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“Lexa, let me explain,” he pleaded as he straightened. “Paige—”
“No,” I told him in a voice devoid of all emotion, while inside, everything was a blaze of pure chaos. “I don’t want to hear about Paige. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say, actually. Whatever your excuses are, save them. This game is over, and I’m not playing anymore.”
“Baby, this isn’t a game. Paige and I—”
“No!” I screamed, turning away from him. “Just leave me alone, Ben.”
“You have every right to be upset, but just listen to me,” he commanded, holding his hands up in a way he must have thought would calm me.
It didn’t. The calm I’d felt earlier while destroying his work vehicle was gone now that I was face-to-face with him. The pain had returned, along with the anger.
“Hey, Deputy!” I yelled, knowing that asshole Murphy could hear me with the door wide open now. “Where the fuck is my lawyer?”
“Lexa.” Ben was only a foot away now and slowly closing in on me, as if he were afraid I would bolt if he didn’t approach cautiously.
With the cell door wide open, I could have made a run for it, but there was the chance they would charge me with attempting to escape.
“Baby, I swear to you, Paige and I aren’t together. If you saw her kissing me…” His voice faded when I turned my hate-filled gaze on him.
“If?” I seethed, stepping into his space. “If I saw you two kissing? Wasn’t that your plan, Sheriff? For me to show up like some love-sick fool and find you mouth-fucking your ex? That was the whole point in giving me a key, right? So I could walk right in and you could play your sick game a little more? It doesn’t happen often, but you really played me. Congratulations. You’ve done what no one else in this shit town ever could before. Are you satisfied? Does it make you feel good to know you got so close and were able to make the frigid ice princess melt in the palm of your hand?”
“You’re so damn stubborn,” he growled, cupping my elbows in his hands. His large fingers brushed over the bruise on the upper part of my forearm, and I couldn’t hide the wince of pain it caused me.
Ben saw it and lifted my arm to inspect it closer. When he saw the fingerprint-shaped bruises already darkening my skin, his nostrils flared. “I’ll fucking kill him.”
“Go ahead. I’ll just wait right here.” I pulled from his grasp, walking away from him again.
The sound of heels on the tiled floor had us both turning to watch as Aunt Gracie walked through the door. Dressed in jeans, a plain gray T-shirt, and heeled sandals, she looked like she was closer to my age. She had genes that only made her more beautiful with age. Her hellion of a son hadn’t even added a single gray hair or line to her ageless face.
Seeing my cell was open, she lifted her brows and turned the full force of her professional glare on him. Ben straightened his spine, and I felt my lips twitch with the beginnings of a grin. Aunt Gracie was one of the sweetest women I’d ever met, but when she was doing her job, she was a tigress on the hunt.
“Can I go home now?” I asked her hopefully as I walked over to the bars.
“Hawk is posting your bail,” she assured me. “You can go as soon as that’s taken care of.”
“She wouldn’t even have to post bail if Murphy had come in and told me what was going on,” Ben said as he came to stand behind me. “She never would have been arrested.”
“Yet, she was,” my aunt said with a skeptical raise of her brows. “And just what were you doing, Sheriff, while my niece was being arrested? The incident happened right outside your apartment. Are you telling me you didn’t hear anything that would make you suspect someone was being so roughly apprehended?”
I didn’t want to see the look on his face while she questioned him. I put more distance between us, hating that I could feel his heat radiating against my back. But even when I put the width of the cell in between us, I could still feel him like he was physically touching me.
“I was dealing with a personal issue at the time and was distracted. When I was walking Paige out, I saw Lexa’s car and the engine was on. Then I saw the damage done to the cruiser and realized something had happened.”
I rolled my eyes at Aunt Gracie when she glanced my way, but I shrugged when she seemed to be waiting for an explanation from me. “What the sheriff means is that he was so busy with his tongue down his ex’s throat, he wouldn’t have heard a bomb going off, let alone someone happening to take a bat to his precious cruiser.”
“It wasn’t like that, goddamn it!” he snapped at me, frustration flooding off him in waves, and I took a sick pleasure in knowing I was tying him in knots.
“I think I should speak to my client alone, Sheriff,” Aunt Gracie informed him, stepping back and holding her hand out toward the door that led to the front of the police station, indicating for him to leave.
“If I could drop the charges, I would,” he told me, his tone imploring me to believe him. “But Campbell already found out, and because it was county property, I have no say over what happens next.”
“Don’t sweat it. I knew what kind of trouble I was going to get into when I did what I did.”
“What she allegedly did,” Aunt Gracie was quick to correct. “Other than Officer Murphy’s word, there is no solid evidence that she was responsible for what happened to the cruiser. And given the state Lexa is currently in, with scratches on her face and bruises on her arms and wrists, I don’t think he is a credible witness, given his mistreatment of my client.”
Ben’s jaw turned to stone. “He’ll pay for this, believe that.”
“I suggest you keep your hands clean, Sheriff Davis,” she instructed. “I’m sure the deputy regrets his actions.”
