Getting Dirty

by Mia Storm

Blaire just told her it wasn’t true. If I say anything else before she has a chance to recant, I’m calling her out as a liar. But I’m not as convinced as Blaire that they’ll dismiss Dr. Duncan’s statement if we deny it. If I back Blaire’s lie and we’re discovered, it will look that much more sordid.

  “I’d like you to remember that you’re the adult in this scenario, Mr. Brenner,” she says, reading my hesitation. “Miss Leon is seventeen. I know in reality she’s not exactly a child, but in the eyes of the law, she needs to be protected if protection is in order. I just need to know she’s okay.”

  I can feel Blaire in the next room and I know she’s hanging on every word. If I don’t play along, she’s likely to burst out here and blow this whole thing up.

  “Blaire Leon is an incredible person. She’s passionate and talented and so full of spirit that sometimes I get lost in it. But Dr. Duncan was mistaken in what he thought he saw.”

  “So you’re saying you’ve never had sexual intercourse with Blaire Leon?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “Well, then, I’m sorry to have bothered you.” She stands. “I appreciate your time, Mr. Brenner.”

  I see her to the door.

  As she steps through, she pulls a card out of her bag. “Just in case you think of anything else.”

  I take it and close the door as she starts down the stairs. I watch through the peephole as she lays her hand on the hood of Blaire’s Mini, parked just outside, then glances back at my door.

  And I know I’m screwed.

  Blaire bounces out of the bedroom, all smiles. “It’s going to be okay.”

  I don’t contradict her, because the way her face looks right now, glowing and wide open, makes me feel so full inside I could live off of the sensation forever. I fold her tightly into my arms and kiss her forehead. “You need to go back to school.”

  Her fingers find the hem of my T-shirt and tug. “I had something else in mind.”

  I gently grasp her wrist and bring the backs of her fingers to my mouth, brushing her knuckles across my lips. “I’m already responsible for besmirching your honor. I’m not going to be responsible for your delinquency too.”

  She shakes her head as some of the glow vanishes from her face. “This is what they don’t see. If I’d made that proposition to any guy in my high school class, he’d be towing me out the door for a quickie in his car. But this is wrong,” she says with a wave of her hand between us. “Even though you actually give a shit about me.”

  I kiss her slowly then draw back. “I more than ‘give a shit’ about you, Blaire.”

  She sinks into my chest and I hold her for a long time. Finally, I pry her away. “You really need to go back to class.”

  Her fingertips find my face and she trails them over my jaw line. “I love you.”

  The unabashed love in her gaze stalls my heart and steals my breath. “Those words don’t feel like enough.”

  “Then I’ll think of better ones,” she says, stretching up and pressing her mouth to mine.

  Our bodies are better at conveying exactly how we feel and it’s minutes later we finally part.

  “You need to go now, before I change my mind,” I say.

  One of her perfect black brows arches and a wicked smile tugs at her mouth. “What if I want you to change your mind?”

  The thought that this might be my last chance to be with her hits me like a wrecking ball. The temptation to tow her into the bedroom and spend the rest of the day demonstrating just how much I love her is overpowering. I teeter on the precipice for a long moment before reaching for the door handle. I’d like you to remember that you’re the adult in this scenario, Mr. Brenner. Time to act like one. “Call me when you’re done at school.”

  She presses up onto her toes. “They’re not going to win,” she whispers, then kisses me. “They can’t keep us apart.”

  I pull open the door and she steps through, but when she glances back at me from her car, the same way Detective Diaz did, I know she’s wrong.

  Chapter 15

  Blaire

  Caiden says it too risky to see each other while we’re being investigated, and just yesterday, he told me we shouldn’t talk on the phone either. He’s shutting me out and I don’t know what to do about it.

  But I’ve done as he asks, because I’m starting to worry that I screwed this up. Gloria called me two days ago and said Detective Diaz was questioning people from Tino’s. I don’t think anyone there saw us doing anything but talking.

  I don’t think.

  But what if they did? I’ve played everything over in my head, and there was a kiss on the sidewalk someone might have seen.

  My window is open and the soft sun of an early-June morning slants across my bed. It feels good on my skin. I use the sensation to ground me in this moment and keep my thoughts from drifting.

  Everything is going to be fine. No one saw anything.

  Someone is knocking around in the kitchen and I know it has to be Mom. Dad is gone for the weekend to some convention in San Diego, and even though Marcus just got home from L.A. last night, there’s no way he’s up at nine on a Saturday morning.

  I’m hunched over my AP history book. With graduation only a few weeks away, most everyone in my class has checked out, including Zoey, even though she’s only a junior. Most teachers have given up and stopped assigning homework. But not mine. My acceptance to Berkeley is provisional. I can’t get a B in this class.

  The third time through the reading, it finally starts to make sense, words and paragraphs coming together in fully formed concepts that I can grasp, and when there’s a knock at my bedroom door, I realize that I’ve gone nearly a full hour without obsessing over Caiden.

  “Yeah?” I say.

  Mom cracks open my door. My senses go on high alert when I see her ashen complexion and the concern lining her face. “Blaire, honey, there’s someone here to speak to you. Can you come downstairs?”

  “Um…” I look down at my T-shirt. “Okay. Just give me a sec.”

  She nods and closes the door. I hear her feet on the stairs, then voices. She’s talking to a woman. How did I not hear the door?

  I go to the window and look out at the street. Parked behind my Mini at the curb is the black sedan I saw at the high school. The urge to climb out the window is overwhelming, but it’s a two-story drop with no handy trellis or tree. And disappearing will only make us look guiltier.

  I yank on the shorts from the floor near my bed and trudge downstairs. Detective Diaz is sitting on the sofa, sipping a cup of coffee.

  She sets her coffee down and stands when she sees me. “Blaire,” she says.

  Mom comes in from the kitchen and we all sit.

  “I may have overstepped,” Detective Diaz says. “I didn’t realize you hadn’t discussed your situation with Caiden Brenner with your family.”

  I shoot a panicked glance at Mom. She looks confused…or really more blindsided, but she won’t meet my eyes. “I told you, there is no ‘situation.’”

  She looks at me for a long moment, then turns to my mother. “I wonder if I can have a moment alone with Blaire.”

  Mom nods and rises from her seat. Finally her eyes find mine. “I’ll be in the bedroom…if you need me.”

  I almost laugh out loud at the notion of her “being there for me,” but something in her expression stops me. Under her shock is something deeper. Something maternal. I feel my heart bunch.

  She looks back from the door, once again relaying some message I’m not quite grasping with her eyes, then slips into her room.

  Once the door closes behind her, Detective Diaz reaches into her bag on the floor at her feet and pulls out an iPad. “I need you to see something.” She taps on it a few times then turns it for me to see. A supernova explodes in my chest as a video of me on the hood of the Mini plays. The clip is dark and grainy, but there’s no mistaking what Caiden is doing to me, his head between my legs and his fingers digging into my ass as I moan out
sounds that aren’t even human.

  Gloria said they were questioning people from Tino’s. But who would have seen this? Who would have recorded it?

  “Where did you get this?” I hear myself say.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says in the same calm voice that I’m just starting to realize is her way of lulling a person into a false sense of security. “I have no choice but to arrest him. I just wanted you to be prepared.”

  Panic kicks in my stomach. “I don’t want to press charges.”

  She shakes her head. “This is a criminal case, Blaire. It’s not up to you or me what happens to Caiden now.”

  “You can’t do this!” I bolt off the sofa. “I don’t want this!”

  “Blaire,” the detective says, holding up her hands to show she’s no threat. “I just need to know the truth so I can help you.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  Mom is back. “I think you should leave,” she says to Detective Diaz.

  “Your daughter wasn’t honest with me when I first asked her about Caiden Brenner,” she says. “I’m just trying to get to the truth.”

  Mom looks at me and now that the shock is wearing thinner, I can see the fierceness in her eyes. She turns her sharp gaze back to the detective. “The truth is, she doesn’t want to press charges. I don’t understand why she needs to be dragged through this.”

  “If she and Mr. Brenner had been up front about their relationship from the beginning, there’s a chance it wouldn’t have come to this.”

  I want to scream at her that we’re in love, but I know, in her eyes, that would only make me look more the naïve, manipulated little girl.

  Mom brushes past us to the door and opens it. “You need to go.”

  Detective Diaz splits a glance between us, then nods. “You may hear from the court or Mr. Brenner’s attorney, depending on how he pleads.”

  She holds out her hand but Mom doesn’t shake it. She takes the hint and turns for her car.

  There’s a long minute where Mom and I just stare at each other, before she closes the distance between us and pulls me into her arms. “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “What can I do?” she asks.

  I drop my head onto her shoulder, surprised at how much just this calms the storm in my mind. “I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do.”

  “About what?”

  We both turn toward Marcus’s voice on the stairs.

  He rubs the sleep out of his eyes as he reaches the bottom. “Who were you yelling at?”

  Mom looks at me and I nod. Marcus isn’t going to like this, but better he hears it from me.

  “I’ve been…seeing someone.”

  “And…?” he says, dropping into the sofa.

  I sit next to him and Mom takes the armchair. “He’s older.”

  Marcus’s face hardens. “How much older?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  His jaw flexes as his eyes flash. “What did he do?”

  I shake my head. “Nothing. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Did he touch you?” Marcus grinds out through clenched teeth.

  “I love him, Marcus.” I lay a hand on his arm. “He didn’t do anything to me that I didn’t ask him to.”

  “So, what’s happening? Who was here?”

  “He’s being arrested,” Mom chimes in.

  Marcus stands, then sits, then stands again. He looks at me and nods. “Good.” He paces to the kitchen, then back. “Good.”

  “It’s not good!” I stand and stare him in the eye. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  He laughs under his breath. “There’s something seriously sick about a twenty-fucking-five-year-old who thinks screwing around with a sixteen-year-old is okay.”

  “I’m seventeen,” I say, “and age doesn’t mean shit! You don’t get to choose who you love, Marcus!”

  He paces the room again, his hand fisted into his hair, then grabs his keys from the counter and storms out the front door.

  I stare after him until I hear the roar of his engine and the peal of tires out front.

  Mom has me in her arms again, and it feels both foreign and familiar. But I’m so thankful for at least one ally—in the place I least expected to find one—that I sink into her and let the tears I’ve been denying myself fall.

  But Detective Diaz’s words in my head stop me mid-sob. I have no choice but to arrest him.

  I tear out of Mom’s grasp and bolt up the stairs to my room. I grab my phone and dial. I’m afraid he’s not going to pick up. When he does, I let out the breath I was holding.

  Chapter 16

  Caiden

  “They’re coming for you, Caiden!”

  My heart turns to molten lead and sinks into the depths of hell at Blaire’s words through the phone.

  “It’s okay,” I say automatically. I’ve been preparing for this since Detective Diaz left here three days ago.

  “It’s not okay! You need to get away from here. Run!”

  I haul a deep breath and try to find myself inside my shell of a body. “I can’t run, Blaire.”

  “You have to. She said I can’t stop it…that it’s up to the courts now. She’s coming to arrest you.”

  In my alternate reality, I was supposed to be defending my dissertation tomorrow afternoon and waiting to hear if I’d landed the adjunct faculty gig. But that all changed in a heartbeat. I’m quite aware that the repercussions here are far greater than just the job I’m never going to get now. I’m royally and thoroughly fucked.

  I pinch the phone between my shoulder and ear and yank my jeans on. “I need you to listen to me, Blaire. You need to cooperate with the police.” I swallow. “And I need you to stop trying to contact me.”

  Not for me. I’m done caring about me. I’ve lost everything that matters—Blaire, my degree, my career, my self-respect. Blaire told me she loves me, but I’m not allowed to love her. I’m going down. There’s not much doubt there. I just want to keep Blaire as clear from the wreckage as possible.

  Chris is folding up the couch when I step into the living room. He gives me a nod and a grimace, and I know he’s heard my half of the conversation.

  I called him after Detective Diaz was here and told him everything. He’s been here every night since. It’s a nice gesture on his part, circling the wagons, but I really just needed to make sure he knows what needs to happen with rent and finances before this whole thing blows sky high and I’m not here to deal with it.

  “Caiden—” Her voice chokes off on a sob. “No.”

  “Listen, Blaire. Detective Diaz is right. There’s nothing either of us can do now to change whatever is going to happen, so stop trying to protect me.” I screw my eyes shut in a grimace as my next words burn on their way up my throat. “I made a mistake. This whole thing was a huge mistake.”

  There’s a long silence where all I hear is Blaire’s shaky breath. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I never should have touched you.” I swallow the pulsing lump in the back of my throat so she won’t hear it in my words. “I’m saying I wish I never did.”

  “You don’t mean that.” Her voice is low, and mixed into the pain I hear an undercurrent of anger.

  Good.

  I glance at Chris, but then away when it’s clear from his expression that hearing what I’m saying is almost as painful as saying it. “Christ, Blaire. Believe me, I do. I was stupid enough to let a firm ass and spectacular tits cloud my judgment.”

  “Jesus, Cade,” Chris hisses and the same time Blaire says, “I thought—”

  I cut them both off. “And it sure as hell didn’t help that you lied to me,” I tell her, hardening my wavering resolve.

  My phone vibrates and I look at the screen. Mom.

  When it rains, it fucking pours.

  “I’ve got another call,” I tell Blaire before she can offer up any argument. “Don’t call me again.”

  I click over and can’t dig a word out
of the black tar of my soul to answer. I drop onto the couch and wait.

  “Caiden?” Mom shrieks across the airwaves. “Are you there?”

  “Is everything okay?” I finally manage.

  “You tell me! The police were here earlier. They were asking questions about a seventeen-year-old girl they say you sodomized. They had video!”

  Video. I feel the molten tar solidify and crack as all my insides freeze solid.

  “What did you do!” she screeches.

  And here we go. This is all the proof she needs that I’m my father. “I made a mistake.”

  The truth is, maybe I’m more like him than I ever wanted to admit. He fucked a seventeen-year-old when he was forty. I’m twenty-five. A few years difference, but it’s all the same in the eyes of the law.

  “A mistake?” she shrieks. “That’s what you call it? You sodomized a baby, Caiden! I suppose you’re going to do what your father did and tell me it was her fault? That she seduced you? You were a helpless victim?”

  I close my eyes and loll my head onto the back of the sofa. “No, Mom. I’m no victim.”

  “Well, I told the detective who showed me the video that it looked pretty clear cut to me. I told her she should arrest you.”

  My heart lodges in my throat. I know it’s coming, but that’s still my body’s reaction anytime I think about it. “I think they were planning on it without your endorsement, but thanks for the support, Mom. I really appreciate it.”

  There’s a pound on my door. Mom is still shrieking through the airwaves as Chris goes to answer it. I put the phone down and tug on a T-shirt, then pick it up when, on the other side of the door is Detective Diaz along with one of East Overton’s finest. The uniformed cop has his hand on the butt of his sidearm.

  “Mom, I’ve got to go,” I say.

  Detective Diaz steps past Chris, a pair of handcuffs in her hand. “You’ll need to end your call, Mr. Brenner.”

  “Is that them?” Mom asks. “Are they arresting you?”

  Chris takes the phone from my hand. “Mom?” he asks.

  He’s listening the entire time it takes Detective Diaz to cuff me. Finally, as I’m being led out the door, he says, “You need to get over yourself Mom,” and hangs up. “What do you need me to do?” he calls to me over Detective Diaz, who’s reading my rights as I’m being led down the stairs.