Beautifully Tainted

by A. M. Guilliams

  He was staring at me like he was studying me when I pulled back. I fidgeted with my fingers and looked down at the ground. Where did we go from here? It was a good thing that he spoke first because I didn’t know what to say.

  “If you’re sure you’re okay, I’m going to head out now, sweetheart.”

  “Sure. I had fun today. Sorry about the freak out session.” I was trying to make things comfortable again, but I didn’t know if I was succeeding.

  I walked him to the door and held it open while he made his way outside. He turned when he stepped onto the porch.

  “I had a great time today too. We should do it again soon.”

  “That’d be good. Just let me know when you want to get together and I can try to squeeze you into my schedule,” I laughed.

  “You better do more than try, sweetheart.”

  He leaned in towards me and brushed the hair off of my face as his fingers grazed my cheek. I leaned into his touch, forgetting about my friend zone rule for a moment.

  I looked back up at him and he had this sly grin on his face. He leaned his face in towards mine and I thought he might kiss me on the lips, but he kissed my cheek instead. I didn’t know if I felt relief or disappointment.

  He whispered into my ear, “Sweet dreams,” and turned and walked towards his truck.

  Once the door was shut, I locked it and leaned up against it with my eyes closed. He was going to be trouble. I could sense it. I didn’t need his brand of trouble though. Keeping people at arm’s length was going to continue in order to keep everyone safe, even if I had to push him away. Everyone’s safety meant more to me than anything else.

  Chapter 9: Case Closed

  Matt

  The past two weeks have been very demanding and trying work wise. If we don’t catch this asshole soon, I might just lose my mind. I want justice for Mia badly. I can’t stand when a man puts his hands on a woman. It’s a good thing the contacts we have in place have finally given us a lead that panned out. All of the others were good, but once we went searching for him, he just disappeared. We’ve finally got him trapped and with nowhere else to run according to the officers that have his whereabouts surrounded.

  Mason and I were almost there and I couldn’t wait to have this guy in the interrogation room. I wanted to know what he had to say for himself.

  We arrived on the scene with Baxter being led to the back of one of the other officers’ patrol cars. It was finally over. Mia would receive her justice. We had him dead to rights on this assault. Neighbors had been interviewed and stated that they had seen Baxter entering and leaving the home at the time of the assault. The neighbors were willing to testify, which made this even better. I would love to see how his daddy tried to get him out of this one. I couldn’t wait to interrogate him.

  Mason and I questioned the other officers about the arrest and went to head back to the station to complete his questioning. I know they say that people are innocent until proven guilty, but screw that. He was guilty, and he knew it. If he weren’t, he wouldn’t have run from the police for so long.

  We arrived and he was already in the interrogation room one. I took a few deep breaths to regain my control of the situation. I didn’t need to lose it. I wasn’t about to give him an ounce of something that could allow the charges to be dropped. I could do this.

  Before Mason and I entered the interrogation room, we decided to go with a good cop/bad cop routine in the questioning. I wanted him to crack under pressure.

  We entered the room and Mason sat down at the table, while I remained standing by the door. We both stared at Baxter as a scare tactic. It didn’t seem to work though. This kid was tough as nails. I knew that he thought he would probably get away with it because of who his father was, but daddy couldn’t save him from this one. He was eighteen now and in the eyes of the court, an adult. Daddy’s power and money were not going to get him off scot free if I had anything to say about it. We reminded him of his right to have a lawyer present and he declined the offer. We hit the record button on the video camera and began our interrogation.

  “Mr. Baxter, do you know why you were arrested today?” Mason asked. We wanted to see what he had to say for himself and go from there.

  “Hell no, I don’t. They said I roughed up some girl, but I didn’t touch her,” he countered. We all knew better, but I wanted him to dig his own grave.

  “Are you sure about that? We have witnesses who can place you at the scene and a statement from the victim. Speaking of which, how do you know Mia Castle?” I asked. With that question, his head jumped up to look right at me. The anger in his eyes spoke for itself. There was something that he was not saying, but we would get it out of him. It was only a matter of time before he confessed.

  “She was my girlfriend, but we broke up. That’s all though. I never touched her. If she’s saying I did, then she’s fucking lying,” he replied. Now we were getting somewhere because Mason and I was about to rip his world apart.

  I left the room and returned with the file that we had compiled with Mia’s case. If he wanted to play hardball, then I was going to play it, as well. I took out the photos that were taken of Mia’s injuries and tossed them across the table. He wouldn’t even look at them. He just pushed them back across the table.

  “What’s the matter? You can’t look at what you did to that young woman. Why’s that?” I asked. I was getting more and more aggravated that this punk kid didn’t even care about what he’d done.

  I pushed the photos back across the table and walked around to where he was sitting. I sat down on the table beside his chair and demanded that he look at the photos. “I want you to take a good long look at what you’ve done. Look at Mia and how broken she is in those photos. If you did care about her, then you had a funny way of showing it. What would make you do that to her?”

  “Fuck you man. I already told you that I didn’t fucking touch her,” he spit back at me. People who got defensive were nine times out of ten guilty in my experience and he was getting more and more defensive by the minute.

  “All right, just calm down,” Mason demanded. “You said that you and Mia had broken up. When did the breakup take place?”

  “Two weeks before someone beat her up. I hadn’t seen her since.” Baxter replied.

  “What was the reason for the breakup?” Mason asked. He was good at playing the good cop. I loved playing the bad cop though. I was just waiting for my time to pounce.

  “We just weren’t working out. We both wanted different things.”

  “I need you to be more specific. You want us to believe that you didn’t do this, but I need specifics so that we can build on our timeline here. I need to know the exact reason for the break up and I also need to know where you were the night of the attack,” Mason responded.

  He was fidgeting with his hands and looking anywhere but at Mason or me. He must not want to go over the details of the breakup. After a few minutes, he looked up at Mason and began to speak.

  “It’s kind of embarrassing. We broke up because I was ready to take the relationship further and she wasn’t. As for my whereabouts for the night Mia was attacked, I was at home by myself. My dad was working and my mom was at some function.”

  Bingo. He didn’t have an alibi. Now we could work with that.

  “So what you’re saying is that Mia didn’t want to have sex with you so you broke up with her and that you don’t have anyone who can verify where you were on the night in question?” I asked.

  “I know that doesn’t help my case much, but it’s the damn truth,” Baxter replied.

  There was a knock at the door. I went to answer and the lab technician gave us more ammunition against him. This kid just didn’t understand that we had him dead to rights. A witness and the victim both place him at the scene, plus his fingerprints were just confirmed to being there as well.

  I tossed down the fingerprint analysis and asked him how his fingerprints would be at the scene if he weren’t there. He tried to s
ay that it was because he had been in the home two weeks prior to the accident.

  “Can you tell me exactly where you were in the home when you broke up with Mia?” Mason asked.

  “Yeah, we were only in the living room. We argued because she said I should be willing to wait for her and I told her enough was enough and left.” Now we really had him because his prints were found in the kitchen, bathroom, and on the stair railing that led upstairs.

  “So what you’re saying is that you didn’t go anywhere else in the home that day except for the living room?” I wanted to be clear on his statement before I nailed his ass to the wall.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he responded.

  “Well, the funny thing here is that your fingerprints were found in several other rooms in the home as well as the living room. So why don’t you tell us what really happened and stop playing games? We have witness statements that place you entering the home in the time frame as well as exiting the home in a hurry.” I wanted to spook him enough so that he would just confess and give us an open and shut case.

  He looked even more frustrated than he did before. I knew that he would break soon. They always did.

  “All right. I went there because she asked me to come over and said it was important. We started to fool around, but she stopped me yet again and I lost it. I was over her mind games and the way she kept teasing me. I don’t know what came over me, but the next thing I knew she was curled up in a ball against the wall. I don’t remember much. I guess I just snapped.”

  “Well, you certainly just snapped. Just so you know asshole, a woman always has the right to say no. Even if it frustrates you, that doesn’t give you the right to put your damn hands on her.” I yelled at him. I needed to get out of here before I completely lost it. I threw the notepad at him and told him that he needed to write down his statement and left the room. Mason could handle the rest on his own.

  I went back to my desk and called Mrs. Castle. She needed to be the first to know that Thomas Baxter had finally been caught and that he’d confessed. I was just glad that justice was finally served and Mia could continue to heal.

  I wanted to tell Emily in person that Baxter had been caught so I decided to text her to see if she was home. It was also an excuse to see her. We hadn’t seen each other since our date except occasionally at work and sometimes at the coffee shop. I knew that I needed to be patient, but I didn’t know how much longer I could be.

  Me: Are you home? I have some news that I want to share with you.

  Emily: Yeah. I’m here, come on over.

  I grabbed my jacket and briefcase and headed to the car. I don’t know why, but I was getting nervous to be around her. Being just friends with a girl was new for me, but she made me feel the need to be around her.

  I arrived at her place and walked up the path to her front door. I knocked and waited. She answered the door a few moments later in a t-shirt and a pair of pajama shorts. She was going to kill me. Proceeding with caution and remembering her need to be friends was something that I needed to remind myself about. At least for now anyway. I planned to wear her down.

  She motioned for me to come inside and shut the door once I had entered her home. We walked over to the living room and sat down on one of the couches. I was glad that I had some good news to tell her. She seemed to have a soft spot for Mia and had been worried about her even before the attack. She had a big heart even if she tried not to show it.

  I laced my fingers together and proceeded to tell her that Baxter was in custody and that he had confessed to the crime. She surprised me by what she did next. The next thing I knew she had her arms wrapped around my neck and was hugging me tightly. After the initial shock had worn off, I hugged her back. She kept saying thank you repeatedly in my ear.

  She pulled back from our embrace, but I didn’t let go. We were staring at each other and I couldn’t take it anymore. I leaned down and brushed my lips against hers. I knew that I could be making a mistake, but I didn’t care. She gasped when our lips touched but returned the gentle kiss. It only lasted a few seconds, but I was relieved that she had kissed me back.

  She pulled back first and looked into my eyes. I was somewhat scared as to what she was thinking and what she would say about what I had just done.

  “Thank you for catching him. I’m glad that Mia can rest easy now knowing that he’s behind bars and can’t hurt her. As for that kiss, I will excuse it to the moment, but it can’t happen again. We can only be friends. Can you just trust me on that, please?” She was pleading with me and it almost broke my heart that she was that scared to let someone in.

  At least she wasn’t mad. I apologized for the kiss, but I wasn’t sorry. I got up off the couch and told her that I would see her at work. I needed to get away before I did anything else to jeopardize our friendship. She walked me to the door and thanked me again for coming by to tell her and for catching the bad guy.

  “You’re welcome, sweetheart, but I was just doing my job. Have a good night.” With that said, I walked back to my truck and went home.

  I needed to figure out how to get that girl to open up to me and stop being so guarded. I just didn’t know how.

  Chapter 10: The Trip That Brings Us Closer

  Matt

  Spending Christmas alone this year is going to suck. I can’t believe that it’ll be in two days. It’s the first one that I’ll be away from my family. I took a week’s time off from work when I first started here with the intention of going home for the holidays, but I cancelled the trip a few days ago. They all want me to come home, but I don’t think I can face everyone by going back. Better yet, I don’t think I can handle seeing anyone here either. It’ll just be a painful reminder of what I’m missing out on.

  Spending Christmas with Emily would be amazing, but she’s going on a trip with Sophia, Jeremiah, and Jeremiah’s brother, Jayson. I’m really going to miss her. We’ve become closer since the first time we hung out together at the park, but I need to see her more. With our work schedules and her volunteer schedule, we’ve only had time to hang out a couple of times. Texting and talking on the phone isn’t cutting it anymore. I know that she only wants to be friends, but when I’m around her, my inner turmoil fades away. She’s become the medicine I need and she doesn’t realize it.

  I was sitting on my couch in a pair of track pants and nothing else channel surfing and feeling sorry for myself, when someone started knocking on my door. I debated just ignoring it when the pounding got annoyingly louder. I’m not in the mood to deal with whoever is trying to get my attention.

  Reluctantly, I got off the couch and made my way over to the door. Looking through the peephole, I noticed its Jeremiah. He looks too chipper for the mood I’m in and I don’t know if I can handle it. I’m being a Scrooge this year whether everyone likes it or not.

  I swung the door open and leaned on the doorframe.

  “Hey, Jer. How’s it going?”

  “It’s going good man. I’m just trying to finish packing for the trip.”

  “That’s right. You guys are leaving tomorrow for a week in Cabo San Lucas right?” I asked knowing the answer, but I’m attempting to get him to make his point so I can go back to being alone.

  “Yeah. It’s going to be amazing. Sun, sand, and relaxation. That’s actually why I’m coming over here. I just got some news and I were wondering if you could help me out.” Please let it be something simple so he’ll just leave.

  “I can try. What’s up?”

  “Do you think we can do this inside man? It’s freezing out here. How can you not be frozen just standing in the doorway?” I didn’t even notice how cold it was. I guess it was because I was in a foul mood and didn’t care.

  Motioning for him to come inside, I shut the door once he crossed the threshold.

  He made himself at home sitting on the couch and I walked over sitting on the opposite end. He had his elbows resting on his knees and his chin in his hands. His feet were bouncing u
p and down a mile a minute. He seemed nervous about something. This should be interesting to say the least.

  “Okay. Shoot. What can I help you with?”

  “Here’s the thing. You know that Sophia, Emily, Jayson, and I are supposed to be going to Cabo San Lucas. Well, my brother can’t go now due to an unexpected work thing he can’t get out of.”

  “And what exactly do you need my help for?” I wished he’d make his point already. He’s a good friend, but I’m not in the mood to talk in codes.

  “The trip’s fully paid for and he can’t cancel now. I know you already have a week off starting after your shift ended today and that you aren’t going home to be with your family. I just thought that you could join us, so the money doesn’t go to waste. My brother doesn’t even want you to pay him back. He just wants someone to take his place since it’s already been paid for.” He looked like he was going to pass out from just asking me. Why would I make him nervous?

  “How does Emily feel about this? I don’t want to impose on anyone’s vacation.” My first concern would always be her in situations like these. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable and going on vacation together would be a big step. One that I did not know if either of us was ready for.

  “That’s the thing. After talking with Sophia, she thinks it’d be a good idea for us to just surprise her. This is the first year we’ve all gone somewhere together and I think she’s nervous enough about that. I don’t want her to back out at the last minute.”

  “What the hell? Do you really think it’s a good idea to spring this on her? She’s known you guys for years. We just met a few months ago. I think it’s a bad idea. She’s going to lose it when she finds out,” I told him. I can’t believe that people who’ve been friends with her for years didn’t know this about her. Surprises like this would only infuriate her. It only took a few times hanging out with her for me to figure that out. It took everything she had to trust me enough when we went to the park.

  “She might be mad at first, but she’ll get over it. She’ll just go with the flow. Trust me. Come on. You know you want to go. I know you want to be around her. Besides, what are you going to do for a week with all of us gone?” He did have a point. I did want to be around her and it would be fun to get away. Plus, it’ll keep my mind off of my family. I just had a bad feeling about surprising her.