Piper ~ H.S

~Fifty-Four~

Judge Alexandra looked intrigued. "Do you really?"

"Yes, Your Honour," Brandon nodded, "would you like to see it?"

"Yes, I'd love to," she immediately nodded, "David, pop that video in the disc player, please," she told the bailiff.

The bailiff nodded and made his way over to our table – taking the DVD from Brandon's hand and walking to the disc player and small TV that was set up in the corner of the room. While he set up the video, I took a moment to sneak a quick glance at Heath's table. I saw that Heath was staring at the TV with wide eyes and a fearful look on his face – and I felt myself smile a little.

As per Brandon's advice, I never told Heath that we had physical proof of the incident – since Brandon thought that telling him would give him an opportunity to strengthen his own argument by devaluing the video in some way. After all, he was a law student who also had his own lawyer – so we were all pretty sure he'd be able to figure out how to do that.

Alexandra's bailiff finally set up the DVD, and he stepped away from the TV as the footage began to play.

"For one, you decided to just go ahead and leave town to live with your flashy new boyfriend, you decided to take Piper with you, and because of that, you're making me drive four fucking hours every Friday night to pick Piper up and take her to my place, and two hours every Sunday evening, just so I can drop her back off! Now that really pisses me off, Leah! It's a waste of my time, and a waste of my gas!"

"Oh, we're back with this again, are we?! Well, if you don't think Piper's worth the effort, you can always just stop doing it, and spend no time with her at all!"

"Oh yeah, you'd fucking love that, won't you? With me out of the picture, you and Piper can just go on and play Happy Families with Harry, and just pretend that I'm not even Piper's father at all! That's just your one and only dream, isn't it?!"

I forced myself to swallow the lump that was forming in my throat as I watched the footage back. This was honestly one of the worst experiences of my life – and I did not want to re-live the whole thing.

"Why the fuck are you making it so hard for me, Leah?! Moving two fucking hours away, which you shouldn't even have done in the first place?! Why would you do all that shit, huh?!"

I let out a soft whimper as I watched the way he started to back me up against the wall. I felt Harry's body stiffening beside me as he began to tense up all over again. While he knew every detail of the incident, he hadn't yet had the opportunity to watch the whole thing from scratch – and I could tell how much it was already pissing him off.

"Fuck off, Heath! You don't get to tell me what I can do! You can't tell me that I can't live with Harry when you've been living with Danica for God-knows-how-long!"

"HEY! I wouldn't have minded if you all moved into that flash apartment at Warnes that he bought, but London is fucking ridiculous, Leah!"

"Oh, really?! Well, you didn't seem to think that when me and Harry first approached you with our plans to move! As far as we were concerned, you were happy to drive the distance – because we thought you'd feel like the travel was worth it to be with your daughter!"

Knowing that the dreaded moments were coming, I took Harry's arm and pulled him close to me to comfort myself – and he responded by protectively wrapping his arm around my waist.

"Well, you thought wrong. Fuck you, Leah. I'm fucking sick of this!"

"Yeah?! Are you sick of seeing Piper, too?!"