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Well, you’re a fool.
How would I trust him with billions of dollars if I couldn’t trust him to stay out of trouble for five days? You knew this was going to happen, Dahl. Stop kidding yourself.
I really needed to turn her off. My psyche was really annoying. She was right, but still incredibly irritating. And no matter what my mind told me, my heart was sure about Cody. I was sure that he had a good reason for whatever had happened while I was in Connecticut securing our future.
My feet fell hard against the concrete floor of the jailhouse. I wasn’t sure if it was that I was stomping, my anger getting the best of me, or if the sound just carried down here. The sheriff who guided me to the empty waiting area didn’t notice, so I assumed it was the latter.
I sat in the small plastic chair and waited for someone to tell me what to do next. After a few minutes, a dark-haired woman wearing glasses and the same uniform as all the other officers came around the corner and yelled, “Jack Lawrence family.” My gaze roamed the room, not entirely sure if I’d heard her correctly or if some other Jack Lawrence lived in these parts because my Jack Lawrence was dead. And I had the death certificate to prove it.
Seeing as the room was bare, except for me, her eyes zeroed in on me, and realization donned, so I played along.
“I’m Jack Lawrence’s family.” I stood and raised my hand stupidly. Dahl, you are an idiot. You’re the only person here. Love is making you dumb.
Shaking off my thoughts, I quickly tried to recover and spat, “Jack’s my uncle.” The woman smiled as if she was bored, gave me a half-uninterested grin, and motioned with her hand for me to follow her. So, I did.
She slid behind a door and peered at me through a partition with a hole in the middle. I looked around again, feeling awkward as she stared at me through the plastic. She rolled her eyes before smacking her gum, and I sighed because I hadn’t realized she was chewing gum in the first place. When she didn’t say anything else, my eyes narrowed in question, and I wondered if we were just going to stare at each other or if she was going to tell me what was going on.
“So,” she began, then paused, “are you going to pay his bail or what?” She offered her hand, palm up out the small hole, and I laughed under my breath. Unbelievable. Apparently, this sheriff didn’t hire officers for their people skills.
“Yes, how much is it?” I asked as I rummaged through my satchel and searched for my checkbook.
“One thousand dollars.” The woman said, unaffected. She blew a bubble, and I wanted to punch her through the hole when it popped. The pink of the gum stuck to the tip of her nose. She still didn’t look affected, and she just stared at me. Rude much.
“Who do I make the check out to?”
Not saying a word, the woman pointed up to the sticker in the far right-hand corner of the partition before stretching her gum out in front of her face. The gooey elastic pulled tight and thin between her ring and middle fingers. Jesus Christ, how old was she?
I quickly wrote out the check and pushed it through the hole, and I watched as the thick paper fluttered to the ground.
I cringed and offered a half-hearted “Sorry” as she reached down and picked it up off the floor at her feet. She gave me the same uninterested smile and then dismissed me.
“You can wait for “your uncle” over there.” She used finger quotes around the words your uncle, and I felt my face blush a deep shade of red. Of course, she’d know he wasn’t my uncle. He wasn’t much older than I was. At least she didn’t question it and I didn’t offer any more information before I returned to my small plastic chair in the waiting room.
I had fallen asleep in the very uncomfortable plastic chair, while waiting for Cody. My anger had finally simmered enough in the hours I had sat there, waiting for them to release him. But the moment I saw his handsome face and felt the terrible pain in the base of my neck from how I’d been sleeping, the anger returned in full force.
In typical fashion, we didn’t speak as we left the sheriff’s office. And we didn’t talk on the drive back to the cabin. The silence wasn’t as peaceful as usual. An unyielding tension had set in tighter than even that rubber band Cody had been playing with the day I returned to Connecticut. I wished I had that rubber band handy because I would pop him on the forehead, hard, to show how pissed I was. Once I pulled the car into the gravel drive, I didn’t hesitate before I stepped out of the vehicle. It was time to hash this out. The anger was boiling under my skin, and I was about to explode.
I only waited until Cody had pushed the front door to close before I began interrogating him.
“You promised,” I whispered, finally allowing my anger to spill out through pursed lips. I turned to him; my right fist clenched tight. Of course, he said nothing.
And for the first time since I’d met Cody, his silence had blood raging through my veins.
“What?” I threw my hands up in anger when his only action was to slip his hands into his pockets. His gaze went down to his feet as if he was a chastised child and I was the parent unleashing discipline.
“Now is the time to say something. Anything! I usually welcome your silence, Cody, but it’s testing my nerves right now.”
He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Dahlia. I had to.” I glared at him, searching his face for a plausible explanation and coming up empty.
“Well, you made me a promise, and you didn’t keep it. Why wasn’t that more important? Why didn’t your promise mean more to you? Make me understand.”
Alarm bells rang loudly in my ears as he continued to say very little.
He already broke your trust, Dahl. What are you still doing here? Leave.
I badly wanted to believe he could change and leave that life for me. But I now had proof that would never happen, and for once, I would listen to my head.
Cody stood before me, his hands still in his pockets, and that’s when I noticed he was still wearing the same clothes he was wearing the day I left. That means he didn’t even wait for the tires on my car to get hot on the road before racing on his motorcycle to commit a crime that had left him in jail for the last four days. What would he have done if I hadn’t bailed him out?
