by Shandi Boyes
After joining him in bed, I scoot across the mattress until our thighs are nearly touching. “Did you ever think to ask me if I had any triggers instead of reading the report? You know what those documents are like, BJ. They’re so cut and dry and de—”
“Demoralizing,” he fills in, peering back at me. “The entire time I was reading it, I couldn’t see you. The way you spoke and what you said, none of it made it seem as if it were you. It was just another report on yet another victim.”
When I see the words he can’t speak in his eyes, I voice them for him. “Until that night in my room?”
I think I’m on the money until Brandon shakes his head. “I wasn’t seeing you then either. I was seeing him. I was seeing Madden.” When his eyes drift over my face, the pain in his eyes softens to regret. “Then I wondered if he was who you were seeing, too.”
“Oh, BJ.” I inch across the mattress until there’s no doubt our thighs are touching. “He wasn’t on my mind. He has never been on my mind anytime I’ve been with you.” Even knowing this will hurt him, I have to be honest. “It was quick, the assault barely lasted a few minutes. It doesn’t take away from what happened, or how wrong he was, but it means I only have to squeeze a few minutes of horror between years and years of happiness.”
After tugging back the sheet, I straddle Brandon’s lap like I disastrously did all those weeks ago. I’m not going to kiss him or beg for him to let me take away his pain. I just don’t want the odd angle of our heads to have him missing the absolute honesty in my eyes when I say, “Madden tried to take away my worth, my self-respect, my confidence, and my voice. To begin with, he won. I was silenced by Joey’s death.”
My eyes bounce between his when I say, “But he’s learning differently now. I’m not a victim of his. I am a survivor. That makes me stronger than him. It makes me more powerful. He won’t win, BJ. He’ll never win… if you don’t let him.” Confusion blisters through his eyes as his brows join. “You’re as much of a survivor of Madden’s as I am. When he hurt me, he hurt you, too, but at the moment, he’s winning the battle against you.”
Brandon vehemently shakes his head. “No. I’m not letting him win. I hurt him. I was going to kill him. I would have if Grayson hadn’t stopped me.”
The anger burning him from the inside out cools when I mutter, “Not physically, BJ. Emotionally. This isn’t a game of skill for him. It’s a mindfuck. But that’s also why I know in the long term, he won’t win. He’s no match for you. He’ll never have your level of skillset and intellect. Just like he’ll never win against us.”
“Us?” Brandon asks, his tone low.
“Yes, BJ. Us. It’s always been us.” I scoot up his legs like a raging river is dividing us. It doubles the tension between us, but since it’s a good tension, I work with it. “It was wrong of me to leave the way I did. If I hadn’t, we may have found out what happened to Joey sooner, and I could have stopped Madden from hurting other women.” When he tries to interrupt me, I talk faster, “But everything happens for a reason. You’ve done so many wonderful things the past seven years, BJ. You’ve broke cases that would have never been broken. You saved hundreds and hundreds of children from horrible situations, and you grew as a person. I’m so incredibly proud of the man you have become, and I know my dad would be too.”
Brandon shakes his head. “He warned me that I couldn’t protect and love you. He told me you would get hurt. He knew I was going to make a mistake. That’s why he didn’t trust me with you.”
“That’s not true, BJ. If he had any idea Madden would grow into the man he is, he would have removed me from that situation immediately. He was as blinded by the evil skating through Madden’s veins as you were.”
Having no plausible defense, Brandon remains quiet. Although I could leave our conversation there, I don’t. The words we’re speaking now should have been spoken years ago. “Have you ever wondered why I wasn’t in the car with my parents the day they were murdered? Dad was adamant we weren’t to be together, so why would he leave me home alone only days after finding me in your sex-scented room?”
Brandon’s brows join as a hopeful mask slips over his face. “He knew he was fighting a battle he’d never win.”
I nod. “But he would have never admitted that. He would have preferred us to sneak around behind his back than admit he was wrong trying to keep us apart.”
An unexpected chuckle vibrates my chest when Brandon murmurs under his breath, “Stubborn bastard.”
“A stubborn bastard who loved you like a son.” When Brandon’s eyes float up to mine, I give him the assurance he deserves. “He didn’t mean what he said, BJ. He was scared, that’s all. I promise you that. He was never ashamed of you. He loved you.” The heavy sentiment in the air crackles when I murmur, “Not as much as me, but it was still there.”
I nuzzle into Brandon’s palm when he lifts his hand to cup my cheek. His thumb isn’t as rough as it usually is since it hasn’t gripped a gun the past five weeks, but it doesn’t weaken the zap that roars through me when he tracks it across my lips. He doesn’t speak, he just lets me see how much my words positively impacted him. I’ll need a ton more to fix the cracks Grayson and I forced onto him when we made him break, but tonight’s conversation was a great lead-up for future ones.
After a few minutes of heart-fixing comfort, I remove Brandon’s hand from my jaw, kiss his palm, then slip off his lap. In quicker than I can snap my fingers, panic overtakes the crackling of sexual energy in the air. “Where are you going?”
My bare feet squeak on the polished floorboards when I twist around to face Brandon. I’m not heated-up with the guilt I’ve felt more times than I can count the past five weeks. I’m warm from the flare igniting between us. I’d give anything to act on it, but since that could possibly shove Brandon’s recovery back a few spots, I must wait.
“I don’t know about you, but dinner was over three hours ago, so I need a midnight snack to keep my energy up. Did you want something?” My last two words quiver when Brandon’s eyes stray to the jar of peanut butter on his nightstand. “I’ll bring you back a spoon,” I mutter before I make a beeline for the fridge. It’s winter, however, I’m going to stand in front of the fridge until the heat roaring through my body cools a few degrees.
Tonight is the first in-depth conversation we’ve had.
It’s not the time for me to get horny.
That logic would be easier to follow if Brandon didn’t add a request to his wordless demand for a spoon. “Can you bring our horror movie list in with the spoon? I forgot about the TV in my room.”
Does he want to watch scary movies because he’s craving gore and violence? Or is he wanting me plastered to him as I have been most of the day?
I guess there’s only one way to find out. “Should I bring an extra jar of peanut butter with me as well? The one you have is half empty?”
My breathing all but stops when he replies, “Perhaps you should bring two.”
39
Melody
I roll over with a groan when the annoying rattle of someone’s knuckles on a door trickles into my ears. My mouth is bone-dry, my head is throbbing, and even with Brandon’s bed being big enough for ten, I’m confident I am waking up alone for the first time in weeks.
This sucks.
The annoyance thickening my blood eases when I spot a note from Brandon on the bedside table he specially purchased for me my first week here. He went to see Dr. Avery as he has twice a week for the past five weeks. I’m glad I convinced him to continue with their sessions. Stepping back from counseling just as it’s beginning to work is the worst thing any patient can do. I did it years ago, and it back-fired in my face.
I’d rather save Brandon the pain.
When a second rattle taps through my ears, I groan out that I’m coming before tossing back the sheets and dragging my sorry ass out of bed. I don’t usually sleep with my implants in, so my head isn’t just throbbing from a couple of hours sleep, my ears are a
ching as well.
Brandon and I watched the final two movies on our list last night. We didn’t go to bed until a little after four this morning. Since I fell asleep with my head buried in Brandon’s lap, no nightmares occurred. I wouldn’t have minded if they did. Brandon was trained to protect, so there’s nothing more he loves than saving a damsel in distress. Although the movies were the cause of my frightened state, I’m reasonably sure he gobbled up every ounce of need beaming out of me. We were even more touchy-feely under the blanket last night than we were when we were teens.
“Jeez, I said I’m coming. Hold your horses,” I grunt when the visitor racks their knuckles on the door for a third time.
In my eagerness to teach them some manners, I swing open the door without peeking out of the peephole. It was silly of me to do. I’m not in any danger, but my heart sure is when I identify the person stumbling forward at a pace so fast, I have to catch her.
After helping my guest back to her feet, I greet her. “Phillipa, hi.”
Nothing against Phillipa. From what Brandon has told me, when she’s not lying about what she does for a living, she is kind and helpful. I’m just finding it difficult to get past the fact she kissed my fiancé while crushing on my high school sweetheart.
Brandon didn’t tell me about Phillipa and Julian’s kiss. I’m not even sure if he knows about it. Julian did. He was so remorseful, he confessed as if their kiss wasn’t the result of his heart being torn out of his chest from watching me kiss Brandon in a room full of witnesses.
Their kiss happened two hours after ours. The knowledge should weaken the knot in my stomach, but for some reason, it doesn’t. I can see Phillipa cares for Brandon. It may not be as much as I do, but it’s still very much there.
If I really want the best for Brandon, I should have let Phillipa step up to the plate as she tried when I arrived weeks ago. Alas, sometimes I’m as selfish as I am sorrow-filled.
A honeysuckle scent fills my nostrils when Phillipa steps into the alcove to glance over my shoulder. “Melody, hi. Is BJ… ah… Brandon here?”
“No. He’s with Dr. Avery.” I’m not sharing guarded secrets. Phillipa is aware of Brandon’s counseling sessions as she was the one who organized them for him. The first visit was under the guise he needed a psych workup to become a consultant with the CIA.
I nod when Phillipa mumbles, “I thought you went with him to his sessions?”
“Usually, I do. I must have slept through my alarm.” After opening the door wider, I gesture for Phillipa to come in. “He left me a note. He should be back in around thirty minutes or so. You can wait for him inside if you’d like.”
“Ah…” She looks more uncomfortable now than she did when her eyes landed on my bare legs sticking out the bottom of one of Brandon’s shirts. “It isn’t really a pop-in visit. I just… ah… needed to borrow a cup of sugar.”
Her stumbling words already have my suspicions rising, much less the way she keeps blinking. And don’t get me started on her piss-poor excuse for her visit, or we’ll be here all morning. She’s not only lying, her silence adds to the controversy of her visit. Her high-pitch isn’t the only voice my implants are picking up.
“It isn’t as it seems,” Phillipa garbles out when I tug out a listening device from her right ear.
When I press it to my ear, I hear Grayson curse before he produces his own pathetic excuse for the invasion of privacy. “I swear to you, we’re trying to save him unnecessary worry, Melody. That’s it.”
I don’t want to believe him, but I do. “Then you better get your ass up here and tell me what’s going on before BJ gets home.”
After handing Phillipa back the bead-like device, I head to the kitchen, conscious I’ll need an IV of coffee to get me through the reason for the unease in Grayson’s voice. He sounded more concerned now than he did when he called me out of the blue weeks ago.
“How confident are you that Bobby isn’t Ophelia’s husband’s son?”
As Grayson’s eyes stray over the mess known as Ophelia Petretti’s life, he shrugs. “The dates add up—”
“I know that. I scoured the reports from BJ’s case for hours when he reached out for my help, even after passing on the details for a defense lawyer who specialized in these types of cases. But that means nothing. For all we know, Ophelia could have moved onto her next target the instant she realized BJ wasn’t going to fall for her ruse.” I’m shouting, and it’s unacceptable, but I can’t help it. I’m truly panicked.
I don’t care if Brandon has a child with someone else. In some warped way, it will be good for him to have someone new to protect. I just don’t trust Ophelia. I don’t care who you are, if you falsely accuse a man of rape, you’re a piece of shit. Your lie undoes all the good victims of assault have fought decades to achieve. You steal the voice of rape victims even more than their rapists attempted to do, and you stop victims from coming forward because they’re convinced no one will believe them.
One lie casts a shadow of doubt on hundreds of real cases, so I wish people would remember that when they’re angry their Tinder date didn’t return their call the next day. You have the right to say no. It’s your body, so you’re free to do with it as you wish, but I beg for you not to pretend you were assaulted because your feelings were hurt. That isn’t fair. Not to rape victims like me nor the men who have been wrongly accused and convicted.
Air leaves my lungs in a hurry when Grayson places down a photo of a little boy I’d guess to be around the age of five or six. His hair is as dark as his mother’s, but the shape of his face and the determined twinkle in his eyes aren’t from Ophelia. I’ve seen them many times in my lifetime. All he needs is snow-white hair, and I’d be convinced I’m looking at a portrait of Brandon.
Grayson pushes out a halfhearted chuckle when I mutter, “Is a DNA test even needed?”
Mistaking the tears in my eyes as sadness, he curls his arm around my shoulders and squeezes me tight. I am sad, it just isn’t in the way you’re anticipating. I’m not upset Brandon has a child, I’m sad for him. He’s missed so many years of Bobby’s life, and if anything Grayson and Phillipa are saying is true, he’s set to miss so many more.
As my eyes bounce between Phillipa and Grayson, I ask, “Is there any way we can gain access to Bobby’s DNA without Ophelia’s permission?”
I know the answer to my question. I studied law for years. I just don’t like the answers that knowledge gains me, so I’m willing to act stupid if it increases the possibility of finding a way around our dilemma.
When Phillipa peers at me through lowered lashes, I try to have her looking at me as more of a friend than a once assistant district attorney. She cares for Brandon. Is it enough for her to tiptoe onto the wrong side of the law? I don’t know, but I’m determined to find out.
“You said Ophelia agreed to Isaac’s request for a DNA test, so why is she refusing this one?”
“Because she knows the results won’t swing in her favor this time around,” Grayson answers on Phillipa’s behalf. “She has her ex-husband on a knife’s edge. If he doesn’t do exactly what she wants when she wants, he won’t see his son.”
“Bobby isn’t his son,” I argue, shouting.
Phillipa’s dark, stormy eyes dance between mine. “We know that, Melody, but Louis doesn’t.” Her tone reveals she feels truly sorry for another victim of Ophelia’s.
“Can he be turned? Surely, he’d consider siding with us if his son’s livelihood was on the line. If any of this is true…” I scan the documents showing numerous payments between the Castros, the Petrettis, and Louis’s many bank accounts. “He and Ophelia are looking at over twenty years. Who will support their son then? Has anyone asked him that?”
Grayson shrugs. “The hierarchies in IA aren’t willing to test that angle just yet. They’re still gathering intel.”
“They’re always gathering intel,” Phillipa and I say at the same time.
I don’t want to smile, but I can’t help it. If
you can change the color of her hair and exclude her Mediterranean skin coloring, we have a lot of similarities. She’d be a good pick for Brandon if I were willing to give him up.
It’s a pity for Phillipa I will never do that.
“What about the DNA company used to conduct Isaac’s test? Would they still have Bobby’s DNA on file?” What I’m asking is illegal and somewhat imprudent considering the two people seated across from me are government officials, but I’m so desperate to get answers for Brandon, I am willing to risk it. My daddy always said I could tiptoe onto the wrong side of the law as long as I found my way back. I’ve never been tempted before, but I’d do anything for Brandon.
My spine straightens when reality dawns. “Is that why you were attempting to break in? You were going to secure BJ’s DNA without his permission.” I can’t tell if I’m angry or pleased with my assumption. It could be a combination of them both. I hate that they were planning to take away Brandon’s God-given rights, but I also understand their desperateness for answers.
I realize I’m way off the mark when Phillipa shakes her head. “I came for his shoebox of photos. We wanted to do a facial comparison of Brandon and Bobby at the same age. We needed to make sure our theory had credit before bringing our findings to Brandon.” The edginess on her face softens when she mutters, “Your confirmation made facial profiling unnecessary.”
After a few moments of silent ruminating, I get desperate. “If I could get you a sample of BJ’s DNA, would you be able to compare it to Bobby’s sample on file?”
I’m hit with a second brutal blow today when Grayson shakes his head. “Most companies retain samples for six months. That wasn’t the case this time around.”
“Isaac asked them to be destroyed earlier?” I say, filling in the words Grayson didn’t articulate. When he nods, my chest deflates. “Then, we need to convince Ophelia to do the right thing.”