The Love Triangle (BWWM Romance) (25 page)

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means that someone has to declare you mentally unstable. Unfit to stand trial. There are a lot of notes and comments on your emotional instability. Witness reports, that kind of thing.”

I shook my head. I would go as far as saying I was just unable to deal with it all, I lost it and that was why I’d done it all. But I knew that wasn’t true. I knew why I’d lost it.

“Have they searched the house yet?” I asked.

Lawrence frowned and looked down at his notes. Finally he shook his head.

“Doesn’t seem like it. They’re still waiting for a warrant. There was a murder last night and the police have pushed your case down the priority list a little bit. As soon as they get the warrant, they’ll go through. Why? Is there something there that they’ll find?”

I waved my hand and turned around, my back to the lawyer. It didn’t matter what I did, if a psychologist came to see me, even if he declared me unfit, they would find the damn drugs and they would know why. And I would go to jail, even if it is for possession. I wasn’t stupid. I knew that having that much on me would get me convicted as a dealer, even if I wasn’t.

I just always had the money to buy bulk and I liked not seeing Kyle too often.

“Just see what you can do,” I ordered. Lawrence left at some point, although I didn’t know when. When I finally turned around again, he was gone.

I didn’t make bail. They wouldn’t let me out. So after the hearing I was shipped to a jailhouse on the other side of Dayton. It was all some kind of nightmare. When we got there I was ordered to wear a gray jumpsuit. They took everything I had and when I fell into step with the other inmates, I looked just like them. There was nothing that set me apart from any of the other criminals anymore.

Four days later, I got a call that there was a visitor for me. I hadn’t heard from Lawrence again, and I was happy he’d finally come with some news. Any news at this point was enough. I was just about dying. My cellmate was a child molester and I didn’t think it was fair to be paired up with someone that really was bad to the bone.

They led me to the visitor’s area. Every gate had two guards on each side, and I was escorted through. The last gate slid open and I walked into the long line of booths with glass panels separating the visitors from the inmates.

I sat down at booth four. But it wasn’t Lawrence looking back at me. I should have known my lawyer wouldn’t come through the visitor’s line to speak to me.

Grace sat in front of me, and I saw her now like saw her for the first time.

She must have had her hair redone because her braided bun looked fresh and neat. She wore makeup and I noticed how smooth her skin was. Her dark eyes were filled with some emotion that I couldn’t read, and I wondered how on earth I could ever have hurt this woman.

I picked up the receiver that sat against the partition and held it against my ear. Grace did the same. 

“I didn’t expect to you see you here,” I said. She took a deep breath, as if she was trying to get her emotions under control.

“I didn’t expect to come,” she said, and the words hurt a lot more than I expected them to.

“Why are you here?” I knew I didn’t sound friendly, but this was humiliating.

“I came to say goodbye,” she said. I didn’t think it was possible, but those words stung the most.

“Are you going somewhere?” I said.

“I don’t know yet. But I have to find a job and make a living. I don’t know where I’ll go now, but I don’t think I can stay in Fort Atkinson.”

“Right. Well, you got what you wanted, didn’t you?” I said. I sounded bitter and angry. I didn’t want her to remember me like that, but I couldn’t help it. I was bitter, and I was angry. I was in here like I was some kind of terrible person, and she sat on the other side, free to walk away and go anywhere she wanted.

“Did you love me?” she asked, and the question caught me off guard. I gaped, struggling for words. Finally I just nodded.

“Then why?” she asked. “Why all the lies, and the pain, and everything that didn’t need to be?”

I searched myself for an answer. I tried to find something that I could say to her that would make it all work, make it all make sense so that she wouldn’t see me as the devil himself. That was all I’d wanted, from the start. From the moment she’d woken up in that hospital and I’d realized I had another chance to prove that I could be the guy, all I wanted was for her to see me like that.

“You never really trusted me again, did you?” I asked instead of answering her question. “Even when you couldn’t remember.”

“Apparently the body doesn’t forget,” she said. “My mind didn’t remember, but what happened wasn’t just a memory. It really happened, and no matter what, you couldn’t undo it. Why didn’t you go for help? Why didn’t you try to fight for me?”

Her face contorted like she was going to cry.

“I was fighting for you. But you loved someone else. What was I supposed to do?”

She shook her head and swallowed like she was trying to pull herself together before she started talking again.

“I don’t know, but what you did do, wasn’t it.”

I sighed. She took a deep breath.

“I’m not going to stay long. I just wanted closure. I wanted to end this the right way.”

I snorted. Was there really a right way to end anything?  I knew that this wasn’t how I’d wanted it to end. With me behind bars and her heart in the hands of another man.

“I didn’t want this to happen,” I finally said.

“I would say I know,” she said. “But the fact is I just don’t. I thought I knew you, but I don’t. I thought I knew where my life was headed, but I don’t. I don’t know anything for sure anymore.”

I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what to say to that. What did you say the woman you’d already lost? What did you say when you hurt someone so much it was impossible to fix? Sorry didn’t cut it. An excuse was a coward’s way out. Saying I understood why she didn’t want me, that would be accurate but I was too proud to say that.

“I’m going to go,” she said softly. She looked into my eyes, and her eyes were so dark, so deep. I remember nights where I’d fallen into them. I remembered nights when my hands traced every outline of her body, and she was mine, completely.

Now she was just two feet away from me, and she felt further away than ever.

“Goodbye, Elijah,” she said and hung up the phone before I could say anything. I hung it up too, and watched her walk away. The swing of her hips, the way her one foot fell in a perfect line in front of the other. The door opened for her and she was out of sight.

“Let’s go,” the officer said behind me and I got up, ready to spend the rest of my life looking back and regretting the moment I hadn’t corrected Grace when she asked did I love her, into saying that I do.

Chapter 24 - Grace

I waited on the curb for a cab to pick me up, and broke down in tears. It didn’t matter how much I loved Justin. How much I thought I’d loved Elijah. With two men in my life, saying goodbye to either one of them was going to be heart wrenching.

But somehow, this was so much worse. Seeing him like that, in his gray jumpsuit with the handcuffs around his wrists like they didn’t even trust he wouldn’t try anything in the visitor’s area, broke my heart. He wasn’t a bad man. He’d hurt me, and he’d done a lot of bad things, but he wasn’t a bad man. He was just the wrong man.

I wished I’d been able to remember. If I’d woken up in the hospital and I’d known what had happened for me to end up there, I could have prevented this from happening. I could have run away with Justin, and Elijah would still be free. A mess, a man that thought money could buy happiness, but free.

I knew he was in there for what he’d done. He was in there for a lot of things, and he would be in there for a long time. It just seemed like such a sad ending.

The cab pulled up in front of me and I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. When I slid into the backseat, I ordered the driver to take me to Fort Atkinson. He had the radio on, music blaring on a station that played the oldies, and the music was a welcome distraction.

I had over an hour’s travel time to pull myself together.

By the time we stopped in front of the hospital, my eyes had dried and the tears felt a little crusty, but it was better than walking in there sobbing over one man when I was going to see another. I checked myself in the driver’s rearview mirror, ran a finger along the bottom of each eye to wipe away invisible makeup smudges. I’d cried off my makeup ages ago.

I paid the driver and got out of the car, staring up at the hospital that was as familiar to me now as a second home.

Justin was awake when I walked into his room. He looked at me and even though his mouth didn’t move, his eyes smiled.

“Hey,” I said softly and sat down next to his bed. I reached out my hand but I didn’t take his. Instead I put it on the bed. He could move his hand and take it if he wanted to. If he didn’t want to, it would beat him physically shrugging me off.

A knot of nerves sat in my stomach like a fist under my ribs and I focused on just breathing.

“I heard you’ve been here a couple of times,” Justin said. His voice was a little scratchy and a little distant, but it was him. I nodded slowly.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” he asked.

“The nurses told me you needed the rest. The sedatives for the pain apparently also knocked you out.”

He nodded. “I slept most of the time,” he said. “But there were times I was awake.”

I’d known that. I’d been speaking to his doctor, making sure that he was okay. The truth was I’d preferred that he’d been asleep, because I was a coward. I was scared to face him after everything that had happened. I was scared of rejection. I knew that I’d done it to him, but I couldn’t take what I dished out, apparently.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Better,” he said, and I believed him. Despite the bruises on his face, the strap across his nose, where his skin was untainted he had color again, and his eyes glinted.

I took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

I hesitated before talking. This was hard. This was harder than I’d thought it would be.

“For hurting you. For choosing the wrong man when I loved you all along. And for what happened to you that you ended up here. Without me in your life, you would have been fine.”

“Without you in my life I would have felt empty. Really, I’d rather have you along with all this, than nothing at all.”

I looked up at him.

“How can you love me after all of this?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve told myself so many times that I shouldn’t. But I couldn’t really stop. So there it is. I was an idiot, but I couldn’t help myself.”

I looked down at my hands. They were trembling. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I didn’t have a script the way the heroines did in movies. I didn’t know what to say to tell him what I really felt. I took a deep breath and pushed my hands under my thighs so I was sitting on them. I couldn’t get them to stop trembling any other way.

“I love you,” I said and nearly tripped over the words. “It took me too long to realize it, and I was an idiot for throwing it back in your face when you wanted me to be exclusive with you. I’m sorry about that. I regret it every day. Well, since I remembered it.” I’d attempted a joke, but neither of us laughed.

“What about Elijah?”

I thought about the man in jail, the washed-out color of his skin in that jumpsuit, the hopeless look in his eyes, and I swallowed hard.

“I want you,” I said. “If you don’t want me after all of this, I understand. I know I’ve messed up enough that I don’t deserve to be with you. But I couldn’t just leave Fort Atkinson without telling you how I felt. That I know now I shouldn’t have been a stubborn ass when you told me you loved me. I should just have bit the bullet with my job and loved you back no matter what.”

“Well, if you think you’re going to leave me now, you’ve got another think coming. I took a bullet for you. So you have to stay. It would be rude not to.”

I smiled at him. I wanted to cry, but I was going to force a smile and be polite about it, even if it killed me. He moved his hand on the bed, putting it on mine. His hand was warm and big and familiar. And it pushed me over the edge. Tears spilled onto my cheeks.