Damaged
I finished loading up the dishwasher, feeling a dull ache between my shoulder blades. I was exhausted, and so was Billy Ray, who’d passed out on the couch, ballcap lowered over his eyes and hands folded over his belly. He’d been driving all night to get to me.
For a moment, I stood silently, looking at the world around me.
My brother was there with me, which I’d dreamed about on many lonely evenings with my fingers hovering over my phone, fighting the urge to call him.
And Colton was out on the patio, reviewing the case file delivered by his assistant while we’d been eating.
And still, everything about our little reunion was wrong.
Our first meal together after ten years had been a crestfallen, grim affair.
Fear strangled me so fiercely I couldn’t breathe freely, as if its steeled fingers were wrapped around my heart, squeezing the life out of me.
From one moment to the next, I vacillated from feeling completely desperate to clinging on to the belief that I could somehow prove that Claire had killed Winston.
I looked at Colton, who sat on the wicker furniture outside, flipping through the pages of the thick file. His shoulders were hunched forward, his forehead lined with worry and his eyebrows scrunched together. Whatever was in that file, it wasn’t good.
It took every bit of strength I had left to join Colton out on the patio. Closing the sliding door quietly, so as not to wake Billy Ray, I walked over to the couch and sat by Colton, then forced a smile onto my lips. “Anything interesting?”
He was quick to close the file and set it on the coffee table. Too quick. Then he turned and looked at me, the frown still lingering on his brow. “Billy told me,” he said quietly, looking into the distance, and then, eventually, at me. “All of it. What happened to you.”
My breath caught in my lungs. I turned away, feeling ashamed. Then I straightened my back and looked at him, remembering that none of what had happened had been my fault. None of it, even what I’d since had to do to survive.
“I had no idea,” he said, reaching for my hand.
I let him have it, and responded to his gentle squeeze, even if my fingers felt ice cold, paralyzed.
“I just thought you’d left me and Billy and everything.
I didn’t stop to ask myself why.” He lowered his head for a moment, seemingly struggling with his own guilt.
“Well, I thought I knew why. I knew your father roughed you two up, but I never imagined—”
His words hung in the air, heavy and unfinished.
I swallowed hard, my mind racing. Do I tell him everything?
The weight of the truth pressed against my chest, but so did the fear—the fear of shattering whatever image he still held of me, the girl I used to be.
The girl I wanted to be again, even if just in his eyes.
I took a shaky breath, finding the words that hurt to say.
“It’s okay, Colton. It’s over now. And I should’ve told you.
I kept thinking about that, when I was gone.
How you should’ve heard from me. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell you what had happened.
I wanted you to think of me as beautiful and innocent, the girl you fell in love with. Not someone so . . . damaged.”
He drew a bit closer to me. “You’re not damaged, Hattie.”
“Please don’t call me that,” I whispered, pulling my hand from his grip.
He looked at me intently, reminding me of how Detective Stanek had looked at me in interrogation. “I won’t ask you why. You’ll tell me when you’ll be ready.” I nodded. “And you’re not damaged.”
I paused for a moment. “You’re a good litigator, aren’t you?”
“I like to think so.”
“And you always win your arguments?”
“Not always, but most of the time.”
“Then let me quit this argument while I’m behind, and take a glance at the case file instead.”
His smile waned, and the grim look in his eyes returned.
“But first, tell me, how does a farm boy from Abilene end up this hotshot lawyer in Las Vegas?”
The darkness dissipated as he leaned back against the couch cushions, crossing his legs and interlacing his fingers in his lap.
Within a split second, he’d gone from tense and gloomy to seemingly relaxed.
Perhaps that ability was what had made him successful in his work, that mental and emotional flexibility.
“Well, if I have to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I did it by waiting tables and getting really big tips from women of a certain age.”
My hand flew to my mouth. I couldn’t help a chuckle. “What? You didn’t—”
“Oh, no, I didn’t sleep with them!” he quickly pushed back.
“But waiting on the right tables makes a lot of sense in this town. Knowing what these ladies want, and pretending to play their games.” He paused for a moment, his blue eyes lost in the distance of memories.
“When you left, I’d just been hired at the gas station.
I didn’t last there a week!” He laughed.
“The following weekend, I was waiting tables at the Dusty Spur. Remember that hellhole?”
“Yeah, I do. It was nothing but a truck stop, the parking lot always smelling of manure from livestock haulers. Swarms of black flies . . .” The place had been terrible, and yet I was remembering it fondly.
“Yeah, that’s the one. I lasted about two weeks, and left the night a trucker told me what kind of tips someone could get in Vegas.
I just took off my apron, threw it over the counter, and hitched a ride out of there with the same trucker.
” He winked at me. “That old man ate for free that night. Best ten dollars I ever spent.”
Colton’s story made me feel relieved. He’d moved on quickly after I’d left. “I’m glad you didn’t wait around for me to return. I—I couldn’t face my father again. I was afraid.” Afraid I’d turn into a killer the next time he laid a hand on me, but that part I left unsaid.
Colton leaned forward, clasping his hands together.
“I left word for you everywhere, you know. With my parents, with Billy Ray, even with the old pastor, Elias.” He paused for a beat, looking at me with a sense of longing that was overwhelming and endearing at the same time. “I never gave up on you.”
I bit my lip, looking at my fidgeting fingers. “I’m so sorry, Colton.”
“It’s okay, I understand,” he replied, his gaze shifting into the distance.
“So, yeah, that’s how I paid my way through law school, one overpriced steak dinner at a time.
I graduated prelaw in two and a half years, sleeping four hours a night.
Law school took me the full three years, and then I took the first high-paying job that came my way.
” A shadow darkened his eyes for a moment. “It’s corporate law, mostly. Boring.”
His words faded into silence. It was almost dark, and perfectly quiet. The sky was lined with a disappearing swath of deep purple. I counted a few stars to summon the courage to ask him another question.
“What’s going to happen to me?” I eventually asked. “Give it to me straight.” I pointed loosely at the thick file on the table. “I need to know where I stand, so I can prepare myself for what’s coming.”
When he looked at me, his eyes were stern.
“They have a lot of evidence, and more is pending. You don’t have an alibi for the time of the murder; quite the opposite, they have video putting you at the scene.
There’s a note about your laptop—it’s still with their technical analyst.” He cleared his voice and clasped his hands together.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen . .
. But I promise you I will do everything in my power to get you a not-guilty verdict. ”
Fear enveloped me like an icy shroud. Things were about to get even worse.
“My laptop . . .” Despair choked me, shattering my voice.
“Colton, they’ll discover I was obsessed with him!
I researched him online, tracked him, stalked his socials.
Collected articles about him, about his business interests.
I’m so screwed. I can’t possibly explain all this to a jury and hope they’ll see it my way. Not with what’s on that laptop.”
He didn’t comfort me. He stared into the distance instead, his jaw clenched and his lips pressed into a tight line, his hands steepled in front of his mouth.
I sat there silently, terrified, trying to make sense of what was going through his mind.
He’d said he’d never given up on me . . .
and now he knew I had given up on him. I’d fallen in love with another man, after becoming obsessed with him. Could he move past that?
“Why did you change your name?” he asked again, taking me by surprise.
I hesitated, with each second of silence knowing I was sinking deeper into a web of lies. Perhaps he’d never find out about the other cities and the other men. The other names. He only knew about this one.
“I just hate my given name,” I eventually said, my voice betraying me.
He shot me a sideways glance as if telling me he didn’t believe a word I was saying.
“I had to get rid of it.” I managed a quick laugh. “You didn’t have to go through life named after a piece of clothing.”
“I see.” Another long moment of silence. “If we’re going to win this, you have to tell me everything.” He paused for another beat. “You know, it’s hard for me to call you Olivia. It takes some getting used to, I guess, after all these years of loving a girl named Hattie.”
I held my breath, afraid of his questions. Of his feelings for me and how they could mess things up. When he looked at me, his eyes were intense, a glimmer of what we used to have still lingering. Dangerous. Complicated.
“Our conversations are protected by attorney-client privilege,” he added. “But you and I go way beyond that. You have nothing to be afraid of, except lying to me. I can’t defend you with lies.”
My mouth went dry. “Understood,” I said weakly. When he didn’t reply for a while, I asked, “What comes next?”
“They’ve assigned us a judge—Thomas Antunez.
He’s fifty-seven, a hard-liner, a stickler for due process.
He’s somewhat sarcastic, a hardened cynic, but he’s fair.
Honestly, I would’ve preferred Judge Harding, the one from your arraignment.
What else?” He paused for a moment, thinking.
“We have pretrial motions in a few days.” He sounded cold, detached, professional.
“Until then, we’ll prepare a defense strategy. ”
“The best strategy is to prove that Claire killed him.” I moved my eyes to the file on the table, wondering why the judge’s name sounded familiar . . . the dangerous kind of familiar. I wanted to go through that file in detail, to see what they had. “Did they give you everything they have?”
He shrugged. “Legally, they’re required to share everything, but sometimes they do so at the last minute.” He stood and offered me a hand. “Come, let’s go inside. You must be bushed.” He collected the file from the table.
“And you?” I asked, a little uneasy.
“I have pretrial motions to prepare.”