Objection Overruled: A Courtroom Romance

I've hated Daniel Park since law school.

That's not entirely accurate. I've competed with Daniel Park since law school. Same classes, same moot court, same clerkships. Always neck and neck, always pushing each other higher. He beat me for Law Review editor; I beat him for the Marshall Prize. He got hired by the DA's office six months before me; I made Senior Prosecutor a year before him.

We were rivals. We were supposed to be rivals. What I felt when I looked at him—the heat, the intensity, the way my blood ran faster—that was competition.

It definitely wasn't attraction. I told myself that for fifteen years.

My name is James Chen. I'm forty-one, I prosecute white-collar crime for the District Attorney's office, and I'm about to be forced to work directly with the one man I've spent my entire career trying to beat.

The case was enormous. A multi-billion-dollar fraud scheme that crossed state lines, involved a dozen shell companies, and implicated half the city's financial sector. Too big for any one prosecutor. The DA pulled both of us into her office and announced we'd be co-leading the prosecution.

"I need my two best people on this. You'll work together or you'll work somewhere else. Am I clear?"

We both said yes. Neither of us meant it.

The first weeks were brutal. We fought about strategy, about witnesses, about which evidence to lead with. Every meeting turned into a debate; every decision became a power struggle. The junior associates started taking bets on who would throw the first punch.

"Your approach to the forensic accounting is fundamentally flawed," Daniel said one night, late in the conference room, papers spread between us like a battlefield.

"My approach is based on fifteen years of experience."

"Your approach is based on ego. You're not seeing the money trail because you've already decided where it leads."

"And you're so certain you're right that you can't acknowledge any other possibility."

"Sound familiar?"

We glared at each other across the table. He was infuriating. Brilliant and infuriating, with those sharp eyes and sharper arguments, always finding the flaw in my reasoning before I could see it myself.

"Why do you hate me so much?"

The question slipped out before I could stop it. Daniel looked surprised.

"I don't hate you."

"Could have fooled me."

"James, I've never hated you. I've resented you, envied you, wanted to beat you at everything we both attempted. But hate?" He shook his head. "Hate is for people who don't matter. You've always mattered."

I didn't know what to say to that. The room felt suddenly smaller, the air between us charged in a way it hadn't been before.

"I should go. It's late."

He gathered his things and left, and I sat alone in the conference room for a long time, trying to understand what had just shifted.

Something changed after that night. We still argued—we'd never stop arguing—but the edge was different. Less hostile, more... charged. We started staying late together not to fight but to actually work, finding a rhythm that complemented rather than competed.

I noticed things I'd never let myself notice before. The way Daniel's hair fell across his forehead when he was concentrating. The way he smiled—rare and genuine—when I said something that surprised him. The way my heart rate spiked every time he walked into a room.

Fifteen years of telling myself this was rivalry. It had never been rivalry.

The realization hit me during a late-night prep session, two weeks before trial. We were alone in my office, going over closing arguments, and Daniel was reading my draft with that intense focus he brought to everything.

"This is good. Really good. But the transition on page twelve needs work."

"Show me."

He came around my desk, leaned over my shoulder to point at the paragraph. Close enough that I could smell his cologne, feel the warmth of his body. Close enough that my hand shook when I took the pen from him.

"James."

"Yeah?"

"Are we ever going to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?"

"The thing we've been not talking about for fifteen years."

I turned in my chair, and suddenly his face was inches from mine. The intensity I'd always attributed to competition was something else entirely, and it was mirrored in his eyes.

"I thought it was just me."

"It was never just you."

He kissed me. In my office, surrounded by case files, with the cleaning crew probably still in the building. It was unprofessional and inadvisable and the best thing that had happened to me in years.

We kept it secret through the trial. Couldn't risk anything that might compromise the case, distract the jury, give the defense ammunition. We were consummate professionals in the courtroom—seamless partners, presenting a unified front that demolished the opposition.

At night, in his apartment or mine, we were something else entirely.

"You were brilliant today. That cross-examination—"

"You set it up perfectly. I just followed your lead."

"We make a good team."

"We always did. We just couldn't admit it."

We won the case. Guilty verdicts on all counts, sentences that would keep the defendants in prison for decades. The biggest win of both our careers, achieved together.

The DA called us into her office the day after the verdict.

"Whatever you two figured out, keep doing it. I've never seen such a cohesive prosecution."

We glanced at each other, keeping our expressions neutral.

"We'll do our best, ma'am."

📅 One Year Later

We're out now. Not loudly, but openly. The office knows, our colleagues know, the legal community knows. There was gossip at first—of course there was, fifteen years of rivalry suddenly becoming a relationship—but it faded as people got used to seeing us together.

We still argue. About cases, about strategy, about whose turn it is to do the dishes. But now the arguments end in bed instead of silence, and I've learned that Daniel fights hard because he cares hard, about everything.

Including me.

We bought a place together last month. His idea—I'd have been content with my apartment forever, but he wanted something that was ours. So now we have a townhouse with two home offices and a kitchen he's slowly teaching me to use.

"You're thinking too hard again," he says, watching me from across the breakfast table.

"Just thinking about the Morrison case."

"It's Saturday. No case thinking on Saturdays."

"Since when?"

"Since now. New rule." He reaches across, takes my hand. "Fifteen years of being rivals. We have a lot of time to make up for."

"We have the rest of our lives."

He smiles—that rare, genuine smile that still makes my heart race. "That's the plan."

I spent fifteen years competing with the man I loved, too stubborn to see what was right in front of me. Now I spend every day collaborating with him instead, building something together that neither of us could have built alone.

Objection overruled. The evidence speaks for itself.