Alice:
Yeah, he’s not a smart dude who’s on a path to anywhere except self-destruction.
By the end of the hotel stay, I’m at a crossroads.
I see him for who he is—a ‘man’ spiraling out of control.
A ‘man’ determined to drag me down with him.
It’s time to make a choice.
CHAPTER 69
BAIL OUT
DEX
The humidity in Sunset Cay doesn’t let up, even in December. It’s as if the weather mocks the chaos unfolding in Margaux’s life—unchanging, oppressive, suffocating. I sit in my quiet apartment, eyes fixed on my multiple monitors, the feed from her jail cell streaming on one screen, Timmy’s erratic movements mapped out on another. My coffee grows cold beside me, untouched.
Margaux’s been through hell. And today, hell looks like a paper-thin outfit in a jail cell.
I bet she didn’t have ‘going to jail’ on this year’s bingo card—or on her overall life’s bingo card.
When the notification about her arrest pinged on my phone, I almost destroyed the keyboard trying to pull up the police reports. The audacity of him—herabuser—calling the cops on her and spinning some half-baked story about being the victim.
I want to smash his smug face into the asphalt. I want to burn his pathetic existence to the ground.
He accused her of pulling his hair? I’ll show him what it looks like to have each hair pulled out one by one until he’s fucking bald.
But I can’t. Not yet.She’s not ready.
The feed from the jail’s internal cameras flickers to life, a sterile gray-blue hue bathing the screen. There she is, curled on the cold concrete, her paper uniform crinkled awkwardly around her limbs. Even through the grainy footage, I can see the exhaustion etched into her face, the tension in her shoulders.
My stomach twists.
Does she even realize how close she’s come to breaking? How precarious this situation is? How many lines he’s crossed—how many she’s allowed him to cross?
I swallow hard, my jaw clenched tight enough to ache. Every instinct I have screams at me to take matters into my own hands, but I can’t act until she’s ready to let go of him. And right now? She’s still tethered to some thread of hope, some misplaced belief that this can be salvaged.
When they move her to the downtown facility, I switch feeds. The cameras there are older, the angles worse, but I manage to find her again. She’s in a cell with other women now—some tweaking, others hardened by years of this cycle.
Margaux sticks out like a sore thumb, her pale skin and ginger hair practically glowing in the dim light. She’s scared but holding it together.
I admire that about her—her resilience, even in the face of absolute bullshit.
The other women seem to warm up to her, eventually. One even laughs at something she says.
Good. She needs allies, even temporary ones—even if they’re jail cellmates.
On another screen, I monitor Timmy’s movements. His phone’s GPS is a useful tool for me—a way to track his patheticattempts at a life. Today, he’s already spent hours at the meth tents, a familiar haunt for him now. He’s back at the apartment by noon, but only briefly, before heading to the beach and then the 7-Eleven that’s become his second home.
I shake my head, disgusted. He’s unraveling, too. Not that he was ever held together by much to begin with.
I look on as Margaux is eventually released from jail, barefoot and wearing the paper clothes, her shoulders hunched against the weight of it all.
Then it hits me—in domestic violence cases, the accused can’t return home except to get basic possessions.
I look on at the apartment’s feeds in horror as I realize Timmy isn’t home, and the police officer escorting her won’t let her in.