Shape of you (Daniel Ricciardo)

Court

Daniel follows Stevie inside, he can almost see the smoke that is coming from her ears, he has never seen her as furious as he just saw her. And unfortunately it seems like some of that anger is directed towards him.

"Baby wait! Talk to me." He finds her in the kitchen, her back turned towards him, pretty much throwing some stuff in the dishwasher.
Stevie stops what she was doing and grabs the counter, her shoulders are so tense that he wants nothing more than to touch her so she relaxes, but he is a little bit worried he might end up with a punch in the face if he does that now.

Her knuckles turn white from the force she is holding the counter with and her breathing is shallow and fast.
"Did you consider taking the offer and paying him to get the kids?" Her voice trembles from the anger she is holding in.

Daniel is weighing his words. He can deny it, but he doesn't want to lie to Stevie, they have always been honest with each other. Ok Stevie may have hidden her scars for him at first, but she had a good reason for that.
She has been lied to by the man she thought loved her for so long. He's not going going to do that to her.

"I thought about it for a moment."
Stevie turns around, tears in her eyes.
"Why Daniel? Why would you even consider it. They are children, not a loaf of bread. You can't put a price on my kids lives. They are worth more than any amount of money." Stevie feels so disappointed that Daniel would even think about giving Mitch and Tiffany money for her kids, their kids. It's just so wrong.

"I know baby, I know they are not a loaf of bread and I know they are worth a hell of a lot more than ten million." He starts.
"Then why?! Those assholes don't deserve it! They don't deserve to live their life in luxere after what they did! What they are doing! You know I want to do this the official way, you know we are going to win this! Then why would you even consider giving them so much money?"

Stevie starts to wonder if there's anything Daniel knows that she doesn't. Is everybody just saying they are going to win to make her feel better? Is she going to lose her kids after all? Is that why Daniel thought paying them would be better than taking it to court?
She swallows when that thought starts to push away her confidence about winning this.

"Did I just ruin it? Are we going to lose them Daniel? Please don't tell me you wanted to pay him because that's the only way we are going to keep our kids?" Her anger evaporates as the fear washes over her like a tidal wave, her entire body starts to shake just from the thought of her ruining their chance of keeping her kids. Maybe Daniel was just going to solve it all and she just destroyed their chances.

Daniel can see how her entire posture changes and he can read her mind.
He quickly closes the distance between them and holds her in his arms when she is fighting not to fall apart.

"Sweetheart listen to me. That is not the reason. Of course we are going to win this. You haven't ruined anything. Maybe I almost did. But we are going to win this."
He cups her face so she has to look at him, in his eyes she can see nothing but honesty and worry about her.

"The only reason I considered it was so you don't have to go through this anymore. I hate seeing you like this. You don't sleep, you barely eat. I get it, I do. It's extremely stressful and you don't deserve this. So I thought, maybe I can fix it."
He really hopes she will understand why he thought about it. In the end he would have discussed it with her first anyways and he kind of expected her not to be too thrilled, but for him it could have been the solution for everything.

"But what if you gave them the money? Then what? Who says they won't try to get more, he was blackmailing you Daniel. That's illegal. Too bad I didn't get it on video, because it would just be another piece of evidence that they are not the right people to raise kids, not ours, but also not kids of their own. I really hope they will never reproduce."
Stevie has calmed down a bit, she was livid when she saw Mitch and Daniel talking especially when she heard what it was about.