Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Skylar
The hard vinyl bench clings to the backs of my thighs. My cheek’s pressed against something solid and warm, and for a second, I can’t figure out what it is.
Then I catch the smell. Grease and I know.
Rainer.
His shirt smells like the workshop he’s spent most of his life working in. It’s grounding, holding me there for a moment when everything else keeps trying to rip me out of my skin.
I shift a little, my neck screaming from the angle I slept in, spine cracking one vertebra at a time.
The lights above us buzz like they’re short-circuiting, flickering against the pale green linoleum that covers the floor.
The police station feels sterile in a way that makes me itch. Everything has been wiped clean, but it still stinks of stale coffee and the men who’d rather ask what I was wearing than what Bryce Anders did.
The clock on the wall blinks 4:42 AM. We’ve been here all night.
I peel myself off Rainer’s shoulder slowly.
He doesn’t move. Only sits there, arms folded, stare fixed ahead. That same look on his face he’s had since the second they cuffed Zane.
When I glance up at him, he finally looks down and gives me a slight nod.
“Are you okay?” His voice is rough.
I nod. But I’m the opposite of fucking okay.
“Sorry,” I murmur, voice cracking on the word. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“It’s fine, Skylar. You didn’t miss anything.” His voice is flat, tired. “Bet these assholes are keeping us waiting. Dragging it out because they can.”
After they arrested Zane and took him away, I told Rainer everything.
What those assholes did to me and what they tried to do.
What Zane did to stop it.
Rainer didn’t interrupt. He listened with clenched fists and a locked jaw. And when I got to the part where Zane showed up and everything went red, he closed his eyes and sighed.
And we both knew at that moment that Zane’s fucked.
Rainer leans forward, elbows resting heavily on his knees, shoulders hunched as if the weight of it all is finally settling in.
“He’s not walking away from this, is he?” I ask.
He doesn’t speak right away.
He sits there, staring at the floor, like he’s trying to find the words that will soften the blow.
Then after a long pause he turns his head towards me. “No. Not with who we’re up against.”
Bryan fucking Anders.
Rainer told me about him last night.
Bryce’s father, the smug, polished bastard who shows up in courtrooms with thousand-dollar shoes. A man who drinks scotch with judges, plays golf with cops, and slithers through the system as if it was built to serve him.
He doesn’t lose. Not when his kid’s on the line.
Zane won’t walk from this; he’ll be made an example of. To remind people that the law often favours those with money.
A door creaks open to the left of us.
Two people stride through, footsteps heavy.
One of them, I recognize, is the officer who cuffed Zane. The other one is dressed to impress. Pressed shirt, expensive tie, sleeves rolled just enough to show off a gold watch. Tan skin, slicked-back hair. Arrogant and entitled. A man who’s never heard the word no in his life.
“That’s the asshole’s father. Bryan Anders,” Rainer mutters beside me.
They stop near the front desk, their voices carrying across the quiet space.
“That kid’s going down,” Bryce’s father says to the officer beside him, loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Broke my son’s jaw in two places. Can you believe that shit?
” he scoffs. “My sources tell me he’s some underground fighter.
Real lowlife. The kid’s been in and out of the system for years. What else can you expect?”
I’m on my feet before I even realize I’ve moved.
The fact that he was in the foster system doesn’t make him worthless, and it sure as shit doesn’t make him disposable.
Rainer reaches out, hand gripping my arm.
“That’s bullshit,” I snap. My voice cracks, but I don’t care.
Bryan turns.
His eyes drag over me from head to toe, taking his time, and I swear I feel every inch like a violation.
“This must be the girl,” he says, lips curling around the words as if I’m nothing but a case file. A thing. A problem to dismiss. “The one he’s saying he was protecting. Sweetheart, you don’t want to tie yourself to someone like that. Trash stays trash.”
Before I can open my mouth to tell him to go fuck himself and that he doesn’t know shit about Zane or anything we’ve lived through, Rainer steps forward.
“His background has nothing to do with his character.”
Rainer’s staring straight at him, his eyes like stone. The tension bleeds off him in waves, all tight shoulders.
The lawyer laughs. “Character? Don’t start preaching morality to me. My son’s in the hospital with a broken jaw. Your guy’s got a record longer than this precinct’s hallway. Let’s be clear. This asshole is doing time. You should figure out how to say goodbye.”
The cop says nothing, simply shifts awkwardly beside him.
I feel Rainer’s hand on my arm again, holding me in place before I can throw something or scream in his face.
I fucking hate this.
The waiting.
Hate that Zane’s sitting somewhere behind those walls—probably pacing that shitty concrete floor with blood still crusted on his hands, and still, we do not know a damn thing.
No one is telling us shit. No updates. What he’s been charged with.
Just silence.
The kind that makes your skin itch.
That presses against your chest until you can’t tell if you’re about to scream or throw up.
The courtroom hums with noise.
The kind that doesn’t stay in your ears, but sinks into your skin and writhes there.
Whispers.
Pages flipping.
The occasional fake cough from someone who’s only here because they want to see blood spilled without punches.
Rainer sits on my right, shoulders set, spine straight.
He has said little since we walked in, but I can feel the tension rolling off him.
His shirt’s white, crisp. Clean jeans. His hair is even combed.
It’s the first time I’ve seen him without grease under his nails and oil smudged down his forearms. Guess this is one of those moments when you’ve got to clean yourself up to be taken seriously.
Cassie’s on my left, legs crossed tight, a crumpled tissue balled in her fist, which she hasn’t touched. Her eyes are red. Raw. She’s been crying for both of us. Guilt’s carved deep into her face, sharp at the edges.
She keeps blaming herself, whispering that she should’ve called the cops. That maybe if she had, none of this would be happening.
But I get it.
People like us don’t trust systems.
We don’t believe the cops or, even, in this case, judges will give a damn about our side.
We believe in each other. That’s all we’ve ever had.
I haven’t cried since the night they took him.
Not because it didn’t break me. Fuck, it did. But I’ve spent years teaching myself how to keep my tears locked down, how to bite down hard and breathe through it. Crying changes nothing. And if I cry now, I’m scared I won’t be able to stop.
The door at the side of the courtroom opens and everything stops.
Then, suddenly he’s there.
Zane.
The chain between his wrists rattles as the officer leads him in.
His hair’s messy, strands falling into his face. The bruising still shadows his jaw and cheekbone from the underground fight; it still looks ugly and raw. And I know what everyone else in this room is going to see.
They will see a kid who looks like trouble. The person their daughters shouldn’t talk to. The kind judges look at once and throw away.
But it’s his eyes that knock the air out of my lungs.
They don’t flick around the gallery searching for us; they don’t scan the benches.
They stare straight ahead. Blank and detached, as if he’s already accepted that no one in this room’s going to give him a way out.
The officer leads him to the table before Zane is forced into a chair. He sits there, eyes locked on the table in front of him. The lawyer Rainer organized for him leans in and whispers something, and still he doesn’t look up.
That’s when I catch it.
The murmurs.
Soft at first. Barely there whispers curling around the room, slithering between the rows. But they grow. Words crawl through the courtroom like insects. Ugly. Itchy.
All here to watch a boy burn.
They don’t even try to lower their voices.
My skin crawls. Heat rises under it, boiling up my spine.
I want to stand. I want to fucking scream.
Tell them all to shut the fuck up because they don’t know him.
They don’t know a goddamn thing about what happened in that alley. Don’t know the soft boy who gave up his bed, so I didn’t have to sleep on the floor. They don’t know that everything he did to them was to protect me.
But I don’t move.
I sit there, fists clenched in my lap, nails biting into skin, teeth grinding down the words building in my throat.
Because I already know the truth.
None of them wants to listen.
Not the people watching with their smug little smirks, or the cops who refused to write my full statement.
When Rainer and I sat down to tell them every fucking detail of what those three assholes did to me, they didn’t ask questions. They looked tired, uninterested, as if they had already decided I was just a kid from the system, causing problems again.
Zane doesn’t seem right sitting there.
He doesn’t seem like the boy who made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe. The one who stood in the kitchen at midnight, making me cheese melts because I couldn’t sleep. The boy who pulled me into his arms and told me he fucking loved me, his voice shaking when he said it.
Now he sits there, shoulders heavy, eyes empty. The spark that always burned in him is gone. It’s as if they had already taken everything from him before the judge even arrived.
Bryce’s old man stands, smooth as ever, as if he’s not a lawyer but the fucking director of this whole mess. He scans the courtroom with a calm detachment, eyes skating over the rows until they land on someone.
I follow his gaze.
And there they are.
The three assholes.