Chapter 30
30
GAVIN
L ife had a sense of humor, and it was as twisted and ugly as my past.
Being here now, after spending months in a cocoon of safety and hope, was like having my beating heart ripped from my chest while someone laughed and laughed and laughed above me. I was shoved back into a past I hated, and the feelings from the first time I’d been here had draped themselves over me like they’d been eagerly awaiting my return, heavy and thick and smothering.
Hopelessness.
Self-loathing.
Despair.
Regret.
The dream was over. The nightmare had just begun. And I wished that I could have Beck with me, to hold me through it like I held him through his own nightmares all those years ago.
But I was alone now. I’d probably never see Beck again.
My breath hitched as I stared at the wall in front of me. It was so fucking bright in here, and all I wanted was to lie in the darkness, fade into all that black, and just…disappear.
Poof.
I’d lost consciousness in the back of the cop car. It was the worst panic attack I’d ever had, and at one point, it felt like a massive weight was pressing down on me until I just couldn’t breathe at all.
I thought I was dying, and that had terrified me. I didn’t want to die anymore. It would’ve been tragically ironic if I’d died right when I was starting to live again.
When I came to, the officers who arrested me were on either side of me in the backseat, yelling at each other and then at me. But I could breathe again.
When we got to the station, they stuck me in a room and made me wait for two hours before someone came in and finally told me why the fuck I was here.
I couldn’t even muster the energy to get mad.
Of course it was him. Of course he’d done this. He couldn’t allow his son to live a life he deemed to be wrong.
I was being charged with breaking and entering, destruction of property, and burglary. They said that on the evening of November twelfth, I’d broken into my dad’s house, destroyed his TV, then stole three thousand dollars from the safe in his bedroom.
I didn’t even know he had a safe in his bedroom.
They said my fingerprints were all over the scene of the crime. I refrained from pointing out the fucking obvious—that I used to live there, so of course they found my fingerprints there. Fucking idiots.
But I felt like the biggest idiot of all for thinking that my dad had given up his efforts after paying those assholes to beat me up.
I was honestly shocked at the lengths he was willing to go to to destroy me. I shouldn’t have been.
And I shouldn’t have felt so betrayed. I think maybe a part of me was still holding out hope that my dad did love me, in some fucked up way. That he did care about me. That everything he’d done had been the only way he knew how to show it. Maybe then I could come to terms with it all, in time. But this…framing me for something that would effectively put me away for decades? That wasn’t love. That was pure loathing, and I wasn’t sure what I’d done to warrant all that hatred.
He might as well have shoved a knife into my heart. I think I would’ve preferred that. Going to prison for decades was…unfathomable. I didn’t want to live in that reality. I only wanted to be with Beck.
Just like all those years ago, my dad had burst into our lives and taken us away from each other, just when we were beginning to find out what we could be together.
I’d never felt so much despair. So much dread. I told myself Beck would fix this. Beck would help me. Beck wouldn’t let this happen to me.
I’d never felt so much doubt, and that doubt brought an abundance of guilt that I was feeling it in the first place. I shouldn’t doubt Beck. But I couldn’t deny that I did.
After they’d informed me of my charges, I didn’t say a word to anyone. I wanted to scream at them, to ask them how they could be so fucking stupid. How was that even allowed, to arrest someone without any real evidence? On the word of a man who hated me? What a fucking joke.
If I let myself think about it too much, I had a feeling it would break me—in a way I could never come back from. And then my dad would win.
I refused to let him win.
When I finally spoke and told them I wasn’t saying anything without a lawyer, the cop had smiled nastily and said, “Good luck getting anyone to defend you .”
I guessed he’d seen the video.
They put me in a holding cell until I could go in front of a judge. It smelled worse than the homeless shelter. There were four other guys in here with me, and two of them were drunk or high or both. There were four benches—long enough to lie down on—and a toilet. One of the men was sitting by the door, muttering to himself, another was snoring on a bench, and the last man—a huge guy—was sitting on a bench across from me.
Staring at me with murderous eyes.
I chose to lie down and face the wall.
I chose to think of Beck. I kept him front and center in my mind, trying to imagine what he’d be saying to me right now. How he’d be touching me. I imagined he was right behind me, holding me, with one hand running through my hair, tugging gently, the other pressed firmly against my heart.
“It’s okay, princess. No one’s gonna hurt you. You’re okay.”
I could hear him in my mind. The deep velvet of his voice, the soft cadence of his words.
And then other words began to filter in. They oozed from a dark corner, slithering over Beck’s words, coiling around them and squeezing the life out of them.
Now he can finally be rid of you. He won’t come. No one ever does. Why would they? Who would come for someone so unstable? So damaged? So…pathetic.
Beck. That’s who.
He told me he would never let anyone take me from him again. He told me he would never leave me. And I believed him with every fiber of my fucked up being.
He would come for me. He would.
He would.
He would.
He would.
I closed my eyes and repeated it over and over again until it drowned out those oozing, hateful words, until they slithered back to their dark corner, until there wasn’t a shred of doubt left in me.
He would come for me.
“Forster! Let’s go!”
I peeled my eyes open, disoriented and still half in a dream. When I sat up and looked around, my hopeless reality shattered the remains of the dream.
I was still in the holding cell.
“Forster!”
I cut my eyes to the officer at the door, then slowly stood up and made my way to him. When I was outside the cell, he placed me in handcuffs and wrapped his hand around my arm. It was an unnecessarily tight grip.
I had no idea how much time had passed, if it was night or day, if I’d been in there for one hour or ten. My bladder was throbbing uncomfortably, but I wasn’t about to ask for a bathroom.
The cop led me down a long hall, through double doors, down more halls. We passed other cops, inmates, clerks. A few working areas filled with people and desks. Someone was shouting somewhere. We finally made it to double glass doors leading outside.
It was sunny out. I had no idea if it was the same day they’d taken me in or not. I was led down a sidewalk that meandered around the building toward the courthouse.
“What day is it?” I asked the cop. My voice sounded rough and cracked. I was thirsty as shit.
He was still gripping me too tight, and when I spoke, he said something under his breath.
Fine. Fuck this guy.
He took me to the courthouse, led me to a room, and sat me on a bench. The judge was already in the middle of what I guessed was an arraignment for the guy standing in front of her. My stomach clenched and my chest felt too tight.
“Mr. Gavin Forster?”
I turned to my left, where a short middle-aged man in an expensive-looking blue suit stood. He wore black-framed glasses that enlarged his deep brown eyes a little.
“Yeah?” I said, wondering who the fuck he was and how he knew my name.
The man smiled and took a seat next to me. He held a folder in one hand but placed it beside him on the bench, then crossed one leg over the other and clasped his hands together on his thigh.
“I’m Jeffrey Lockhart and I’ll be representing you,” he told me.
Was this Beck’s lawyer?
“Are you Beck’s lawyer?” I asked. I felt stupid even asking, but maybe he was a public defender. I hoped not, because the court-appointed lawyer I’d gotten two years ago hadn’t done anything to help me. Not that I deserved any help back then.
Jeffrey Lockhart nodded. “Yes. He called yesterday and we’ve been working hard to figure this whole thing out.” His eyes did a quick once-over of me, as if he was making sure I was in one piece. “I’m glad to see you’re all right, Beck told me you were in the middle of a panic attack while they arrested you and they did nothing for you. There’s something to be said about the lack of proper procedure here, and I promise that I will make sure all relevant parties will be held accountable for their negligence.”
Beck had gotten me a lawyer and was working to get me out. My nose prickled and my throat started thickening. Relief and love poured through me as I blinked back the tears I didn’t want right now. “It was my dad,” I rasped. I cleared my throat as Jeffrey nodded. “He hates me. I didn’t do what they’re saying. I was with Beck that day, I went to therapy in the evening, and then I was with Beck that whole night.”
Jeffrey nodded again. “And we’ll prove that,” he said. “For now, I’ve convinced the judge to set your bail, so following the arraignment, Beck will post it, and you should be let out no later than this afternoon.”
I swallowed past the ever-growing lump in my throat as some of the helplessness and despair began sloughing off me, replaced with a tentative hope.
“Is it Monday? What time is it?” I asked.
Jeffrey’s expression softened, but not into pity. “Yes, it’s Monday. Nine thirty in the morning, to be precise. And, Gavin?”
“Yeah?”
He leaned closer. “Beck wanted me to tell you he’s sorry he couldn’t be here this morning but he’s working on putting money together for your bail. He said to be brave and that he loves you.”
The tears started to fall, and that was the exact moment I was called up to see the judge. I was a blubbering, snotty mess, only able to use my shoulder to wipe anything away with my hands cuffed as they were, and I didn’t give a single shit.
Judge McIntyre seemed to be a fair woman. She listened to my side of things, then told me that because of my prior conviction, I had a steep slope to climb. Jeffrey spoke for me a few times when I didn’t have an answer to some of her questions. It was over in less than ten minutes, and then I was being led back to the holding cell.
It was there, as I waited for Beck, that shit hit the fan.
The guy who was staring at me yesterday was still in there. He was a literal mountain of a man, bigger than Beck, and Beck was six foot six.
This guy had to be at least six foot seven or eight and he was much broader in the shoulders. I wasn’t sure I’d ever been in the presence of someone as enormous as him, and it was a little nerve-racking. Combined with the way he was looking at me—with a hatred so deep in those unnatural gray eyes it made my skin crawl—I was suitably intimidated. A little scared, even—because we were locked in a room together, and if he decided to smash my head into the wall, I doubted anyone would stop him in time.
I doubted they’d stop him even if there was time.
I sat on the bench farthest from him, but unfortunately that offered him a direct view of me. Not that there was anywhere I could hide in this shithole. I decided to just lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes. I didn’t want to look at him anymore, so I just pretended he wasn’t there.
But he wasn’t doing the same thing, and when I heard the bench across from me creak under his weight, I opened my eyes to find him standing. His hands were fisted at his sides, his eyes full of animosity, his upper lip curled in a sneer.
I didn’t know this fucking guy, but it seemed like he knew me and I had no fucking clue how. The video? When he started walking toward me, my heart began to race and I shoved myself up off the bench.
“What are you doing?” I hated that my words were shaking, but I was so wrung out, so exhausted, and I wasn’t sure I could take anything else. His size was terrifying, and if he wanted to kill me, he fucking could.
And he looked like he wanted to do just that.
“Stay the fuck away from me!” I snarled.
He kept stalking over to me, not answering my question or acknowledging my words, so I ran toward the door and pounded on it.
I already knew nobody would come.
When I turned back around, the gray-eyed giant was close enough to snatch up the front of my hoodie. I made a humiliating sound full of fear as he dragged me up onto my toes with no effort at all, and I started pulling at his hand, trying to get him off me.
He shoved his face close to mine and spat out, “You fucking low-life piece of shit. You don’t deserve to be walking around, breathing the same air as my nephew. I told myself if I ever saw you, I wouldn’t do a goddamn thing because you aren’t worth the energy. You aren’t worth anything. But seeing your fucking face, all I want to do is show you what it feels like to almost die because of someone else’s callousness.”
His voice was broken glass over gravel, crunching and grinding and slicing through every soft part of me. I stared into those light gray eyes, trying to make his words fit somewhere, and when they clicked into place, it was like a blow to the gut.
“Oh, fuck,” I whispered. He was Brody Corelli’s uncle.
Brody almost died because of me.
I deserved whatever he was about to do to me.
I dropped my hands, closed my eyes, and said, “Do it.”
He scoffed in disgust and shook me enough it had me opening my eyes again. “You’re fucking pathetic. Only pick fights with people smaller than you?” He yanked me higher until I was completely off the ground, just dangling in front of him. “Coward.”
A bolt of anger surged through me. I needed him to hurt me, to make me suffer. I grabbed his forearm with both hands and snarled, “Fucking do it! Show me! Show me what it fucking feels like, because that’s all I’ve wanted for two years now and nobody will fucking do it! I don’t?—”
He smashed me against the wall, knocking the breath from my lungs. My head smacked into the concrete and a wave of dizziness made me grip him harder as the world spun around me.
I focused on his face, zeroed in on those awful gray eyes, and whispered raggedly, “I’m sorry.”
His nostrils flared and his chest heaved as he glared at me. “No, you’re not. Judging by the fact that you’re in here, it seems you haven’t changed one bit. Who’d you hurt this time? Huh? Are they even still alive? How can you fucking live with yourself?”
Didn’t he know I couldn’t? Couldn’t he see how much I wanted to take all the suffering I’d caused back onto myself and just live in it? Die in it?
“I can’t,” I rasped, my vision blurring. “I really can’t anymore. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
His brows drew tighter as his eyes searched mine, and then he scoffed and let me go.
I fell to the ground like all my bones had been sucked out. I heard him say, “Coward,” and watched him walk back to his bench. He lay down and stuck an arm under his head, staring at the ceiling.
The word fool was playing on repeat in my mind. I’d been fooling myself for months now, thinking I was worthy of something good. Being sheltered in Beck’s house, the gym, his arms—it had blinded me to the fact that I wasn’t worthy of anything decent.
I was grateful Brody’s uncle was in here with me, reminding me exactly what I was.
A coward.
A monster.
Unworthy.
But even in my despair, all I wished, all I hoped, all I longed for, was Beck. That he was meant to be mine. Meant to save me.
I’d never felt so much doubt.
Coward .
Beck told me to be brave, and I wanted to be, but I wasn’t sure I even knew how.