Chapter 23 #2
Dalton was silent for a moment. “I got him to agree to come with me, Jace. Back to Elkton. He fell asleep a few minutes ago, so I wanted to call you to give you a heads-up.”
“You’re taking him home with you?” I asked.
“Well, I wasn’t going to let him fucking do whatever it was he was gonna do to get money for a bus ticket,” Dalton snapped.
Dalton’s agitation surprised me. He rarely showed any kind of anger – he was more of a slow burn type who was likely to shut down before blowing up. “What are you planning to do with him, Dalton?” I asked.
“No fucking clue,” the man muttered. Dalton lowered his voice. “But the kid is messed up. Only way I could get him to agree to come with me was to promise I’d give him the money he would have earned at the bus station.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“He thinks I’m buying him for the night, Jace,” Dalton said in a harsh whisper.
“Dalton—”
“Don’t, Jace,” Dalton snapped. “You know I wouldn’t—”
“I know that. That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
I took the phone off speaker to give Dalton privacy for what I wanted to say next. “Dalton, I know you’re hurting right now… more than usual. Silver isn’t your responsibility. Let me come get him.”
“Silver? That’s his name?” Dalton asked softly. He went silent and I could practically see him looking at the young man in his passenger seat. “He wouldn’t say how he knew you guys.”
“He saved Willa. We owe him everything.”
The man was silent for a moment, then said, “I’ll call you when we get to my house, Jace.”
With that, he hung up. I shook my head and looked at Ronan. “Let’s see what things look like in the morning.”
Ronan nodded. “We can fly down there and get him if your friend can convince him to come with us. But we can’t force him.”
I nodded. Caleb sat down next to me and put his hand on my knee. Ronan said his goodbyes and left the room. To Caleb, I said, “He’ll be okay. Dalton will take care of him.”
Caleb sent me a small smile, then reached up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear. “Let’s get some rest, Jace. Things will look brighter tomorrow.”
I wasn’t as certain, but I nodded anyway and didn’t argue when Caleb took my phone and set it on the nightstand, then did what he did best.
He took care of me.
Things didn’t look brighter the next day or any in the week that followed.
We hadn’t had much time to dwell on the fact that no amount of convincing could get Silver to come to Seattle.
Fortunately, he was still with Dalton, but I wasn’t sure how long that would last. The idea of the young man disappearing all together terrified me.
With no money or family, he literally had nothing, and there were only two places he could end up if he left Dalton’s place.
Either on his knees in an alley somewhere servicing a random stranger for a few bucks.
Or dead.
As much as I would have liked to go to Maryland myself to try and talk to Silver, Caleb had to be my first priority.
Because for all the progress he’d made in the past few weeks, it had become more and more difficult for him to hold it together as we’d neared the date of the pre-trial hearing.
I’d managed to get him to share his feelings, rather than him bottling them up, but he was still a wreck about the whole thing.
“It’ll be okay,” I said softly as I squeezed my fingers tighter around Caleb’s hand. We were standing outside the judge’s chambers waiting for the prosecutor.
Caleb nodded, but didn’t say anything. He was holding onto my hand so tight that if he’d been a stronger man, he likely would have caused me some serious pain.
“There he is,” Eli said. He was leaning against Mav, who had his arm around him. I followed Eli’s nod and saw a tall man in his early thirties walking toward us.
“Eli,” he said as he shook Eli’s hand, then said his hellos to Mav.
“Caleb, good to see you again,” he said.
“Mr. Morrison,” Caleb said with a nod. “Um, this is Jace, my boyfriend.”
I forced myself to nod politely as the man introduced himself to me.
Caleb had been worried the man would rail at him for the letter Caleb had sent his father in prison, but he’d assured Caleb that he’d seen the letter and it could easily be explained away in court - a fact that had eased some of Caleb’s attention.
Morrison turned his attention went back to Caleb. “Are you ready? I got a text from the defense that they’re already in there,” he said as he motioned to the doors.
Caleb sucked in a breath and said, “I’m ready.”
But the second the four of us fell into step behind the prosecutor, the man turned to us and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, it’s a closed hearing. You won’t be able to join us. It’s just me, Caleb, the defense attorney, his client, and the judge.”
“What?” Caleb croaked. “His… his client?”
Caleb’s startled eyes swung to me, then Eli. “Dad… Dad will be in there?”
“Baby,” I said, desperate to get his attention, but he jerked his hand free of mine.
“No, no, you never said he’d be in there,” Caleb said to the prosecutor. Then he turned to me. “Jace, I can’t,” he cried. “Please, you have to come with me!”
“Caleb—” the prosecutor began, but Caleb cut him off with a wave. He grabbed my wrists.
“Jace, please, I can’t go in there. I can’t see him. I’m not ready!”
“It’s okay,” I said as calmly as I could, even though I wanted to punch the prosecutor in the face. To him I said, “There must be something you can do. Talk to the judge—”
“No, I’m sorry, that’s not possible.” To Caleb he said, “Caleb, I’m sorry, but it needs to be this way.”
Caleb shook his head frantically. He’d gone so pale that he was scaring me.
“Can you delay the hearing?” Eli asked.
The prosecutor shook his head. “No, we’ve already delayed once. Without a legitimate reason…”
The man let his words hang.
Caleb stepped back. He was struggling to pull in oxygen. “Caleb,” I began, but he cut me off.
“I’m… I’m okay. I just… I need a minute.” Despite his words, he didn’t look okay. His gaze fell on the prosecutor. “Can I go to the bathroom?”
“That’s fine,” he said. “I’ll just head in and let the judge know. The bailiff will escort you in when you’re ready.” He nodded at the stern-looking court officer standing a few feet away.
Caleb was already hurrying away before the prosecutor even finished talking. I only half-listened as the man apologized to me, Eli, and Mav for the confusion. I kept sight of Caleb as he made his way down the hall to the bathroom.
Not liking how calm Caleb had suddenly gotten, I said, “I’m going to go check on him.” I didn’t care that I’d cut the prosecutor off mid-sentence.
It took a good thirty seconds to work my way through the small crowd that had emerged from one of the courtrooms near the bathroom and my anxiety crept up with every single one of those seconds.
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the bathroom was that it was empty, except for one closed stall at the end. The second thing I noticed was that a small corner of the large mirror was broken and that several pieces of glass were on the floor.
My heart was pounding in my chest as I rushed to the last stall. “Caleb!” I shouted.
“I’m sorry, Jace,” I heard him softly say.
I was about to break the door down when the latch flipped. I yanked it open and felt my heart sink at the sight of Caleb leaning back against the side of the stall, his jacket removed and his sleeve rolled up.
And there they were.
Three perfect cuts on the inside of his lower arm.
I felt my throat close up with tears as my eyes lifted to meet Caleb’s gaze. He looked both heartbroken and relieved at the same time. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. A couple of tears slipped down his face.
“Caleb?” I heard Eli call behind me.
Caleb let out a choked sob and I quickly pulled him into my arms, not caring about the blood on his arm. “It’s okay,” I whispered softly into his ear. Caleb began to cry.
“I had to,” he croaked.
“I know, baby,” I assured him.
I heard a gasp behind us, but didn’t need to see who it was.
“I’ll stand guard outside,” I heard Mav say.
“Caleb,” Eli cried out, and as I released Caleb, I saw Eli turning to get some paper towels from the dispenser.
“I’m sorry,” Caleb told his brother.
“It’s okay,” Eli said, his voice shaky as he gently pressed the paper towels to the wounds.
Caleb let out a rough sob and then he was pushing into Eli’s arms. I took over holding the paper towels against Caleb’s arm as his brother held him and just let him cry.
When Caleb had calmed, Eli released him and gently pulled him from the stall.
We got him to the sink and Eli held onto Caleb as I quickly cleaned the cuts. Fortunately, they weren’t deep .
“I’ll go tell the prosecutor we’re not doing this today,” Eli said as he wiped at his brother’s face.
“No,” Caleb said, grabbing Eli’s arm before he could leave. “Please, I need to do this now. I’ll… I’ll be okay.” His eyes fell to his own arm, then he was looking at me. “Jace, please, I have to do this.”
“We can talk to the judge… try to explain.”
Caleb shook his head. “If he finds out about this,” – he motioned to his arm – “he might say I’m crazy or something. He’ll believe my father’s story that I made all of it up.”
Part of me knew he was right, but the other part of me just wanted to get him home where I could keep him safe.
I traded glances with Eli and could tell he was just as reluctant as me to let this continue.
But Caleb did seem calmer and while I hated how he’d gone about it, I couldn’t take this from him – he’d never be able to move on with his life if his father walked.
I finally nodded, and when Caleb looked at Eli, he said, “If you have to stop at any time while you’re in there, you just tell the prosecutor and that’s it. No arguments,” he said firmly.
“Okay,” Caleb said solemnly. “Promise.”
As he and Eli talked, I covered the still-bleeding cuts with some more paper towels and used my hair tie to secure the makeshift bandage to his arm, much like he had the day he’d hurt himself when we’d boarded Dalton’s boat.
Luckily, there wasn’t any blood on his shirt.
Eli helped him get his jacket back on and then I took his hand in mine and led him from the bathroom.
When we reached the judge’s chambers, I held him for a long time and whispered in his ear that I’d be there the moment he was done and that I loved him. He nodded against me, but didn’t speak.
My gut was screaming at me that I was making a terrible mistake by letting him do this, but I forced myself to let Caleb go.
For once, I hated that my instincts were usually spot-on.
Because less than thirty minutes later, a very pale and deathly silent Caleb emerged from the room.
And I completely lost it.
Because I’d only seen him like this one other time - that first night in the cabin when I’d discovered the scars on his arm and he’d told me that he was too far gone to fix.
“Caleb, baby, talk to me,” I said, gathering him in my arms as soon as he exited the doorway. But it was like he wasn’t even hearing… or feeling me.
My eyes fell on Jack Cortano as he left the room in cuffs, sandwiched between two guards. He threw us a smug smile over his shoulder, which had me releasing Caleb and striding after him. But Mav got in my way.
“Don’t!” he bit out when I tried to push past him. “Caleb needs you now,” he said firmly.
I turned to see that Caleb was in Eli’s arms, but he wasn’t reacting to his brother either.
He was just… gone.
“What the fuck happened?” I snapped at the prosecutor as I returned to Caleb’s side.
The man looked stricken. “His father said something to him.”
“What?” I asked. “What did he say?”
“He was smart – waited until the hearing was over and the judge had left,” the man muttered.
“What did he say?” I asked impatiently.
The prosecutor opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of it. He grabbed my arm and pulled me aside so Caleb wouldn’t hear us.
“He said, ‘Caleb, I love you, my sweet boy. We’ll be together again soon.’ The second he said it, Caleb just froze. It was like… like this switch got flipped inside of him,” the man said softly, his gaze going to Caleb.
A chill went through me because I had no doubt that that was exactly what had happened.
Mav was the one to say our goodbyes to the prosecutor because Eli and I were still trying to get any kind of response out of Caleb.
By the time we got Caleb back to the Whidbey Island house, he was barely functional. He hadn’t spoken or cried. Even seeing Willa didn’t have any kind of effect on him. I got him settled in our bed and crawled in with him, hoping like hell I’d get some kind of reaction out of him.
But there was nothing. Just like there was nothing three days later.
He stayed in the same position in bed, no matter how much I begged and pleaded with him to come back to me. He roused from bed only long enough to drink something or go to the bathroom, and nothing more.
It was like I wasn’t even there.
“Caleb,” I whispered as I settled my lips on the back of his neck.
We were in the same place we’d been from day one.
Lying in the middle of the bed with my arms wrapped around him from behind.
Baby had become Caleb’s shadow from the moment we’d gotten back to the house, and I had no doubt the big animal could sense something was very wrong with the young man.
He was currently lying along Caleb’s front and while Caleb wasn’t interacting with him, the dog only left his side when Eli took him outside.
I rubbed Caleb’s arm. “I’m here, baby. I’m not going anywhere.
So you take as long as you need to, but I will be here when you’re ready to come back to me.
” I leaned over him as I spoke and while the sight of the single tear sliding down his cheek hurt like hell, it also brought a certain measure of relief.
Because it was something .
And right now, I’d literally take any proof that he could still hear me.
Wherever he was.