“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?”
“I do.”
The District Attorney walks from the table that he’s sitting at and stands in front of me. “Morning.” He smiles at me. I hate his fucking smile. I can’t wait for this whole goddamn thing to be over. I’m tired of betraying everyone I know. Tired of betraying him.
“Now, Tate… is it okay if I call you Tate?”
“Sure.” I shrug.
“Thank you.” His smile grows. It was a fake smile before. Now I have no fucking clue what to call it. “Now, Tate, I just want to clear up why we’ve called you up to the stand.” He smiles. He knows that he’s already won. “You came to me, didn’t you? You told me you had information you wanted to give.”
“Yes.” I look up. For the first time, letting my eyes land on Zane, I can see the anger boiling over in them.
“Can you tell the court how you know the defendant?”
“We met 7 years ago.” It comes out in a whisper. I try not to glance over to where the defense sits. Zane is still glaring holes through me, so I refuse to make eye contact with him, and quickly move past him. I get a quick nod before I turn my head again towards the prosecutor.
“And what is the nature of your relationship?”
He asks like it’s so fucking easy to answer. Like there hasn’t been years of baggage and emotions involved. Like we’re normal, and we’re not together because we don’t want to be and not because life just isn’t fucking fair sometimes.
“Tate?” the prosecutor tries to get me to focus again. “What is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Anderson?” I look back over at the attorney, but my gaze falls past him. Towards Darren, who looks as furious with me as I knew it would be, because he knows the nature, and he doesn’t want me to admit to it on the stand. Because he thinks it will make Zane look bad.
“We would sleep together every couple of years.”
“And when you say sleep together, what exactly do you mean?”
“We would have sex.” I deadpan as I stare at him. He and everyone else in this fucking room knows what I meant by ‘sleep together’. He just wanted to embarrass me by saying it out loud. He doesn’t know the failure I’ve set him up for, and I would almost feel bad if he wasn’t such a prick.
“And you say every few years?” It’s a question even if he doesn’t phrase it as one.
“It wasn’t like clockwork, really, just whenever we ran into one another.” I shrug out, letting myself look back over at Zane, and it breaks my heart as I see the hurt in his eyes.
I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry.
“Zane!” my uncle shouts into the phone. “Did you hear me?” I’m actually surprised when I hear his emotions crack through its barrier that he was trying to keep them behind. He needs me to answer him, but I’m not sure I can just yet. My emotions strangle me as I sit up in the bed in my dorm room. “Zane!” He yells out, having composed himself this time.
“Yeah, I’m on my way.” My voice cracks as I attempt to answer him. I can’t take the failure that the crack conveys, so I just hang up the phone, moving over to the side of the bed.
“Zane?” Holly whispers from where I shoved her off of me to. “You’re leaving?” I’m sure that she’s pissed. I mean, I’m sure she got pissed when I answered my phone mid-fuck. I can only imagine that the realization of me leaving isn’t helping any.
“Yeah.” I cut out as I grab my jeans off of her bedroom floor.
She shifts from behind me and I don’t need to look at her to feel her aggression building. “Fine.”
Sighing out, I turn and look at her. “We’re not like that, and you know it.” Rage fills me as I say the words. I can’t believe that she’s acting like this right now. “But even if we fucking were, it wouldn’t matter.” Pulling the shirt up over my head, tugging it down on my body and I stop, staring at her, forcing all the emotions that the conversation with Ro just brought up. “My parents were just killed.” Her face falls at my confession. I don’t wait for her to say anything else. I just turn for the door, trying to clear the threshold before the pity that I saw forming on her face is complete. I pause for a second before as I open the door and saying, “This should be the last time,” before I shut the door behind myself, not bothering to look back. I’m sure that I heard her shocked plead with me as I left, but she’s the last thing I need to be worried about.
My phone rings as I’m walking down the hall, pushing the door to the building open before I’m outside. “What?” It’s abrupt, but I don’t give a fuck. I’m sure whoever is calling me at the moment knows what happened.
“Ro called you?” My brother’s voice filters through the receiver, just as curt as my answer was.
“Yeah. I’m on my way.”
“Okay. Ro booked a flight for me, but I won’t be able to get in until tomorrow night. And you know Drew is going to want answers immediately.” We both let out a small, sad chuckle, knowing how our baby sister can be.
“Yeah, she’s just like Mom. She’ll try to go after whoever she thinks may have done it.” I trail as a realization takes over.
“Yeah, I guess she really is just like Mom now.” His tone is somber as he says the exact words I was thinking.
