The Spark

She tried to hide her smile by looking down. “What’s the partner’s name who assigned you?”

“Blake Dickson. We call him The Dick, because he is.”

Autumn nodded.

“How was your friend’s wedding? It must’ve happened by now, right? Did the bride do her dance down to the altar?”

Autumn’s mouth dropped open. “She did, and the wedding was a blast, but I can’t believe you remember that.”

“It’s pretty hard to forget a story about a bride planning to dance down the aisle to ‘Crazy Bitch’ by Buckcherry.”

She laughed. “I guess so.”

“Plus…” I caught her eye. “I remember everything about our weekend together.”

I debated saying anything else, but she’d really rocked me when she pulled her disappearing act, and I felt the need to let her know it. So I ignored the fact that I probably sounded like a desperate wuss and cleared my throat. “I remember that you only ever have one earbud in at a time, never two, so you can be aware of your surroundings. But you alternate the right and left one every Sunday—so the other doesn’t feel neglected. You also speed when you go over bridges, just in case they collapse. And you know a crapload of random facts because you have an incessant need to do a deep dive on anything you hear about that you feel like you don’t have enough knowledge on, which causes you to get lost in Google searches for hours. If I’m not mistaken, it was lottery winners after we watched that movie about a guy who won the lottery and lost all his money. You spent an hour telling me about random things that have better odds than winning the lottery while I made us dinner. Also, you sleep with the covers over your head, and you’re so small, it’s hard to tell if you’re in the bed or it’s just a lump of covers.”

Autumn blinked a few times. “How do you know how I sleep? We never slept in the same room except for a few short naps. I slept in your bed, and you slept on the couch.”

I smiled. “I checked on you. I might’ve pulled the covers back and watched you sleep for a minute or two once.”

“That’s kind of creepy...”

“I wanted to make sure you were okay. And then I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. You’re beautiful, even when you sleep.”

She looked away, and when she turned back, she avoided eye contact. “I’m nervous about what’s going to happen to Augustus this time. His last arrest was only a few months ago.”

I guessed that was the end of our trip down memory lane… “I might have something I can use to make this go away.”

“What do you mean?”

“Prosecutors don’t particularly enjoy punishing twelve year olds, especially ones who have potential, like Storm. So if you can bring them something they do enjoy prosecuting, and help them see there’s also a good path for your client without putting him in a juvey detention center or shipping him someplace where he’ll only wind up worse, then usually they’ll work something out.”

Her nose wrinkled. “I’m not following you. Who would they enjoy prosecuting?”

Even without attorney-client privilege, I wasn’t going to break my word to Storm. Kids like him don’t trust easily, so if they so much as smell that you might not have honored your word, you lose them for good.

“Leave it to me, okay?”

She looked wary. “Okay…”

This time, when she tried to look away, I made sure I got through to her. “Autumn?”

She lifted her eyes to meet mine. “Trust me, okay? I’m going to do everything I can for him.”

With a sigh, she nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. Digging it out, I saw that it was the office. I looked over at Autumn. “Excuse me for a minute.”

She nodded, so I swiped to answer and stood, taking a few steps away. “Donovan Decker…”

“Decker, how did the hearing go?”

Yeah, hello to you, too, Mr. Dick.

“Hey, Blake. The hearing went fine. Pretty standard.”

“Will you be able to get the kid off?”

“I’ll do my best. I might have a little leverage to work.”

“You better. There’s a lot riding on this for you.”

Seriously? Seven damn years of pulling in tens of millions on high-profile cases, and my fate comes down to a pro bono case for a twelve-year-old kid I shouldn’t even have while he’s deciding how to vote on whether I make partner or not? I wanted to tell him to eat shit, but instead I ate shit—though I had to physically swallow in order to force down my thoughts and make room for my ass kissing.

“Absolutely, I won’t let you down.”

Click. The asshole hung up on me.

I shook my head and grumbled under my breath. You have a good day, too, Dick.

However aggravated the short conversation had made me, my anger quickly dissipated as I turned around. Autumn had her thick auburn hair in her hand, and she was tying it up in one of those buns girls could do faster than a ninja. She looked beautiful with it down or up, but seeing it piled on top of her head reminded me of the morning I’d woken up and found her standing in front of my stove, cooking while wearing one of my T-shirts. She’d been humming “Little Boxes,” an old song that had made a comeback as the theme song to the show Weeds, and I’d secretly snapped a picture of her. Trent still busted my balls about that pic. I’d showed it to him once, enlarging it so he couldn’t see her bare legs, but it had been in my favorites folder—the only picture I’d ever hit the little heart on and put in there on my iPhone.