had finally landed me in a spot that I couldn’t lie, cheat, steal, or manipulate my way out of.
The stoic and startlingly good-looking lawyer seated across from me didn’t look like any white knight I had ever seen. He was too slick for that, way too calculating in the way he looked at me while he silently judged me. No, this guy wasn’t the good guy riding in to rescue the damsel and prove himself a hero; this was the guy that the villains paid megabucks to in order to keep them out of jail. In all that I had done, I’d never considered myself a villain. I knew I was a bad guy (or girl), but I wasn’t a corrupt, amoral criminal with the actual intent to harm anyone other than myself. However, under the scrutiny of this man’s unusual gunmetal-blue gaze, which held not even an ounce of warmth or reassurance in it, I was starting to reconsider my stance. He made me feel like I was well on the road to corruption and disgrace, and he had yet to utter a single word. I’d never done anything bad enough or stupid enough that I required a professional to defend my actions before now, and I was having a hard time believing this guy gave a single shit whether I was innocent or not.
All I wanted to do was cower away from him, and pretend like I was anywhere else in the world but in this tiny room with a metal table that was bolted to the floor between us. I moved my hands again, and couldn’t hold back a flinch and a tremor as metal scraped across metal. Rock bottom was going to leave more than bruises if I ever managed to pull myself up and dust myself off. This was going to scar, deep and vicious, and I hated that I deserved every single stinging mark.
“I don’t want your story.” His words were sharp and to the point. I blinked at the rough sound of his voice in the sterile room.
“I don’t want to know if you knew what your boyfriend was up to or not. I don’t care. All I want to know is if you understand what you’re being charged with, and how serious those charges are. If the answer is yes, all I need to know is if you are willing to do whatever I tell you to do moving forward.”
Did I understand how serious the charges were?
Was this guy fucking kidding me right now?
I was hooked up in cuffs. I was wearing an orange jumpsuit, and had on rubber shoes that squeaked across the floor when I walked. I hadn’t slept in two days because, after everything went down the night I had been arrested and booked, I’d been locked up in a cell with one woman who was so strung out she kept seeing little gremlins coming out of the floor and, as a result, kept jumping up on the rigid bunks suspended from the concrete cell wall, barely missing stepping all over me. The other woman in the holding cell was there because she had tried to run her cheating husband over with the family minivan when she found him in bed with their next door neighbor. He had been in the family’s dining room at the time, so not only was the woman fighting mad about the affair, but she ranted and raved well into the early hours of the morning about how her unfaithful spouse better be on the phone with the insurance company to repair the damage she’d caused. She was a bag stuffed full of crazy, and the more I tried to ignore her, the more she seemed determined to tell me her entire life’s story.
Yeah, Legal Eagle, I had a pretty damn good idea how serious the charges were, and I was scared shitless about what would happen to me if I was going to be found guilty of them.
I lifted my chained hands in front of me and let them fall back on the table to make a noisy and unmistakable point. The man didn’t bat a single, ridiculously long eyelash at the motion, but his mouth tightened a fraction. It was a pretty mouth. All of him was pretty, in one way or another, and I wondered if when he walked out of this industrial meeting room he shook himself off like a wet dog to rid himself of the feel and taint of crime, sleaze, and bad decision making. He looked like the type that had never, ever took a wrong step. He oozed confidence, self-assurance, and arrogance like it was an expensive cologne that was crafted and bottled just for him. It should be reassuring, should make me feel like he had this all handled, like I would be home safe and secure in my own bed in no time, but instead it made me bristle and feel even worse than I already did. I was a train wreck and that was bad … but having a witness to the wreckage, a witness as put together and unflappable as this man seemed … Well, that made the fallout from my latest bad move seem a hundred times worse.
This guy wasn’t the type to chase bad choice after bad choice. In fact, he made his living riding to the rescue for us poor slobs that did. A very nice living if the Rolex on his wrist and the Mont Blanc pen he was tapping against the file in front of him was any indication.
“I understand how serious the situation is.” My voice was quiet and tiny in the empty room. I cocked my head to the side as we continued to size one another up. “My dad hire you?”
I wanted to hold my breath while he answered, but I couldn’t get my lungs to work. I couldn’t get anything to work.
I was a screwup. I was a failure, a flunky. I was a loser, a manipulator. I was one hot freaking mess on top of another, and through it all my parents, more often than not my dad, had always been there to pick up the pieces. He forgave me. He excused me. He cleaned me up and gave me helping hand after helping hand. He loved me when I didn’t want to be loved. He was always there, but not this time.
Bad decisions make for good stories, Sprite.
Dad’s words chased themselves around in frantic circles in my head as I felt myself slip a little farther, fall a little deeper and realized this … this point was actually my rock bottom, as the man who claimed to be my defense attorney shook his tawny head in the negative. “No. A former client actually contacted me and asked me to represent you. He paid my retainer in full and told me that any bills that are incurred while handling your case should be handed over to him. I was hired before the police had you booked and taken to lockup.”
My dad wasn’t here to kiss the boo-boo this go-around. He wasn’t waiting in the wings to dust me off and tell me everything would be all right. Not this time. This time I had gone too far and a miserable, uncomfortable night with a drugged-out weirdo and a psycho, suburban mom had nothing on the ice cold fear that climbed up my spine, vertebra by vertebra, at the thought that I had finally done something Brite Walker couldn’t forgive. I knew it was coming. I knew that even my big, badass, former Marine, Harley-riding father had a breaking point. I pushed and pushed to reach that point my entire life. I always figured when the fracture happened it would come with a giant boom. I expected an explosion that would level Denver. The fact that it was barely a whimper, a whisper of sound that indicated a good man’s heart was breaking, made me feel even worse than I already did. I had no idea how it was possible, but I sunk even lower than rock bottom. This was what a torrent of misery and despair felt like and I was submerged neckdeep in it.
I blinked back tears and tilted my chin up at the attorney. “Who’s paying for you to be here?”
My mom loved me. She had a huge heart that was made of marshmallow, but she had reached her point of no return with me much earlier in my life than my father had. My parents divorced when I was in high school, right on the heels of one of the most defining moments of my youth. My dad rallied like he always did and tried to make the separation as easy on me as possible. My mom went from being distant and confusing to actively pushing me away. I was never sure if she forced the distance between us because things were so easy between me and my father or because they were so hard between her and me. Either way, the strain in our relationship did nothing to help the rapid descent that started to engulf me when I realized exactly what kind of person I was.
A harmful one.
A guilty one.
A selfish one.
I could even be considered a dangerous person, if you asked the right people, and they weren’t necessarily wrong. It was amazing how hazardous doing nothing
