CHAPTER 44
maverick
Shaking, I gave the phone back to Sheriff Kramer. My fingers didn’t want to let go, as if I held on just a little longer, I’d realize this was all just a horrible dream. Like I’d wake up, and everything would be okay again.
Kramer hung it up, and the definitive click sliced through me, making my whole world silently shatter. Something in my chest gave way, collapsing inward and hollowing me out as it did.
“That was cruel,” the Sheriff commented.
His voice was distant, barely an echo in my ears.
“But you did the right thing. You don’t want the Lowells as your enemy, son.
It’s better if you just do your time and start over once you’re out.
If you keep your head down, it should be a short enough sentence. ”
Cruel. The last thing I ever wanted to be to Harley was cruel, and I’d been exactly that and then some. To take everything we had and destroy it like that was meaningless. It was exactly what Mrs. Lowell wanted me to do to him, but I hated it. I hated myself for it.
“I’d like to go back to holding now,” I whispered. Even my voice didn’t sound like my own. Fuck, what had I become?
“All right,” he said. Getting to my feet, I let him take me back to the holding cell. My body moved on autopilot, doing whatever needed to get by as everything inside me shifted and broke.
Kramer prattled on about the next steps. Words like arraignment, sentencing, and jail stuck out. They were words that were about to change my entire life, but I couldn’t care. There wasn’t anything left in me to care. That part of me had died with the end of the phone call.
By the time Kramer stopped, my chest burned and throbbed with the effort to keep it all in.
The door clanged shut behind me with the kind of finality that was unforgiving and cold.
It broke the last thread holding me together.
My knees gave out, and I sank to the floor with a shuddering breath.
I folded in on myself, my arms wrapping around my middle as if I could hold all the little pieces in.
Mav…
The pain in Harley’s voice as he said my name—how it cracked and rose an octave—would be forever etched in every corner of my mind. I’d done that. I’d hurt him that much. There was no erasing that. Ever.
I didn’t want to hurt him. I’d carry the weight of that forever.
Harley deserved to be loved and wanted and needed every single day by someone who saw him.
The real him. Not the version his mother had groomed him to be.
I’d been an idiot to think I could give him that—to think that we could have the world together without repercussions.