“Back to that night, Elodie.” Mylee halted in front of me again. “What happened when he told you he wanted to check out your new apartment?”
“I told him to leave.”
Mylee nodded and placed her hands in front of her. “And did he?”
“No.” I glanced over at Asher, his nod of encouragement fueling me forward. “I told him Asher would be back any minute, but he still wouldn’t leave.” My fingers trailed up to my throat as I remembered the way he’d—
“Then he grabbed me around the throat.”
“Had he done this to you before?”
“Yes. But…there was something different about this time.” I tried to keep my mind focused on what had happened that night. “His eyes…there was a darkness to his eyes.”
“And how did that make you feel?”
“Scared.”
“What happened after he grabbed you around the throat?”
“He…” I felt a sob bubbling up and pushed it down as far as I could. “He spat on me.” I paused and winced as I remembered. “Then he slapped me.”
“Then what happened?”
“He wrestled me to the ground.” The sob couldn’t be contained any longer, and I let it out, needing to find some relief in the memories coming back to me piece by painful piece. “I tried to fight but he kept telling me I was his.”
Mylee passed me a tissue and I wiped at my face, needing to get control of my emotions. I wasn’t going to satisfy Knox for a moment longer, but it was hard to keep them contained. I hadn’t had to tell anyone what happened that night since I’d given a statement. “Then what happened?”
“He pulled my hair so hard it felt like my scalp was on fire.” I remembered the white-hot pain burning over my skin. “I dug my nails into his arm, trying to get him off me.” I balled the tissue up and held it between my palms. “Then he threw me to the floor and my head smacked off the edge of my coffee table.”
“And how did this affect the way you acted?”
“I couldn’t get my bearings. Everything was blurry and happening so fast. I knew I had to get out of there, so I turned around but…but I wasn’t quick enough. He slammed his shoulder into my chest and knocked my breath out of me.”
Mylee nodded. “So, there was no way out?”
“Objection,” the same deep voice said, but his tone was softer this time.
“Sustained.”
“Did you feel like there was a way out?” Mylee asked, her gaze meeting mine.
“No. He trapped me and then…then he pulled my jeans down.” A tear ran down my face as my skin crawled. I could still feel the weight of him on top of me. “I begged him to stop, but he…he liked it. He told me to keep begging him, but every time I did, he just carried on.”
“You’re almost done now, Elodie,” Mylee said, her lips pulling into the faintest of smiles. “What happened next?”
“He…pushed himself inside of me.” I took another breath, determined not to shed another tear. “I told him no again, but he didn’t listen. He carried on, and I realized…I realized nothing was going to stop him.”
“Thank you, Elodie.” Mylee placed her hand on the edge of the stand again and gave me a slight nod, then turned around. “Your witness,” she said to the other table, but still I didn’t turn to look at them. I kept my gaze forward, waiting for the man who had objected several times to come into my view.
“Elodie,” he said, his voice deceptively soft. “You knew Knox from attending the same school as him, correct?”
“Yes,” I answered, keeping my gaze firmly fixed on the lawyer. His gray hair was receding and from the way his suit fit him, it had to be designer.
“And you’d been friends with Knox for a long time?”
“Yes.”
He nodded and took a couple of steps away from me. “But you didn’t live near each other?”
My stomach dipped at his question. “We did not.”
“Where did you live, Elodie?”
I wet my lips and swallowed, trying not to let him affect me. “With my mother.”
“No father?”
“No.” I shook my head and held my hands tighter in my lap.
“And why is that?”
My nostrils flared at the sight of his lips quirking on one side. “He left when I was a kid.”
“Is it not true that he left because your mother abuses both alcohol and drugs?” He raised a brow, waiting for me to answer, and when I gave a small nod of agreement, he gritted out, “Vocalize your answer.”
“Yes,” I croaked, feeling like I wanted to run away. I hadn’t expected him to bring my mom into it, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. Knox never played anything but dirty.
“So when the opportunity came to be away from your mother, you snapped it up.” His voice got louder. “You were offered an apartment by another man and dropped Knox just like your dad had done to you.”
“That’s not—”
“Because that’s the pattern you’ve learned growing up, isn’t it Elodie? You take what you want and don’t care about the consequences.”
“No—”
“You used Knox.” He paced the small area in front of me. “You used him because he was popular in school. His family is rich. You lured him, promising him things that you were never willing to give.”
“That’s not true!” I blurted out, feeling frazzled.
“The truth is that you liked rough sex. You took a straight A student who was on the path to attend an Ivy League college and twisted him to your ways. You didn’t want the plain high school guy, you wanted the rough-and-tumble kind.” He paused and halted in front of me. “You wanted the kind of guy you’d grown up around, but they didn’t suit your needs to get out of the trailer park you were trapped in did they?”
“You’re spouting fiction,” I told him, narrowing my eyes. “That’s not what happened, and it’s not what Knox is like.”
“What I think happened, Elodie, is that the moment you dropped Knox, you realized your mistake and you asked him to come to your apartment.” I shook my head and opened my mouth to answer, but he continued, not letting me talk. “I think you engaged in the rough kind of sex you were used to, but you hadn’t expected your latest boyfriend to walk in, had you?”
I heard murmurings in the room, but I tried my best to ignore them. He was attempting to rattle me, trying to get me to have an outburst, but I’d spent years learning how to stay calm in the face of uncertainty.
“You’re wrong,” I told him simply.
“Did you engage in rough sex with Knox previous to this event?” he asked, raising his brow.
“I did not.”
The lawyer stared down at me, his bright blue eyes drilling into me. “That’s your word against his, though, isn’t it, Elodie?”
“I suppose it is.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but I didn’t give him the chance this time. “But this isn’t my word against his. There were witnesses to how he treated me throughout our relationship. I’m haunted every day by what he did to me. I have physical and emotional scars that he left behind.” I paused. “And the evidence from the rape kit proves what he did to me.”
“Or it proves you like rough sex,” he quipped back, pursing his lips
“Do you know what it’s like to have your choices taken away from you, sir?” I asked, pushing forward in my seat.
“I think you’ll find it’s my job to ask the questions here, young lady.”
“That’s a no, then.” I shook my head, feeling all of my emotions bubbling to the surface. “Because if you did know, then you wouldn’t be asking me these questions. I’ll live with what he did to me for the rest of my life. This wasn’t an event that will pass on by. This is something that will stay with me until the day I die.”
“Stick to only answering questions I ask,” he ground out, his warning clear.
I tried to take a calming breath, but it was really hard when I was faced with a man representing such evil. �
��Okay, then.”
He walked back to his desk and I felt my shoulders slump. It was over, finally ov—
“One last question.” He held his finger up in the air and spun on his heels to face me. “How long did you work as an exotic dancer at the strip club Pink Feather?”
My breath whooshed out of me, my face paling. I’d thought I’d kept what I did a secret, but if Knox’s lawyer knew, then so did Knox. Had he known all along?
“I…” I didn’t know what to say because the truth made me look a certain way; the truth meant people would made a judgement about me and what I was like. It wouldn’t matter if they were right or wrong.
“According to my records, you’d worked there for around nine months.” He held up a piece of paper. “Would an eighteen-year-old high school student take her clothes off and flaunt her naked body in front of men if she wasn’t experienced?” My breaths were ragged as I stared at him, not able to say a single word. I’d worked there because I didn’t have a choice. “I think you felt trapped and thought this was your only way out: to accuse an innocent young man of something so vile.”
“I—"
The lawyer swiped his hand through the air, keeping his gaze fixated to mine. “No further questions.”
I gasped. He hadn’t even let me explain. He’d portrayed me to be something I wasn’t and now there was nothing I could do about it. He’d left me hanging, knowing the last of his words would impact the jury.
“You may leave the stand now,” the judge said. “Let’s break for lunch and return at one thirty.” He stood and walked out of the courtroom through a back door, leaving me sitting here not knowing what to do or how to act.
I hadn’t told anyone how I’d earned my money, and I was hyperaware that Brody, Lola, Belle, and Leo were sitting in the same row as Asher. They’d heard what Knox’s lawyer had said. Would they look at me differently now? Would they see me the way the lawyer had made me out to be?
“Elodie.” I whipped my head up, my stare meeting Mylee’s. “You can come down from there now.”
“I…right.” I cleared my throat and stood on shaky legs. I kept my head down as I passed between the two tables and pushed through the swinging doors toward the row of seats.
“You did great up there.” Asher’s voice was the first I heard. I couldn’t bear to look at him, afraid of what I would see on his face. “Sweetheart,” he murmured, placing his finger under my chin and tilting my head back. “Don’t let it get to you.”
I sniffled, trying not to let the tears escape. “I didn’t expect it to be like that. I thought…I thought.” I paused. “Everyone knows what I was. They know and—”
“We won’t look at you any differently,” Lola stated. I turned my head to face her, preparing myself to see judgement on her face, but there wasn’t any, if anything, she only expressed understanding. “You’re our Elodie, and that’s all that matters.” She placed her hand on my shoulder. “You did what you had to do to survive. In my book, that makes you stronger than anyone.”
“Really?” I whispered.
“Yep.” She shuffled to the side. “Now, what do you want to do? Stay or leave? Because I’ve about had it with watching that piece of shit from back here.”
I pulled in a breath, knowing exactly what I wanted to do. I hadn’t looked at the defense table the entire time I’d been in this room, but now it was time for me to face my demon head-on.
I spun my body, knowing Asher was at my back, and stared Knox square in the eyes. He narrowed his eyes at me, his wrath clear for anyone to see, but in the blink of an eye it was gone. I’d had an entire speech built up in my head of what I’d say when I saw him again, but in that moment, I felt like I didn’t need to say a word. I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. I hadn’t been afraid of him for months. He was just a boy—a boy who thought the world owed him something. Life would teach him a hard lesson, one that I wasn’t sure he’d survive.
He leaned back in his seat, blew me a kiss, then laughed up a storm. The sound echoed around the room, but without the judge or jury in here to witness it, it would go by unseen. But it didn’t matter anymore.
He thought he’d come here and win, but he was losing. He’d lost the moment he’d walked into my apartment. He’d lost the second he’d laid his hands on me.
“That fucker,” Asher ground out from behind me. His chest met my back and I grabbed on to his arm, silently telling him not to say or do anything. It was what Knox wanted. He lived to rile people up and making them react to him because it was all a big game to him.
I spun around, turning my back on Knox. “Let’s go home,” I told Asher. “I just want to go home.” He glanced down at me, his dark eyes lit with burning rage. His chest moved rapidly, and I could see he was trying to calm himself down. “Ignore him.”
“It’s real fuckin’ hard, sweetheart.”
“I know, but he’s not worth it.” I placed my hands on either side of his face. “He’s never been worth it.”
Asher inhaled a deep breath, closed his eyes, then wrapped his arm around my shoulders and led me out of the room. It wasn’t until we were at the doors that I heard Belle say, “Oh, shit, Dad has gone over there.”
We all halted, our heads swiveling back to the front of the courtroom where Brody was standing in the middle of the tables talking to Mylee. We couldn’t hear what he was saying from here, but he smiled at her, nodded, then took a step away. At the last second, he darted to the side. His palms landed on the table Knox sat behind as he bent down, and my body jerked.
“What is he doing?” Leo asked.
“He’s making sure the dirty fucker doesn’t come anywhere near Elodie,” Lola answered, her voice neutral. Leo said something back to her, but I wasn’t paying attention because I was hyper focused on Brody. His lips moved rapidly, Knox’s face paled, and then his lawyer stood, but still Brody didn’t move. He stared him down, making sure he understood whatever he’d said, then stood, grinned, and walked toward us.
Brody winked at me as he got closer to us, and I remembered what he’d said to me the day after Asher’s court appearance. He’d told me I was part of this family, and I was guessing this is what he did to protect his family. He didn’t say a word to any of us as he walked out of the room, and everyone followed after him.
I couldn’t resist one final look at Knox. His head was down, his shoulders slumped. I’d finally done it. I’d finally confronted him. I’d faced the monster from my nightmares, but he didn’t look that scary anymore. And in that moment, I realized I wasn’t going to waste another second on him. I’d told Asher Knox wasn’t worth it, and it was the truth.
“Let’s go home,” I said to Asher, feeling like I could finally breathe again.
Epilogue
ELODIE
I stood at the side of the stage, nerves rolling through me as the song playing through the speakers reached its crescendo. Two minutes felt like both a lifetime and the snap of fingers when you were on the stage, dancing your heart out. I’d placed my feet in the same starting position over and over, but the way my stomach churned and excitement took over never changed. Each time my bare feet hit the bouncy floor, a rush like nothing else slammed through me, and today wasn’t any different.
The song ended and then it was time. Time to show the people watching what happened when you poured every single emotion you had into each movement of your body. Time to show them what losing yourself in dance was really like. The crashing beat of the music rang out and a smile drifted onto my face.
“She looks so much like you right now,” Asher whispered in my ear. “Look how much she’s concentrating.” He chuckled, his breath fanning over my neck as he placed a kiss there. “She even gets that little V between her eyes like you—”
“Shhh.” I tapped his arm but couldn’t help grinning as I watched my students on the stage. “She’s trying to do all of her extensions properly.” I lifted up onto my tiptoes at the same time as they did, trying to urge them as high as they cou
ld go.
Asher wrapped his arms around me from behind and I leaned back into his chest, relishing in the moment of happiness. He always held me in the exact same way, and it never failed to make me feel safe. Even after all this time, I still craved to be cocooned inside his arms. “Well, someone needs to tell her she’s only three and has tiny arms that can’t extend like the ten-year-old kids' can.”
I huffed out a breath. “Well, I’m not going to tell her.” I raised my brows and turned my head to face Asher. “Have you seen what she does when you tell her she can’t do something?”
“Erm, yeah, she likes to prove you wrong.” Asher pursed his lips “Kinda like her momma, huh?”
“Yeah, right. That’s the Easton genes through and through.”
He snorted. “I’m not gonna argue with that, sweetheart. The Easton women are a breed of their own.”
The music drifted down into a soft melody, the fall before the high at the end of the piece, and I pulled out of Asher’s hold. “Quick, get back out into the audience. If she looks out and you’re not there…” I didn’t need to say anything else because our daughter, Lilac, was a force to be reckoned with. She may have only been three years old, but she had every single member of the family wrapped around her tiny pinky finger, including her uncle Leo, her favorite. Leo and I had attended the same college, but when I’d left education, he’d continued on, deciding he wanted to get another degree before doing his master's.
Lilac had been a surprise to us the year I’d graduated from college with a major in dance and a minor in teaching, but it had been the best surprise we ever could have asked for. She was the light at the end of a dark tunnel we’d spent years wading through.
I’d thought Knox’s court case would have been a finality in my mind, but it wasn’t. There wasn’t one moment that could stop the way you felt. It took time to truly work through the darkness and pain I’d been dragged through. It didn’t matter than Knox was sentenced to prison time. It didn’t matter that Asher supported me every step of the way, because in the moments of despair, all I wanted was to hide away from the world.
Burned Duet: Asher & Elodie: Fast Burn & Deep Burn (Easton Family Duet Boxsets Book 4) Page 42