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Sustained: Book Two of the Don't Count Me Out Series
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 3 2026
Pages: 50
Weight: 0.16
Height: 0.13 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
SUSTAINED
Book Two of the Don't Count Me Out Series
For thirty years, Judge Bernadette Bernie Okafor and defense attorney Desmond Ashworth faced off across the same courtroom - she on the bench, he doing everything in his power to win. She built a full, formidable life on the strength of her own judgment: eleven years widowed, entirely unbothered by anyone's opinion of how she should spend her retirement, and completely convinced she needed nothing further to call that life complete.
Then Desmond showed up sober, retired, and living two streets from the marina - and Bernie discovered that a life can be whole and still have room in it.
But rekindling something with a man whose last decade on the bench circuit was defined by missed filings and hungover continuances comes with a ledger neither of them can outrun: a daughter who watched her mother die loving a man who wasn't fully present, a son who learned to armor himself before he was old enough to know he was doing it, and a rival judge more than willing to use Bernie's own courtroom reputation against her.
Bernie doesn't need rescuing - never has, never will. What she needs is a man capable of sitting with the whole truth of who he was, not just the six good years he'd rather lead with. And Desmond has to learn that loving her properly means standing beside her through a fight, not stepping back to spare her one.
No ring. No finish line. Just two of the most stubborn people in Essex County, finally willing to hand each other the truth - and, eventually, each other's hardest decisions.
Sustained.
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