making me laugh awkwardly. "Yeah." "I know your name though, miss Mia Perez." "But yours is?" I pressed, holding his gaze. "My name's Killian. Killian Carter." Carter? As in Kade's family name? They were too alike and this was too much of a coincidence to be anything else. Killian had to be Kade's brother, or his cousin, or his twin to have completely fooled me. When I came to, I smiled at him. "I guess I'll see you around Killian Carter." I told him, the lie flowing from my mouth effortlessly. Before Killian could even say another word I was out the door and rushing to my car in the hotel parking lot. As soon as I got in, I gripped the steering wheel with both hands and just sat there for a moment, staring at nothing, the full weight of what I had done pressing down on me. Then I let my forehead drop against the wheel and groaned. "How could you sleep with the wrong guy, Mia? Ugh." I stayed like that for what felt like hours before I pulled out my phone with a sigh and started digging. A few clicks on the right name told me everything. Killian Carter was Kade's twin. I had climbed into bed with Kade Carter's identical twin brother like some kind of spectacular idiot and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it now. Killian had been in the city while Kade had been abroad for months, closing a business deal and there was no news on when he was coming back to New York. I turned off my phone, chucked it in the passenger seat and turned on my car, wanting to leave this place when there was a ring from my phone. I glanced over at the text message from an unknown number. Killian here. I wanted to make sure that you had my number, princess. See you soon. I stared at it for a second too long before turning the phone face down and peeling out of the parking lot. There was only one reasonable thing left to do after a morning like this. Drink and forget that this ever happened.The year the Mensah decision was handed down was also the year Rosa turned thirteen.She had been writing for three years. The family court access argument was taking shape in her notebooks the way all the access arguments had taken shape before it, from the ground up, from the specific problem outward.At her birthday dinner in the Georgetown apartment she surprised everyone.After the cake and the gifts and the particular energy of a family celebrating someone they loved, she stood up.She was thirteen years old. She stood the way Nora had stood at her first Senate testimony. Completely prepared and not performing preparedness.She said, "I want to tell everyone about my argument."The table looked at her.She said, "Children in family court. The state removes a child from their home. The proceeding determines where the child lives next. The child is the center of the proceeding. The child has no lawyer representing specifically their interests in most jurisdictions."She paused."T
The Mensah opinion was the longest I had written.Fifty-nine pages.The extension of the adequacy standard to removal proceedings required addressing three distinct constitutional arguments.First, that removal proceedings triggered the due process clause in the same way that criminal proceedings did. The court had addressed this partially in earlier immigration cases but not specifically in the adequacy context.Second, that the adequacy standard as established in the access and adequacy framework applied wherever the due process clause applied. This was the logical extension of the In re Gault reasoning from Simmons.Third, and most importantly, that the nature of the stakes in removal proceedings, the permanent separation of a person from their established life and often from their family, made the adequacy standard's application not merely logical but constitutionally necessary.The stakes argument was the one I spent the most time on.I described what Amara Mensah stood to lose.
Spring on the court.Three significant decisions in March and April. A Fourth Amendment case in which I wrote a majority opinion that drew on the access framework's logic in an unexpected way, applying the principle that constitutional rights were hollow without mechanisms to vindicate them to a surveillance context.The Chief Justice read the opinion and said, "You used the access logic in a Fourth Amendment context.""The principle is not limited to access," I said."No," he said. "It is the most general principle in constitutional law. Rights require remedies.""Marbury," I said."Always Marbury," he said.An administrative law case in which I dissented from a ruling that I believed was too deferential to agency interpretation. The dissent was careful and precise and three of the most read legal blogs in the country described it as a template for the court's eventual reconsideration of the deference doctrine."You are writing for the future court," the Chief Justice said."The futu
The Anderson conference was in December.Nine justices in the room.The states' arguments were strong enough that the room was genuinely divided in a way I had not seen since the early adequacy cases.Three justices were persuaded by the anticommandeering argument.Two were uncertain.The Chief Justice was watching carefully.When it was my turn I presented three things.First, the distinction between a federal program that activates on state failure and a federal mandate on state officials. I made the argument precisely and I had eight pages of concurrence already drafted to back it up.Second, the Spending Clause relatedness. The federal interest in access to legal representation was not adjacent to the access program. It was the program. The condition and the interest were the same thing.Third, the human cost.I said that the legal argument was sound on all three grounds. I said the framework of the opinion I was prepared to write would address every concern raised by the states'
The summer brought a development in the Carter family that had been coming for a while.Rosa was twelve.She had turned twelve in the spring and the twelve of it was visible in the specific way that twelve is visible in a child who is about to become something larger than a child. She was tall and precise and had the Killian smile and the Elena reasoning and something underneath both that was entirely herself.She had been writing in the notebook for two years.She showed it to Nora the previous year and to nobody else.In July she showed it to me.She brought it to the Georgetown apartment on a Sunday visit and after dinner she handed it to me and sat across from me in the same way Nora had handed me her four-page analysis at eight years old."What is this?" I said."I want you to read it," she said. "And tell me if it is right."I looked at her."What is it about?" I said."Access law," she said. "But the part that nobody is working on yet.""Tell me which part," I said."Children i
Nora's book was published in November.The Right That Reaches You. Four hundred and twelve pages. The full story of the access framework from the first family in Flatbush to the monitoring statute, written for anyone who wanted to understand it.The publication event was at a bookshop in Brooklyn that Nora had chosen because it was three blocks from Cruz's office.Cruz came. Dani came. The whole office came.Nora read for twenty minutes. Not the constitutional argument. The stories. The families. Robert Calder. The family in Flatbush. Dani's eleven months. Gerald's letter. Elena Torres's two years.The bookshop was quiet in the way of rooms where people are listening completely.After the reading, during the signing, a woman came through the line who I did not recognize. She was in her fifties. She had the look of someone who had dressed carefully for the occasion.When she reached Nora she said, "My son was represented by a public defender with three hundred cases. He went to prison
It was Kade's mother who figured it out first. We were having lunch at the townhouse, just Eloise and me, a habit that had developed quietly over the past weeks. She fed me and I told her things I didn't tell the twins, not always about them, sometimes just about work or the city or things I wa
By the following Tuesday, the entire office knew. I wasn't sure how it started. Maybe it was the way Killian had greeted me in the hallway that morning, loud and warm in front of everyone, like we were old friends. Maybe it was the way Kade had held the elevator door open for me with a look that
I did not shake their hands for long. The second I let go, I stepped back and put a smile on my face that I hoped looked more natural than it felt, because on the inside I was absolutely losing it. "What a surprise," I said, and I meant it in the worst possible way. Bendel was beaming betwe
It took an entire bottle of bourbon to make me forget what I had done days ago and an entire barrage of messages from Killian to bring me back to reality. I grimaced at my phone screen when another text from him popped up. This was his fifteenth one in three days and even after I blocked him, Killi







