Chapter 8 #2
“It’s Raina’s prayer group night. Nothing awaits me but a group of suburban women speaking in tongues over casserole,” she replied without looking up.
Despite myself, I chuckled. “Sounds riveting.”
“Mmm. Besides, I’m still bothered by something about the security logs from when we thought Mrs. Patrice was Leo. The timing doesn’t line up with some of the items.” She stretched her arms overhead, the movement pulling her blouse tight across her chest in ways I forced myself not to notice.
I rolled my chair over to her desk, positioning myself beside her to view her screen. We were now sitting close enough that I smelled her coconut lotion, close enough that her knee occasionally brushed mine as she shifted in her seat.
She pointed to a timestamp on the log. “See here? Mrs. Patrice couldn’t have left the crane in my desk drawer. According to the video logs, she never entered the building that day.”
“Do you think she gave it to someone else to deliver? Maybe the logs are incomplete,” I suggested.
Aven didn’t seem convinced. “I was thinking we should review the exterior camera footage from that day to see if someone else was involved.”
It was a reasonable suggestion, one I would have made myself if I weren’t so distracted by her proximity.
“Good idea. Let’s use the security station. Better monitors, easier access to the archives,” I suggested rolling back to put some distance between us.
Ten minutes later, we were seated in the small room off the main office where all the security monitors were housed. With the door closed and the overhead lights dimmed to better see the screens, the space felt intimate, secluded from the rest of the empty building. I pulled up the old footage.
Aven pointed at one of the screens. “Start with the back entrance.”
The movement brought her face close to mine. I nodded and keyed in the date and time range. The footage played, showing an empty parking lot in the early morning hours.
Aven’s hand landed on my forearm. “Over by the dumpster.”
I paused the footage and zoomed in. “This angle is shit. Honestly, could be anyone.”
“Ugh! Rewind it a bit. Can you tell where they came from?”
“It looks like they came around from the front.” I stopped the frame as the person entered from the side of the building.
Aven squinted. “Can you enhance it? Maybe catch a reflection in the car window?”
“You’re going to drive yourself crazy. You haven’t received any more cranes, and Mrs. Patrice told you it was her. If it happens again, I will pursue that mother fucker ten toes down.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“It’s fine. Hey, do you remember this?” I commented, pulling Facepage up on my phone. I wanted to get her mind off the stalker shit.
She settled closer as we stared at the screen.
“Aww! It’s the community center where they held the graduation party, right?” she replied.
“Yeah.” I laughed. “Oh shit. It looks like someone added a video since I last looked at the school Facepage.”
The footage filled the screen, showing the community center’s main room packed with graduating seniors. The camera angle captured most of the space, including the dance floor and drinks table.
“There you are in your silver dress.”
Aven smiled. “Damn, it seems like so long ago.”
We watched a while longer, then we spotted another file from the previous week.
“Click it,” she said.
I did, and another video popped up that was unmistakably me, seventeen-year-old Langston Black.
I had climbed through a window, looking drunk and miserable but very much present at the time when I was supposedly with Aven across town.
We watched a little longer, and I staggered to the bleachers where I passed out.
The air left the room. Aven paused the frame, her finger trembling as she pointed at teenage me on the screen.
“You were sleeping at the community center? You had proof you were innocent,” she whispered, her voice tight with confusion.
I stood abruptly, needing space to breathe through the pressure building in my chest. “It’s not what you think.”
“Really? Because what I think is you let me lie to the police for you when you knew there was video evidence that would’ve cleared your name.”
“It wasn’t that simple.”
“Seems pretty fucking simple to me! You were not anywhere near the hardware store. You could have proven that!” Her voice rose, echoing in the small room.
I ran my hands through my beard, trying to pace the narrow space between the monitors and the wall. Fifteen years of carefully constructed walls were crumbling, and I didn’t know how to stop it, nor did I know if I even wanted to anymore.
“I didn’t know the community center had cameras. By the time I figured it out, you’d already given me an alibi,” I explained.
“So what? When you found out, you could have come forward and shown this! Instead, you let everyone in town think you might have done it. You let me put my reputation on the line for you!” She gestured angrily at the phone where my teenage self stood frozen in time.
Her palm slammed against the desk in the confined space. The action was so unlike a composed Aven. It momentarily stunned us both.
“Why would you let me lie for you when you could have cleared yourself?” she demanded, anger and hurt in her eyes.
I turned away, unable to meet her gaze, unable to face the betrayal written across her features. I stood my body thrumming with the need to move, to escape this conversation I’d been avoiding for fifteen years.
Her voice dropped. “Langston, answer me. Why?”
Something in her tone, the hurt beneath the anger, broke through my defenses. I turned back to her, shoulders slumping in surrender.
“Because you chose to save me. You looked at me and decided I was worth lying for. Nobody had ever chosen me before,” I admitted, the words raw in my throat.
Her expression of anger gave way to confusion. “What are you talking about? You had your grandparents.”
“Who took me in out of obligation? The whole town knew. Just like they knew my mom was a junkie who chose drugs over her kid every single time. They believed I was a lost cause, the troubled kid with anger issues heading nowhere good,” I countered.
I moved closer to her now, needing her to understand.
“Yet you, student body president, honor roll, college scholarship, you stood up in front of the sheriff and said you were with me that night. You risked everything to protect me.” My voice cracked on the last words.
“Do you have any idea what that meant to me?”
Aven’s eyes widened, realization dawning. “You just… let me lie? Let me think. I’d saved you from being wrongfully accused?”
“I was going to tell you after graduation. Then you got on the bus to college, and it seemed better to let you go without the burden of knowing,” I explained, grabbing the bridge of my nose.
“The burden of knowing what?” she pressed, still not understanding.
I exhaled heavily, looking up at the ceiling and anywhere but her face, as I admitted the truth.
“That I didn’t deserve it. I was at that party getting fucked up, feeling sorry for myself while Dalvin Wright and his crew were across town setting a fire, that you put your good name on the line for someone who wasn’t worth it. ”
My words hung between us; fifteen years of shame exposed to the light.
“Not worth it? Is that what you thought?” she repeated.
I shrugged; the gesture painfully inadequate for the weight of the moment. “What else was I supposed to think? The smart girl with the bright future lied for the town fuckup? Everyone figured you were being naive. That I’d manipulated you somehow.”
“And you believed that?” Anger flashed in her eyes again, but different now, directed not at me but at the situation, at the town, at the unfairness of it all.
“Didn’t matter what I believed. What mattered was that you believed in me. That was enough to make me want to be worth it,” I said, dropping into the chair I vacated, suddenly exhausted.
The admission cost me, stripping away the last of my defenses. I was unable to maintain the confident posture I had cultivated as armor all these years. In this moment, I was seventeen again, unworthy of the gift she gave me but desperate to earn it retroactively.
Aven sat still, processing everything I’d said. The security monitors highlighted the slight tremble of her lower lip.
“You built all this — your company, your reputation, your life here. Was that you trying to be worthy?” she said, gesturing to encompass not only the security room but the entire business beyond.
I looked at her, vulnerability a physical ache in my chest. “Every fucking day, every client I protect, every employee I hire, every system I built is all because you looked at me that day and decided I deserved a chance,” I admitted.
The weight of my confession hung between us in the quiet room.
Years of unspoken truth had been given a voice.
On the phone, teenage Langston was passed out drunk in the community center he shouldn’t have been at, unaware this moment would define the next fifteen years of his life.
He was unaware the girl he couldn’t stop thinking about would lie to save him, would leave him, and return years later to unearth the secret he’d built his entire identity around.
Aven looked at me as if she was unsure what to do with this new understanding between us.