Sustained(44)

Chelsea zeroes in on one detail of my explanation. “You got into a fight with a couple of kids?”

“I was a big kid. One-on-one wasn’t really a challenge.”

She grins. “Sounds like you were a troublemaker—like Rory.”

“Troublemaker is an understatement. Rory is a fucking saint compared to me.”

“Becker?”

I turn at the sound of my name and Tom Caldwell approaches our table, smiling. Caldwell’s a bright-eyed, brown-haired, young but hungry prosecutor with the US attorney’s office. A real by-the-book, straitlaced, goody-two-shoes kind of guy. He’s also the prosecutor on my upcoming assault trial against Senator Holten.

“Caldwell.” I nod, shaking his extended hand.

“I thought it was you. How’s it going?”

The interactions between prosecutors and defense attorneys are bizarre. Inside the courtroom, we do our best to eviscerate each other. Outside of it, it’s all friendly handshakes and weekend softball-league games. We’re not supposed to take anything personally—because it’s really not personal. Just business—part of the game.

“Pretty good,” I reply vaguely. “Yourself?”

“I’m good—I’m here with my parents. Showing them around DC.” His gaze turns to Chelsea—and lights up with interest. He probably thinks I don’t notice, but I really fucking do.

Etiquette says I should introduce them. And etiquette can kiss my lily-white ass—pointless set of rules as far as I’m concerned.

But like I said, Tom’s not the type to let much stand in his way. He holds out his hand to Chelsea. “Hi, I’m Tom Caldwell.”

She shakes his hand. “Chelsea.”

“Are you a client of Becker’s?”

She smiles. “No. He’s represents a few members of my family though.”

“They’re in good hands. Becker’s a fine attorney.”

“And your life would be so much easier if I sucked,” I say.

He snorts. “That’s true.” Tom glances toward the entrance. “Well, I should be going. Enjoy your dinner. It was lovely to meet you, Chelsea.” He taps my shoulder. “Jake, I’ll see you in court.”

“Have a good night, Tom.”

As he walks away, Chelsea asks, “Is he a friend of yours?”

I shake my head. “Not particularly.”

We finish our dinner and split a slice of cheesecake for dessert, but no coffee—neither one of us wants to diminish the pleasant buzz of good wine. There’s more moaning, more fruitless readjusting as Chelsea slowly swallows a mouthful of the white, creamy concoction. Fuck—and I accused her of having a dirty mind. My dick pushes against the fabric of my pants the way an inmate strains against the bars of his cell, begging to be set free.

Chelsea’s skin radiates the flushed, cheery glow of alcohol. Her eyes are hooded and happy but shield her thoughts, making her harder to read than usual. She leans back in her chair, regarding me, running her finger around the rim of her glass. “So if you started out as such a troubled youth, how did you become”—she gestures to me—“this? Successful. Honorable. Respectable.”

I pour the last of the wine into my glass. “ ‘Respectable’ is probably pushing it a little bit . . . but the story goes like this: I was fifteen, running around with some real dipshits. Older guys. One night we thought it’d be brilliant to break into a sporting goods store, because that’s the kind of losers we were, only I didn’t know one of them was carrying. He ended up shooting a guard in the leg.”

Chelsea gasps just a little.

And my cock twitches a lot.

“We ran out the back, right into the arms of a waiting squad car.” I shake my head at the idiot I was. “The prosecutor wanted to charge me as an adult, send me away for serious time—and he could have. I had a hot temper and a record, and aside from my mother, I thought the whole goddamn world was my enemy.”

Chelsea leans forward, completely enthralled. “So what happened?”

“The Honorable Atticus Faulkner happened. He was the juvenile judge on my case—a big, mean, scary son of a bitch. And he . . . thought he saw something worthy in me. So he kept me in juvenile court—gave me community service and probation, to be supervised by the hard-ass himself.” I chuckle. “At the time, I thought the judge was doing me a favor—going easy on me.”

“He wasn’t?”

“Depends on your definition of ‘easy.’ For the next few years I trimmed grass by hand with fucking garden shears. I carried boulders, scrubbed floors, reshingled the goddamn roof—real Mr. Miyagi, wax-on-wax-off kind of shit. He rode my ass—nothing was ever good enough. It made me want to do everything better, just to fucking spite the bastard. And then . . . he had me start doing research. Studying case law, drafting briefs, analyzing opinions—it was fascinating to me. When my probation was up, the Judge offered me a job. By then I’d gotten my head out of my ass and was actually scoring decent grades in high school. With his recommendation and a shitload of student loans, I got through college, then law school . . . and that’s all she wrote.”