Chapter 14
TRIPP
“Montgomery,” a voice announces, and my eyes snap to her. “Bail’s been posted.”
I stand as she opens the door of the holding cell, offering a quick wave to the two other guys inside as I follow her out of holding and into a larger waiting area.
He’s turned away from me, but I know my brother when I see him. Of course he’s wearing a fucking suit and posturing like he’s standing before a judge. The guy next to him is a few inches shorter, also dressed in a suit, a shade of blue that contrasts to the beige that my brother is wearing.
Handing a clipboard and a pen back to the person on the opposite side of the desk from him, Brody turns, and what I would almost believe to be fear on his face quickly twists into fury.
“You told me that you were fine,” he grits as he shoves a paper bag into my arms.
“Because I am.”
“There is absolutely nothing fine about this,” he argues. Carefully gripping my jaw, he turns my head side to side to inspect the damage. “Were you recording the interaction?”
I nod, shifting my arms to hoist up the bag. “Should be on my phone.”
“Good, I’ll need a copy of that,” the guy next to him says. Sticking out his hand to shake mine, he adds, “Ezra Amato.”
“Tripp,” I nod.
The guy is a classic frat-boy-gone-suit, from the quiff in his hair to the wing tips on his feet and the silver signet ring wrapped around his middle finger.
I’d bet if he rolled up his sleeve, I’d see a Rolex on his wrist, and I’d bet twice as much that he can’t read analog, so it’s just for looks.
If B trusts him, though, so will I.
It feels like hours pass while we finish filling out paperwork and going over details that I know are important, but I can’t bring myself to focus on at all. I pick up a few things here and there, but I trust the other guys to retain it all.
I don’t watch the video when Ezra pulls it up. I only chance a few glances at B’s face as it shifts between disgust and rage while it plays through.
“They said something about a hearing,” I say to Ezra. “Do you fly back out for that or something? How does that work?”
“There won’t be any hearing,” he tells me with an amused chuckle. “Thanks to that little camera of yours, there’s a six-minute-long video of the guy kicking the shit out of Jefferson and Molly Montgomery’s unconscious son, while also failing to ensure that he understood his miranda rights.”
“I’m not their son,” I grit.
His hand lands on my shoulder as he levels a look at me, pulling up the corner of his lip into a smirk.
“As far as these people are concerned, yeah you are, my guy,” he tells me. “Your name carries enough weight to make this whole thing disappear, and you’re gonna let it.”
Pulling a set of keys from his pocket as he uses his head to gesture in my direction, Brody says, “I’m taking him home. Can I assume that you’ve got it from here?”
His friend offers him a confident thumbs up before the two of them exchange a quick shake of their hands.
“B, that necklace thing—” I pause, looking between my brother and his colleague. “It’s still on my bike.”
“We’ll get him,” he assures me with a hand on my shoulder. “I promise that you won’t go home without him.”
Neither of us make much effort for conversation while we collect my stuff. I can’t get a read on if he’s pissed at me for what I did, or if he just doesn’t like coming to Florida. Either way, his brows have a soft pinch to them that makes me not want to ask him any questions.
He softens, just a little, when we’re finally on our way out of the building and heading for his rental car.
“Shitty car,” I comment, gesturing toward the small silver sedan waiting for us.
“My brother was in lockup,” Brody snarks. “You’ll forgive me for not taking the time to reserve a Range Rover.”
The corner of my mouth ticks up with a soft laugh as his hand clamps down on the back of my neck.
Much to his displeasure, I take five minutes to have a cigarette before stuffing the pack into my pocket and sliding into the passenger’s seat.
Pulling the small bullet-shaped pendant from my left pocket, I wrap the chain around my finger, giving a squeeze to the cool metal and the ashes kept inside of it.
Clearing my throat as Brody pulls us out of the parking space, I ask him, “Can I fly back with you?”
“I already discussed it with Nia,” he says. “Your room is set up and waiting for you.”
I sit quietly for a moment, tapping my heel against the floor of the car while I look out the window and into the parking lot. It’s not as busy as I would expect it to be, filled with mostly patrol cars and a few cruisers with maybe five civilian vehicles sprinkled throughout.
Pulling the lever at the side of my seat, I dip into a low recline and cross my arms over my chest.
“This is where I’m supposed to file papers, right?” I finally ask, keeping my eyes trained on the window as we leave the lot.
My brother heaves a sigh, rolling his knuckles against the steering wheel before glancing in my direction.
“I can’t tell you what to do, Tripp,” he tells me. “All I can do is tell you that our home is open to you for however long you need it.”
Yeah.
His home, right back in the belly of the fucking beast.
I don’t talk on the way back to the house. I just watch. The trees, the buildings, the familiar Miami architecture as all of it flies past me. When we reach a line of houses, one right after the other that look exactly like mine, my stomach churns.
I pull in a breath, closing my eyes as we roll to a stop on my driveway, where my wife’s SUV is parked.
We didn’t want to live in an HOA. We’d both spent so long being told what to do, how to act, who to be; we didn’t need some stuffy old crones bossing us around, too.
Turns out, you don’t get much choice in where you wind up when you show up with less than a week’s notice and a tight budget after your parents cut you off from the family bank accounts.
Jules was determined to make it work for us. ‘It may not be our dream home, but we can turn our home into our dream,’ she’d told me, and she tried to do just that. From fresh coats of paint in the interior to re-finishing our thrifted furniture pieces to give them a face lift.
Everything about being here feels wrong, now.
This isn’t the home that we made together.
It’s just another one that I’ve lost.
“Oh my god, where were you?” Julia calls from the kitchen as we step through the front door. As she rounds the corner, horror washes over her features. “Did you wreck? Are you okay? What happened to your face?”
“You—”
Brody’s hand presses firmly between my shoulder blades as if I’m one of his clients being led out of the court room, and he leans in to tell me, “Don’t do or say anything that you’ll regret in the morning.”
Would I regret it, though?
We made vows to each other. We devoted the rest of our lives to each other, and when we promised to stay faithful to each other, I took that seriously. I assumed that she did, too.
I gave her the best that I had to give for sixteen years, from the first night that I took her out until today.
Sure, I have regrets. Everyone does. There are probably a hundred things I’d do differently if I had the chance, but I’d have happily given her the rest of the years that I have left on this fucked-up planet.
What does that make me? A doormat.
“Bam—”
“You need to stay downstairs right now,” he tells my wife, cutting her off when she tries to follow closely behind us.
An angry huff pushes through my nose as I carefully move up the stairs, heading for our bedroom and leaving the two of them behind.
I flip the lock as soon as the door closes behind me, and I make my way through the room, bracing a hand against my screaming rib cage.
The sound of Julia shouting ‘no no no no no!’ filters up from our living room, followed by the beating of heavy, panicked footfalls on the stairs moments before she pounds a fist against the door.
“Tripp,” she calls out. “Lovey, please open the door!”
Brody must join her, because the muffled sound of his eerily-calm voice comes through the door alongside hers. She’s sobbing, and they’re talking to each other, but I can’t make out their conversation. I don’t think I care much about it, either way.
While the two of them talk, I reach for my over-the-ear headphones and slip them on to drown out the sound of their voices as I carefully get myself settled onto our bed.
My stomach twists at the sudden realization that, for all I know, Connor and my wife could have fucked each other on this bed; and suddenly I’m standing.
The blankets are yanked off of the bed first, followed by the pillows, before I flip the mattress itself onto the floor.
I don’t care that my entire body hurts. I don’t care that it feels like I’m being torn in half.
Split me down the middle and throw the pieces to the wolves, for all I care.