Mental Anguish （n.） – Scarlett
MENTAL ANGUISH (N.):
MENTAL SUFFERING WHICH INCLUDES FRIGHT, FEELINGS OF DISTRESS, ANXIETY, DEPRESSION, GRIEF AND/OR PSYCHOSOMATIC PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS.
SCARLETT
Several Hours Later
I’m naked and lying on top of Jameson in the suite’s oversized bed.
He has one hand pressed against my back, and the other against my leg. I assume it’s so he’ll know if I try to leave him before check-out without saying goodbye.
That’s all there is to say, though.
Mind-blowing sex aside, nothing between us has changed.
And I doubt it ever will.
Leaning over, I reach toward the nightstand to grab my phone, but Jameson suddenly grips my wrist.
“I left the drawer wide open for you,” he says, his eyes still shut.
“Huh? What drawer?”
“I know you or someone else had to see it,” he says. “Why didn’t you see it?”
“I…” I shake my head. “Jameson, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Was it Ray McKnight?” he asks. “Did he put you up to this? Was it my stepfather?”
I stare at him, remembering that he’d fallen into a trance like this weeks after we first met.
He’s even saying the same words…
“Jameson…” I softly shake him. “Jameson, wake up.”
“My father didn’t do this and you know it.” He speaks even louder. “You fucking know it, Mr. Hansel...”
His grip on my wrist tightens, but his eyes remain shut.
“When I get done with you, Peter Hansel, you’ll be looking up at me from Hell, and regretting the day you ever fucked me and my family over.”
“You’re hurting me, Jameson.” I bang on his chest with my other hand as he squeezes me even tighter. “Jameson, stop!”
“Fuck you, Peter Hansel,” he says. “Fuck. You.”
“Jameson—” I hit him as hard as I can. “Please, just—”
“What?” His eyes flutter open and he releases his grip on my hand, looking completely nonplussed about the past minute and a half. “What are you doing, Scarlett?”
“You hurt me during a nightmare.” I hold up my hand in front of him, showing off the deep red marks on my skin. “I tried to get you to wake up.”
“I’m so fucking sorry…” He glances at my hand, looking ashamed.
Slowly rolling me off him, he gets out of the bed.
“Stay right here,” he says, leaving me alone in the room.
Ignoring the sudden flare of pain, I grab my phone and check the time.
3:00 a.m.
I have eight hours before I need to head to the airport.
“I will leave,” I mutter to myself softly. “I will leave…”
Jameson returns to me with an ice bucket and a bag full of something I can’t see.
“I’m sorry, Scarlett.” He looks into my eyes. “I would never want to physically hurt you.”
“Only emotionally, right?”
“No…”
I wait for him to take my bait and fire back with something sarcastic, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he sits on the edge of the bed and takes my hand, icing my wrist. Then he softly wraps it in a warmed white towel.
“Thank you…” I let out a breath.
“You’re welcome.” He lifts my wrist to his mouth and kisses it. “What made you leave Manhattan for Los Angeles?”
“I needed a lot of space from everyone.”
“Including me?”
“Especially you.”
“You went through my mail.” His voice is low. “And you accused your own father of being a murderer.”
“Because he is…” I’m still trying to come to terms with it, but the weeks I’ve spent away in California have made my childhood recollections so much clearer.
I’ve had plenty of time to put the puzzle pieces of his shady business practices together, and although I don’t have the entire picture, the corners I do have are ugly and compelling enough.
“I know you want to believe the worst of him because he’s hurt you, but…” Jameson pinches the bridge of his nose. “If I win his case—one that affects your brothers as well—it’ll be my nine hundred sixty-seventh career win.”
“I hope you’re not expecting me to throw you a party.”
“I’m hoping you’ll understand.”
“Understand what, Jameson?” I ask. “You haven’t told me anything.”
“I’ve told you I missed you,” he says. “That I clearly fucking want you.”
“So, that erases our last ugly conversation and all this time in between?” I shrug. “It completely deletes all the questions I wanted answers to?”
“It should…”
“So, we can just start over with the exact same issues hanging in the balance?”
“That’s what mature adults would do, yes.”
“Well, feel free to call me an immature teenager forever, then.” I get up, and he grips my waist. Then he pulls me back down.
“The person I go to see twice a week is my father,” he says, answering one of my old questions with ease. “He’s currently serving a life sentence in state prison for murder.”
What? I can feel all the color draining from my face. Every assumption I had about his obsession with defending the guilty slowly shifts out of place.
“He’s been locked away there since I was a kid.” He looks as if the words pain him to say. “But he’s completely innocent. Happy now?”
“No…”
“Well, you should be. Only a few other people know about this.”
“I…” I don’t even know what to say to him.
“This is the part where you ask me how I know he didn’t do it, Scarlett. Ask me.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Oh, now you don’t want to know something?” His voice is strained. “What the fuck do I need to tell you to get you to come back and let us start over?”
“Cut ties with my father.” I pause. “Or at least tell me everything you’re doing for him.”
He says nothing.
He just stares at me for several seconds, his expression shifting from vulnerable to vexed.
“Scarlett Hunter—”
“It’s Winters now.” I correct him.
“Fine,” he says, straightening his back. “Scarlett Winters, I meant what I said about attorney-client privilege, and you know damn well how much winning cases means to me.”
“It means more than this so-called relationship, right?”
“That’s a trick question,” he says, “but I’m not breaking the law for you.”
“And I’m not changing my plans for you.” I stand up from the bed and quickly move out of reach. “I’m going to shower and catch an Uber to the airport. Please don’t join me or try to make me get in your car. I’m done with you this time. For good.”
“Get back in the fucking bed, Scarlett.” He looks at the sheets. “We can finish this conversation in a few hours when you’ve come to your senses.”
He moves back onto the mattress, gesturing for me to move back on top of him, but I don’t.
“I meant what I said about not following me, Jameson.” I pick up a towel and wrap it around my body.
I head to the bathroom, but then I stop and look over my shoulder at him.
“There’s a stone well at my father’s estate house,” I say. “When I was a kid, it was my favorite place to read every day because it had the most beautiful red oak bench and matching canopy.”
He arches a brow.
“One day, my father tore down that bench and canopy, placing them next to our lake instead,” I say. “Then he put up ‘No Trespassing’ signs and told me the well was off limits for the rest of my life.”
I can feel my hands shaking, my mind begging me to stop the story here, but I can’t help finishing.
“He told me that some utility company had ruled that it was a hazard, but every blue moon, I’d see his men out there in the darkest hours of the night,” I say.
“And without fail, days after they left, a nauseating odor would drift from that well for weeks at a time. The scent would disappear for a year, but it would always come back after another visit from his team.”
“Looking back, I think I know exactly why.”
“You’re assuming why, Scarlett…” His tone doesn’t match the look in his eyes.
“Maybe.” I shrug, opening the door. “But whatever you’re defending him from now, I guarantee he’s probably done much worse, and only one of us can actually do something about it…”