“I’ve always loved him,” I finally said. “Even when I decided against him. Even when he told me that we weren’t together anymore. Even when I’d told him to go to hell. It’s not about if I love him, though.” I looked up at Evelyn. Her face was impossible to read. She looked at me, her gaze measured, her lips pursed in a thin line. She sat opposite me, wanting to know if I was going to rip her brother apart again.
“I just don’t think he should be loving me.”
There it was. I’d said it, the thing that had been nagging at the back of my mind since the ambulance had taken him away from the ranch after Elijah’s hitman shot him.
Evelyn looked suddenly angry. There was a white line around her lips, and her eyes were a deep ocean blue. They looked so much like Justin’s eyes right then it made my heart constrict.
“Don’t you think you’ve fucked with him enough?”
Her sentence was so straightforward and so raw it caught me off guard.
“That’s why I think it’s wise for me to go,” I said and my voice was thin. I felt like I was a child reprimanded by an adult.
“If you’re going to leave now, after all of this, you’re an idiot,” she said. “If you leave him after he’s sacrificed so much for you, you’re a damn idiot. If you didn’t love him then fine, I would have accepted that. I would have said that you were a cold-hearted bitch that played my brother and I would have been happy to see you go.”
I took a deep breath to answer her, but she held up her hand, asking me to wait until she’d finished.
“But if you love him, and you leave him again, I don’t think he’s going to make it.”
“But how can he still love me, after all of this?”
Evelyn shook her head and she looked annoyed. “I don’t know. I’ve tried talking to him so many times, tried telling him that being with you isn’t the right thing. I’ve never thought you were the right girl for him, I think he can do so much better.”
“Wow,” I managed to get out. I’d heard a lot of times that Evelyn was straightforward and not scared to speak her mind, but she really wasn’t even candy-coating it for me.
“I know. That’s what I thought when he wouldn’t give up on you. The problem here is that he loves you.”
My chest got tight when she said that, my heart beat faster. My hands felt sweaty and I rubbed them on my thighs.
“It doesn’t matter what I say to him, he loves you, and even if you’re the worst person in the world, which I thought for a very long time you were, I guess that makes you the right person for him. It doesn’t matter who he’s with, if he doesn’t love her, it’s not right. And dammit, I can’t help it, but he does love you.”
Somewhere in the middle of her harsh speech I’d started crying. Tears ran over my cheeks.
“So don’t you dare leave until you’ve spoken to him and told him about how you feel. If, after that, he doesn’t want you then fine. Go. But until then I don’t want to see you running from this. You made this mess so clean it up.”
I nodded. She was right. It was hard to hear and I thought she could have said it all differently.
I nodded. She got up and so did I. I expected her to walk to the door and leave. But instead she walked to me and hugged me. She didn’t say more than that, just walked to the door like I’d thought she would, and disappeared.
I took a deep breath and looked at my wristwatch. It was still a while until visiting hours at the hospital. But there was one place I had to stop off first before I went to see Justin.
Chapter 23 - Elijah
It turns out that it doesn’t matter how much money you have, the moment you’re stamped as a criminal you get treated the same as any other piece of scum on earth. The paramedics had patched up my leg like they had to, they really didn’t look like they wanted to. I was still a person, dammit!
After they’d made sure I wasn’t going to bleed out, they stuck me in a holding cell with a bunch of other men. They were from all walks of life, and they looked terrible. Some of them looked like they’d been picked out of the garbage. They’d taken Kyle away at the same time they took me, but he wasn’t in the holding cell with me.
I wrapped my hands around the bars and pressed my face through as far as it could go, the cold metal bars pressing against my cheekbones, and I shouted.
I shouted for my lawyer. I shouted for a better cell. Didn’t they know who the hell I was? I kept shouting. At first some of the officers tried to get me to shut up. They threatened me and one even came to me, waving his baton and hitting against the bars, so close to my face that I felt the vibrations go into my skull.
When I wouldn’t be quiet, they gave up. I kept shouting until my voice was hoarse. The other people in the cell didn’t pay any attention to me. They just sat there, staring at the floor or the ceiling, whichever was less depressing.
After hours I finally sat down and did the same. I chose the floor. Someone was going to come. I was going to get my phone call.
When I got it I phoned Tyler Lawrence, a man that had handled my personal belongings for years. It had crossed my mind to phone Grace, she was the best damn lawyer in the country. There was a reason I’d wanted her, and paid her that much to come work for me so that no one else could match the money and scoop her up.
But she wouldn’t work for me. If anything, as my lawyer, she would work against me.
Lawrence was second best. When I spoke to him he was positive that he could get me bail.
I was moved the next day to a courthouse in Dayton where I waited in the cells underneath the court for my appearance in court the next morning. That was where Lawrence finally found me. When I saw him coming to me, I got up and walked to the bars, hands in my pockets. I was still wearing the same suit I’d gotten arrested in. They hadn’t even given me new pants, so I wore the same ones with the bullet hole and rusty red patch where I’d bled out of the bullet wound.
“Jesus, Elijah. You look terrible,” Lawrence said when he stopped in front of me. He wore a midnight blue suit with a whiter than white shirt and a butter yellow tie. I wondered who’d chosen it for him.
“You have to get me out of here,” I said. He nodded and sat down on the bench opposite my cell.
“Aren’t you going to get me out of here, don’t we even get a room to talk in?” I asked. In the movies they always sat at a table in a small room with their lawyers. I thought about all the people in the cells next to mine, how much they would hear, if they would care to listen at all.
Lawrence shook his head. His hair was slicked back with oil and he had that smooth lawyer face plastered on. I suddenly wondered how many times he’d delivered bad news with that same million-dollar smile.
“We’re going to have to talk here, Elijah,” he said. “I’m not going to play around. You’re in a lot of trouble. You’ve got so many charges against you, you’re making some of the other inmates here look bad.”
“Cut the crap,” I sneered at him. “Just get me the hell out of here. You know I’ll pay whatever they need, and make sure you’re taken care of, too.”
Lawrence nodded his head, looked at me with his gunmetal gray eyes, and spoke the next words smoothly.
“I’m going to try my best in there, but I don’t think I’m going to get you bail. You’re up for different counts of attempted murder, among other things. The judge doesn’t like killers walking loose in the streets while they wait for their hearings.”
That made me angry. The rage burst through me like a furnace, burning all the way down to my fingertips.
“I’m not a killer!” I shouted. Lawrence lifted his eyebrows. He wasn’t intimidated by me. I didn’t know if that was because of the fact that he would get his money regardless of what happened to me, or if I was behind bars. Either way, the calm on his face just upset me even more. This was my life. It was just his job. Did he not know the difference?
“There is a way we might be able to approach this,” he said. “We can get a psychologist out, and if he can declare you mentally unable to stand trial you might be able to get out of this one.”
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?”