“The one with the purple hair and the big— aah, mmm.” Levi swallowed his words when Mercedes glared and shoved her elbow into his ribs, hard enough to bruise, which made him moan.
“The big fucking tits.” Pax grinned and gestured with his hands in front of his chest. “Wyatt, man, you wouldn’t even know what to do with titties like those. When we get back I’ll have to show you—”
“Thank you, gentleman.” Chris held out a hand to interrupt, and rolled his eyes. “We get the idea. A good idea, actually.”
He turned to the director, who didn’t seem the least put off by our exchange. In fact, she was smirking a bit at our excitement.
She knew she had us.
“Can we work in roller derby instead of synchronized swimming?” Chris wanted to know. And the director looked like a cat with a fresh bowl of cream.
“Hell yeah. Who doesn’t love a derby girl?”
Chapter Four
ADELE
“You sure about this?” Officer Jeremy—I couldn’t seem to drop his title, not even in my mind—gave me a sidelong glance as I slammed the car door shut behind me. Once, I would have freaked right the hell out, ride shotgun in a cop car—screw the establishment, and all that. But today I’d needed support and, though I loved them both, that support couldn’t come from Mal or Dorian.
They would both take over for me in that alpha male way that they had... and I’d let them, because inside I was scared shitless. But when I’d called up Officer—okay, by this point I was pretty sure I could just call him Jeremy—he’d surprised me.
“I’ll take you to the prison.” His voice had been thoughtful. “But I don’t t think I should go in the visiting room with you.”
“Oh.” I’d had to remind myself that this was what I wanted—to do this all by myself. But part of me had realized then that what I’d really wanted was to do this free of Dorian and Mal... entirely by myself. To prove to myself that I was still as strong as I’d been before them.
“Adele?” Belatedly I realized that Jeremy had asked me a question. He repeated it, and a rush of uncertainty hit me.
I didn’t have to do this. I knew that. Yet, in some way, I did. I had to go face down my demons and hope that they would burn to ash when exposed to the light.
“Yes.” I finally said, stretching the word out to several syllables. “Yes, yes, I do.”
It helped that he was here. Without his rigid, law enforcement style support in the driver’s seat, I might have turned and fled at the barbed wire gate that surrounded the facility. But while I fought my way past the bitter cold of fear that had seeped into my very bones, he had shown his badge to the guard at the gate, had gotten us all the way to the building that housed my tormentors.
“Adele. I’m serious. You’ll have to face them in court. You don’t need to put yourself through this an extra time.”
I didn’t reply, but my face must have shown my determination, because finally Jeremy sighed and nodded, gesturing me ahead of him to the grey steel door marked “Visitor Entrance”.
We were greeted just inside the entrance by a young male officer. Athletic looking, with buzz cut blonde hair, he so strongly personified the type of boy who had assaulted me—that boy next door, golden boy kind of look—that I felt myself start to tremble violently.
“Welcome to Westrock Medium Security Facility.” I felt the officer’s eyes look me up and down, and though I’d dressed for the occasion in jeans that didn’t hug my figure at all, and a turtleneck underneath a cardigan, I still felt naked under his stare. I thought I might have been imagining it, until I felt Jeremy straighten at my side.
“Watch where those eyes land, kid.” His warning might have made me laugh, because he quite clearly only had a handful of years on the young officer, but I appreciated the protectiveness.
The officer’s face contorted and he opened his mouth to reply, but Jeremy pulled out his badge. “Save it.”
The young officer, whose name badge read “Watts”, glared but gestured us down the hall with a jerk of his head. I exhaled a breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding as I followed the two men down the narrow, dim hall.
Tension seemed to ooze from the bubbles in the concrete wall, as if one hasty breath might make the entire facility explode.
“This here is the security checkpoint.” Watts slapped a hand against the door, making me jump. It lit a spark in the cold of my fear as I glared at him, but Jeremy’s warning seemed to have done some good... Watts wouldn’t even look my direction.
Why was I okay with this protectiveness from Jeremy and not from either of my guys? Well, I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure.
But at the end of the day? Jeremy was a good guy... but he was still just the officer who’d worked my case. An authority figure. Not a real part of my life.
Mal and Dorian? They were the loves of my life. I was now beginning to suspect that, despite what I’d thought as recently as pulling through the gates to this prison, this had little to do with me needing to prove to them that I was strong and capable, that I didn’t need their overprotective, alpha male ways. Because honestly, right this second I have done just about anything to be wrapped in a hard double hug.
No, it was about taking a stand for me. If I was honest, I’d survived during the two years that Mal had come back into my life, and I’d met Dorian... but I hadn’t really lived. Not the way I had before the assault.
That carefree girl was gone, murdered by the boys who’d forced themselves on me that night. Dorian and Mal had wakened some of that wild spirit once more, but the rest?
The rest was on me. I needed to look them in the eye and tell them that they hadn’t broken me, and only then would I be able to move on. To fully open myself to the miracle that was Mal and Dorian.
A sidelong glance at Jeremy told me he knew this—that I certainly didn’t have to do this, but that if I was going to, I had to do it myself. Maybe he’d learned it in the first few years he’d been on the job, maybe it was something anyone with half a brain could see. Either way, he was right, and so when he patted me on the shoulder and told me he’d be right outside in the car, I dug down deep into my core for the strength I needed and stepped through the door.
“Got a visitor for Number 04322.” Watts nodded at the woman who greeted us in the security check in. Good intentions aside, my anxiety ratcheted up a notch when I looked past her to see cubicles marked for men and women.
“Place your cell phone, purse and shoes in a bin.” The woman, whose name tag read “Wilson”, gestured at Watts to go. He cast me an unreadable expression before he left.
Wilson stood, waiting with an equally blank expression. Between her and Watts, I was wondering if this place stole emotions, sucking them from your lips like Harry Potter’s Dementors.
A quick glance around the room noted three security cameras and a set of lockers. Nothing like Hogwarts at all.
“You’re gonna need to hide those nerves if you want to go in there.” Wilson’s voice was quiet, yet seemed to echo in the silence of the room as I swung my gaze back to her face. It was still mostly blank, but I thought I caught a flicker of something that could have been emotion passing over it.
But I might have imagined it. The words, too, as she snapped latex gloves onto her hands briskly and gestured for me to stand back.
“Your bag, phone and shoes will remain here in a locker while you’re inside.” Inside. The belly of the beast. “They will be returned to you when you leave. Now I’ll need you to strip.”
Strip. Right. Jeremy had warned me about this—and he’d blushed while he’d done it, seeming so very young and innocent, despite his job. I’d been prepared.
But the word seemed to tease something out of the depths of my memory, a silvery tendril too wispy to grab hold of, yet that regardless buckled my knees with its accompanying punch of panic and pain.
“Strip her down. Prop the camera on that shelf.”
“No!” I panted through the c
ramps that suddenly clamped steel belts over my belly. I double over, arms wrapped around myself, and heard Wilson’s shout.
“I’m going to need you to straighten up, miss.” I saw her feet in their work boots, planted in front of me. I tried to unfurl, bringing my gaze up to her waist, where her hand rested on the taser that was strapped to her belt.
The shock of that had me swinging my wide eyed stare back to her face.
“Are you all right, miss?” Her words were tense, and as I nodded and looked back down at the taser, I saw her nod, answering my unasked question.
“Didn’t mean to scare you. But people will use all kinds of stunts to try to sneak stuff in for the inmates.” Her hand dropped from the weapon as I goggled at her, and to my surprise, she barked out a short laugh, gesturing to my turtleneck.
“You don’t look like the type, granted. But that doesn’t mean much, these days.” She stepped back, giving me some room to breathe as I straightened back up. The sight of her hand on the taser had shocked the wisp of panic-inducing memory back into submission. “Now I really do need you to undress. I know it seems invasive, but any contact with the inmates means we have to make absolute sure that no one is bringing in any contraband.”
“Right.” Swallowing thickly, I began to unbutton my cardigan. As I slowly peeled the clothes from my body and handed them to her, piece by piece, I shivered a bit in the aftermath of that memory.
Perhaps it was just as well that they did these checks. Otherwise I might have been tempted to smuggle in something with which to castrate whichever of these bastards I was going to get to see today.
I saw Wilson eyeing my tattoos, but she didn’t comment. Strangely, after she shook out each piece of my clothing, inspecting it thoroughly for contraband before handing it back, I found some sense of calm.
This woman didn’t care who I was, or why I was here. With Jeremy waiting outside, there were no expectations here. I could be who I was, feel whatever I needed to feel. There was more strength in that than I could have guessed, as though Wilson had shaken the insecurity off of my clothes as she inspected them.
Redressed, waiting for her to guide me into the visiting room beyond, I felt a blissful blankness settle over me. Whatever was going to happen in here... it couldn’t possibly be worse than what I’d already lived through.
“As you have requested, this is an open visit. Sit down at the table. Keep your feet on the floor and your hands where they can be seen. A guard will bring in the prisoner. You have twenty minutes. At the end of the visit, you are permitted brief physical contact, such as a hug. Do not attempt to touch the prisoner before the guard tells you to.”
“I don’t want to touch him.” Anger, blue like the very centre of a flame, cracked through me, surprising me with its heat. Wilson looked at me, seeming startled by the vehemence in my voice.
The calm swallowed it down, and I regarded her with a look that probably appeared as blank as I felt again. “I don’t want to touch him.”
Wilson shrugged. “Your choice, honey.”
Then she opened yet another door, revealing an empty room filled with cheap looking plastic tables and chairs. At Wilson’s nod, I sat down and noted that all of the above were securely bolted to the floor.
The blankness turned to cold as it hit me that I was really, really about to do this. I was about to see one of the men who had tried so hard to ruin my life.
“Inmate walking.” Wilson barked out after a buzzer sounded. From behind me I heard the electronic hiss of a door opening, felt the air change because I was no longer alone.
Expectation filled me until I was a balloon ready to burst, but I didn’t turn my head. Didn’t look around, I didn’t know why, I just didn’t want to.
“Sit down, college boy.” This was a new officer, Hanson. A massive man with skin the color of coal and a scowl etched across his mouth, he nudged the person I hadn’t yet looked at into the chair. Lowering my eyes to the tabletop, I waited as he arranged himself across from me, seeming so very large in this small room.
“Twenty minutes.” I heard Wilson open the door through which I’d entered. Then I was left with the massive guard and my attacker, but I might as well have been alone with the latter, because the guard stepped back and did his best to blend in with the wall.
Finally, finally I lifted my head and looked at one of the two boys who had sent my life careening so wildly off course.
Bright blue eyes, seemingly innocent eyes, met my own. Surrounded by thick dark lashes, for a long moment I couldn’t look past these eyes.
Eyes are the windows to the soul... ever heard that one?
Yeah. I called bullshit.
Forcing myself to move on, I looked him up and down, taking in the navy scrub style pants and the matching T-shirt. On one side of the chest was stenciled the institution name, his inmate number... and his last name.
Funny, how I’d blocked that out, though I’d thought that pulling up his Facebook page on the advice of a professor and seeing those pictures would have burned his name into my memory forever.
Vanderlee.
As in, Emmett Vanderlee.
A boy I didn’t know... and who I still didn’t know.
Yet he’d changed my life, completely and irrevocably.
I sat there, unable to move as I took him in, that big, athletic frame, the face that was clean shaven even in prison, the strong jawline, the good looking features. The neatly cut chestnut hair.
As I looked, I was struck by how absolutely unremarkable he was. Just another good looking frat boy. One I probably would have passed by on the street without more than a fleeting glance of admiration, but who had caught my eye when I’d been drunk and heartsick over Mal.
In that moment I couldn’t pull up the name of his cohort, or even picture his face. But I didn’t need to... this was enough.
Emmett slumped back in his chair, ran a hand through his hair in a visible show of nonchalance, eyeing me warily. I eyed him right back, sitting still as a stone and refusing to speak first.
“Are you going to talk or not?” His voice with its defiant tone surprised me, even though it matched what he looked like. Still, it was a shock to listen to the properly annunciated words, with the tone of defiance... a reminder that this wasn’t a man who’d been in dire straits when he’d assaulted me. No, this was an educated boy who’d had the world at his feet, until he’d pounded a couple of beers with his frat brothers and decided to use the roofie that he’d had stashed in his room. Or maybe it hadn’t been a roofie... maybe I’d just been that drunk.
Either way, I hadn’t asked for it, and I hadn’t consented, and I sure hadn’t asked for pictures to be posted online for our entire school to see.
As I continued to regard him, I noticed him shift in his seat. Squinting at him, I realized something...
I was making him uncomfortable.
Me, being here was making him squirm.
That small little thing was enough to have me doing a mental fist pump in the air.
Still, I wasn’t prepared for him to sigh and, sitting up straight, look me directly in the eye. “Look. Just say your piece. Get it out of your system. And just go.”
“Get it out of my system?” Blinking, I let the words sink in, rolled them over in my mouth to see how they tasted.
They tasted like my own rage. A rage so potent, that stuffed me so full, that it held me immobile.
“You want me to yell at you?” I said slowly, savoring his minute flinch. Oh, yes, he did. “You want me to yell and scream and cry so that you can move on? So you can tell yourself that I’ve forgiven you and have moved on with my life?”
Emmett stared, and anger simmered in the depths of the blue. I’d hit a nerve.
It felt good. I hadn’t known what I’d been expecting, exactly... maybe a smirking asshole, maybe a psychotic maniac masquerading as a student. But instead he was just an average guy, one who, if I was guessing right, had his moral compass skewed by privilege and overindulg
ent parents.
I wondered if his partner in crime was the same way.
I would probably never know, and I really didn’t care.
“Yes.” He said firmly, planting his hands on the cheap table, as if trying to take control of the situation. “Go ahead, spit it out. I deserve it.”
I drew myself up in my chair, straight as an arrow.
“I’m not going to make it that easy for you.” The words tumbled from my mouth, and I didn’t know where they came from, but I couldn’t have stopped them. “You didn’t step on my toe or break my favorite toy. You can’t just say sorry and make it go away.”
“But I am sorry,” he said quickly—too quickly for me to believe him. His face was the very picture of earnestness, but I was reminded of a cheating boyfriend I’d once had.
The boyfriend had been willing to say or do anything to make me forgive him his indiscretions. But in the end, he’d go right back out and do it again.
“If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have done it again.” My words struck home—he flinched. “And I’ll bet you’ve done it to more than just me.”
“You don’t know anything.” He looked like a petulant toddler as he cheeks reddened. “All I’m guilty of is posting those pictures.”
“Don’t!” That was enough. Moving quickly to stand, I saw the guard shift position, but when I did nothing else, he stayed put. “We both know that’s bullshit, and I don’t want to hear your excuses. Nor am I going to scream at you. What I want is for you to shut the hell up and let me talk.”
To my surprise, he did, though the smirk on his face told me he thought he was getting his way—that I was going to let him have it.
Up until that moment, I’d thought I might, too. But it turned out that that wasn’t what I needed at all.
“I forgive you.” I deliberately didn’t use his name, making him as anonymous as I had been to him during that drunken encounter. “And I forgive your friend.”
I was pleased when he just started at me, completely taken aback. “Why?”
Grimly, I smiled to myself, thinking that that was as much of an admission of guilt as I was likely to ever get.
Kiss Me Twice Part 2 (Three Little Words) Page 4