“She smashed her face into the mirror and told the police I did it. I was charged and booked into the county jail that night, and it didn’t matter what I told them. They didn’t believe me.”
Gypsy curled into herself, glaring at the floor as she considered the circumstances. “That’s so awful. They had to figure out she was lying at some point, right?”
A dry laugh ejected from my throat. “It only got worse from there. My parents bailed me out, but she’d been granted a restraining order against me which included my son. I wasn’t allowed to see him or contact her. I abided by the rules because I knew it was the only way to get Dawson back eventually. I had faith in the system. I had faith that somewhere along the line, somebody would figure it out. But they didn’t. And when she started using a phone she’d registered in my name to send herself threatening texts, it only compounded the problem. Stalking charges were added, and I was brought back to jail. This time, my parents didn’t bail me out. They didn’t know what to believe, I guess.”
“But you were their son,” Gypsy said. “How could they not believe you?”
“It happens more often than you’d think,” I assured her. “Things can get so skewed in a courtroom that people find themselves questioning things they never thought possible. But regardless, it wouldn’t have mattered what my parents believed. The court-appointed attorney didn’t believe me either, and it was evident in court. He did his job with the least amount of effort required on his part, and that was it. The judge handed down my sentence, and I was convicted on both charges with a two-year sentence.”
“What a load of bullshit,” Gypsy snarled.
“I didn’t care about the sentence. My whole life had been ripped apart, and the only thing that mattered to me was Dawson. She took him away to punish me because I wouldn’t stay with her. I was worried for his safety and well-being, and nobody would listen to me. I requested welfare checks. I did everything I could, but they left him in her care.”
Gypsy shook her head in disgust. “Just another kid falling through the system.”
“They failed him.” I pinched my eyes shut. “I failed him.”
“What happened to him?” Gypsy pressed.
“I was a few months away from my release when the warden pulled me into his office and sat me down. He told me that Dawson was gone. He’d been gone for two weeks, and I didn’t even know it. Nessie had been getting violent with him. Hitting him. Kicking him. I don’t know the extent of it. He had internal bleeding and died from the injuries because she never took him to the hospital. He was three years old.”
The numbness I’d always felt whenever I spoke those words seeped into every crevice of my soul, and I couldn’t think of anything else to add. That was the end. That had always been the end for me. The day Dawson died, I stopped living too.
I didn’t know what Gypsy would think. I was almost relieved she hadn’t said anything at all. But when I opened my eyes and they fell on her, there were fresh tears on her cheeks. Those tears were for Dawson, and maybe a little for me too. I couldn’t recall ever sharing the grief with anyone, and it was a comfort to have a companion in my darkness, even if only for a little while.
MY BODY MOVED BEFORE MYmind could process what I was really doing. It wasn’t my conscience, but my heart that led me to him.
I’d been torn about this man from the very beginning. From day one, I had declared that I could only ever hate him. But between the shadows of last night and the early light of day, something had changed between us. He knew my darkest secrets, and now I knew his.
I needed to go to him. Breathe in his scent, feel his skin against mine. It wasn’t logic, it was compulsion. A new addiction that I feared I might not ever recover from.
He looked up at me as I approached, and I reached out my fingers to brush them through his hair. He had beautiful hair. A striking face. And a body that was made to be seen. I could understand why someone would never want to let him go because at that moment, I felt it too. But more than anything, I felt a new rage inside me on his behalf. An equal need to destroy the bitch who ruined his life, and one to comfort him in the only way I could.
I made myself at home on his lap, straddling him as his cock stirred to life between us. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?”
“No,” he answered, his lips a breath away from mine. “You would be the first.”
I slipped my hands beneath his shirt, savoring the warmth of his skin against mine. “Sometimes, I think you came into my life for a reason. I think you came to save me.”
“Then you would be right,” he answered.
I buried my head in the crevice of his neck and breathed him in. “Why?”
“It’s the only thing I have to offer you.”
I clung to his body, terrified of what I wanted to ask next. “Have you done this with others? Women like me?”
“No.” He petted my hair. “You’re the only one.”
Tension melted from my body, but I was greedy for more. “What about the girls at the club?”
“They are different,” he said.
“Different how?” I demanded.
“They want pain. I want to provide it. That’s all it ever was.”
“And sex too.”