by Mia Storm
Chapter 27
Marcus
Addie’s gone. I waited for a week to hear from her, and when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I went to her school to find her. Waited at the front door before school and the back door after. Finally I asked around and found someone who told me she’d moved.
Christmas came and went. Blaire didn’t come home, so I hardly noticed. I feel like my whole life is on hold waiting for this stupid trial, but I honestly don’t care anymore.
My nerves are so shot that a knock on the apartment door makes me jump. Bran’s at work and I’ve been living the hermit’s life, trying to stay out of the public eye.
When I crack the door open, Detective Diaz is standing on my stoop.
“Can I come in?” she asks.
“That depends,” I say, unable to keep the bite out of my voice. “Do you come bearing food, because I don’t get out much lest I look at a sixteen-year-old and get more bogus charges thrown at me.”
“I know this has been an ordeal, and though I don’t come bearing food, you’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
I step back and open the door wider.
She moves past me. “Mind if I sit?”
“You seem to do what you want no matter what I say, so I doubt I can stop you,” I say, closing the door and following her.
She sits on one end of the couch and I take the other. “We’ve withdrawn the charges, Marcus.”
All the blood drains from my head and I see stars. “What?”
“There were enough inconsistencies between Corinne Pratt’s and Deanna Robinson’s stories that I’ve decided her account isn’t credible enough pursue. I took my concerns to the DA and he agreed that, because our case was all circumstantial, without any physical evidence to support their claims, he wouldn’t be able to get the conviction. You’ll hear from your public defender soon with the good news, I’m sure, but I wanted to tell you myself.”
I let out the breath I was holding in concentration, trying to understand exactly what she’s saying. “So, Corinne and Deanna’s stories don’t match, so you have to let me go?”
She nods. “That’s basically it in a nutshell.”
I bark out a laugh at the irony. Deanna was so hell bent on hurting me that she saved me instead.
“So, that’s it?” I ask.
“That’s it.” Her lips purse. “But I will say this. I had two alleged victims, a witness, and a perpetrator, and I don’t believe I got the truth from any of the four of you. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Addaline Grace, Marcus, but tread lightly.”
I stand and start toward the door, hoping we’re done. When she stands and follows, I breathe a sigh of relief.
“By the way, I saw the DA is pressing charges against Nathan Collins. It took a lot of courage for your sister to come forward like that. How is she doing?”
I yank the door open. “She’s doing great thanks to the guy you sent to jail for statutory rape against her. Remember him? Her husband, Caiden Brenner? He’s the reason she came forward. He’s the one who’s put her back together.”
Her gaze is unwavering. “My job, Mr. Leon, is to protect the innocent from sexual predators. A twenty-five-year-old man caught having sexual intercourse in a public library with a seventeen-year-old will always be a sexual predator in my eyes. In Blaire’s case, I’m very glad everything’s worked out, but that’s not the norm.”
“Yep,” I say with a sharp nod. “It did. But it was a long road after she was raped. Might not have happened if you hadn’t sent the guy who would have protected her to jail.”
“That’s hardly fair,” she says, all righteous indignation. “We do the best we can, and most of the time it’s the bad guy who goes to jail, not the good one.”
“All I’m saying is that one-size-fits-all justice doesn’t work. No one asked Blaire if she wanted to press charges.”
“It was a criminal case. Not her call.”
“Well, it was the wrong call, whoever made it,” I counter.
“We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this, Marcus,” she says, passing through the door. “But tell your sister I say hello next time you talk to her.”
I close the door behind her without responding, then drop onto the couch and hold my head. Because the only person I want to tell about this is the one person I can’t find.
I know I’m taking my life into my hands going to Blaire’s on New Year’s Eve. Any normal day her neighborhood is dangerous enough. But as I dodge drunks and crackheads on my way to the door, I wonder again how they’ve been in this apartment for three years and lived to tell about it.
When Blaire invited me for New Year’s Eve, I told her no. I’m totally not up for a party. But, as usual, I’m putty in my sister’s hands, so, against my better judgment, here I am.
I press the buzzer and Blaire rings me up. I take the stairs two at a time and knock on their second story door.
When it swings open, the doorway is empty and the room is dimly lit with candles.
“What’s going on?” I say, stepping through.
The door closes behind me and when I turn, what I see steals my breath.
“Hi,” Addie says, stepping toward me.
For several beats of my racing heart, all I can do is stare.
An unsure squint pulls at her face. “Marcus?” she asks, the waver of nerves clear in her voice.
I stride toward her and pull her against me. “Jesus fucking Christ.” I bury my face in the crown of her hair and fight the press of tears behind my eyes. “I didn’t know if I was going to see you again.”
Her breath comes out shaky with her own tears. “I couldn’t be the reason they sent you to jail.”
“It’s over,” I say, crushing her so tightly against me I feel her ribs pop.
“Not yet. I’m not eighteen,” she says, her arms crushing me just as hard.
I can’t stop the laugh. “I think we can dodge the law for six days.”
She looks up at me, her eyes all concern. “What about your job?”
“That’s not going to be an issue.”
“What do you mean?”
“The day after the charges were dropped, the school board went all vigilante on my ass and canned me.”
She shoves back from me, all righteous indignation, and it makes me smile to see her fire isn’t extinguished. “That’s bullshit!”
“Is it?” I say, raising my eyebrows at her. “I did have inappropriate contact with a student.”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong. I wanted you to have inappropriate contact with me.”
“It’s really okay,” I reassure her. “This way it’s quiet. I can’t use them as a reference, but I can still apply for teaching jobs. So, really, the only obstacle left is your father.”
Her eyes widen, but then she takes a deep breath and all her nerves seem to still. “He just asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I know the answer.”
I grin. “You sure you don’t want to go for the car?”
She gives me a scheming smile and tugs me back to her by my jacket. “What can a car do for me that you can’t?”
“Hmm,” I say, pulling her to the couch. “In order to answer that, I’d first have to know all the things I can do for you.”
I strip off my jacket and hoodie, then stretch on the couch and pull her to me. She fits perfectly into all the curves and valleys of my body and I just lay here, soaking her up.
She kisses my neck and wriggles her body so there’s no part of me that’s not in contact with her. “A car could bring me home,” she says, looking into my eyes, “but a car could never be home.”
We sink into each other and as the clothes come off and our bodies take over, I know she’s right. No matter where I am with Addie. I’m home.
Epilogue
Addie
I run to the door when I hear the rumble of Marcus’s truck, and when I yank it open, he’s just climbing out. The cold April thunder squall has passed, but the pa
vement is still wet and the sky is gray.
But nothing can darken my mood.
Marcus called Tuesday to tell me he scored a teaching job for next fall. It’s just up the road from here in Pleasanton, and they also need a boys’ swim coach. What he doesn’t know is that we have more to celebrate. I haven’t even told Dad my news yet. I want them to hear it together…maybe give them something to bond over.
I go to him and he folds me into his arms. “Hey. I’ve missed you.”
He smiles, but before he kisses me, he glances at the apartment to be sure we don’t have an audience. “So, I was thinking about this Chinese place in Berkeley that serves eel for our celebratory dinner.”
“Eel,” I say, my face scrunching.
He tips his head at me. “Or we could go for crabmeat pizza. I saw a place in Palo Alto that serves it.”
“Not every meal has to be a bucket list food,” I say.
“So, what do you want, then?”
I shrug. “Italian, maybe?”
He nods and starts guiding me back to the door I left hanging open. “That works. And then we can go for wheatgrass smoothies after. Brenda’s been telling me I need one.”
I roll my eyes. “Whatever. It’s your party.”
I feel him stall as we step through the door and he sees Dad on the couch, but then he moves into the room behind me. Becky stands from where she was sitting and pulls him into a hug. “It’s sort of silly that we both have to drive all the way to San Jose to see each other,” she says when she pulls away.
She’s been here more and more over the last few months, always just stopping by when she’s in town on a “business call,” but I hear her and Dad talking, and when she was here last week and they said we were going out for dinner, I pretended not to be feeling good and stayed home.
I still don’t know how I feel about what happened with them, but something has shifted for the better in Dad over the last months. He’s more himself than I’ve seen him since our trip to Europe. Some of it is our family counseling sessions. We’ve worked out a lot of our guilt issues, each shouldering our share, but also realizing part of the blame lies with Mom. But I also think his change is because of Becky.
“We’ll have to get a burger at Sam Hill sometime,” Marcus tells her.
“We’re going out for Italian. You guys want to come?” I ask.
“Tony’s?” Dad asks, and I nod. Exactly the reason I chose Italian. He can’t resist Tony’s lasagna.
He splits a glance between me and Marcus. He’s still not okay with us, but Becky has managed to talk him down, so now he tolerates Marcus’s visits.
“Lasagna sounds perfect on such a damp day, Bruce,” Becky says. “Don’t you think?”
He nods and gains his feet. “I’ll drive.”
When we get to Tony’s, there are people milling around the sidewalk waiting to be seated. We walk in and the owner, Tony, a man so immense I’d totally believe he is as wide as he is tall, gives Dad a clap on the back. “How many of you?” he asks, looking over our group.
“Four,” Dad answers.
“Got just the thing,” he says, grabbing menus and leading us to a table near the window that the busboy has just finished setting up. The perks of being regulars.
“Thanks, Tony,” Dad says, pulling a chair out for Becky.
Tony cuffs him on the shoulder. “What? I make my oldest customers wait?”
We order drinks and Becky and Marcus open their menus. Dad and I just smile at each other, already knowing what we want.
Once our drinks come and we’ve ordered, I take a deep breath. “So you know we’re celebrating Marcus’s new job, but I also have some news.”
Marcus’s eye widen expectantly.
“Yes…?” Dad says, much more warily.
I look at him and realize from the look on his face that his trepidation is because he thinks I’m pregnant or something.
“It’s good,” I say, holding up my hands. “Or really, amazing.”
“Go on,” Becky says.
“You know I applied for pretty much every scholarship I could find,” I say.
Becky and Marcus nod, but Dad’s face pulls into a chagrinned grimace. I know he feels guilty about not being able to help with college.
I’m sort of bouncing in my chair as I continue, unable to contain my excitement. “I was thinking that I might get enough to afford JC, but my counselor called me into the office today and told me I scored the Harmon Grant.”
“What’s the Harmon Grant?” Marcus asks.
“I guess Ramsey Harmon was this really rich alum who left his money as an endowment for Roosevelt High when he died. One senior every year gets a full ride to the college of their choice.”
“You got a full scholarship?” Becky asks, rising from her chair and hugging me. “Oh my God! That’s incredible, Addie!”
“Thanks!” The possibilities are still whirring through my mind, but I’ve gotten in to every four-year school I’ve applied to, so now I can actually go to one of them.
Marcus takes my hand under the table when Becky lets me go. “Congrats”
I smile at him and squeeze his hand, because I won’t be living at home next year after all. I tingle with the thought of having more freedom to be with him.
When I glance at Dad, he’s got his elbows on the table and his fingers tented in front of his nose, partially hiding his quivering lips. But there’s the definite gleam of moisture in his eyes.
“I’m so freaking proud of you, Addie. I hate that I put us in a position that meant you were going to have to compromise.” A sad smile ghosts over his face. “But leave it to you to dig yourself out of the hole I put us in.”
I scrape back my chair and hug him. “We’re going to be fine, Dad.”
I’ve always thought that line was a cop out. Meaningless words to be said when there was nothing else to say. But as they leave my mouth, for the first time in a long time, I realize I actually believe them.
I slip into my seat and look between he and Becky as they smile at each other. “So the only other thing that would make this night better is if you two had some news to share.”
Both of their gazes snap to me.
“Go ahead,” I say. “I’m ready.”
Becky tips her head at me as Dad leans back in his chair, his gaze searching my face. It’s clear from their expressions, shocked and a little chagrinned, that they both understand I’m referring to their affair.
“How much do you know?” Dad asks after a beat.
“I know about then,” I say, my heart aching, but in a whole different way than it has since Mom died. “Tell me about now.”
Acknowledgements
I was terrified to write these books. I was even more terrified the day the first book in the series, Getting Dirty, published. All I can say is I’ve got the best readers in the world! Thanks to every one of you who picked up either of the Jail Bait novels and gave them a try. I truly appreciate you spending your valuable time with Marcus and Addie. That includes the many bloggers and authors who helped spread the word. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I only found the courage to write these books because of Katy Evans’ encouragement and support. Thank you, my lovely. Thanks also to the ladies at New Leaf Literary, who have come to my rescue and made this into the book I thought I wrote. Suzie Townsend’s incredible eye for the gem buried in the rubble has been a Godsend these many years, and Danielle Barthel’s eye for my many booboos as made my work readable. Thanks also to Danielle Sanchez and K.P. Simmon at Inkslinger for all their encouragement and endless hours of support. And, always, thank you to my family for…everything. I love you.
About the Author
Mia Storm is a hopeless romantic who is always searching for her happy ending. Sometimes she’s forced to make one up. When that happens, she’s thrilled to be able to share those stories with her readers. She lives in California and spends much of her time in the sun with a book in one hand and a mug of black
coffee in the other, or hiking the trails in Yosemite.
Connect with her online at MiaStormAuthor.blogspot.com, on Twitter at @MiaStormAuthor, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MiaStormAuthor.