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I pull away from her, pushing my hand through my hair as I look down at the floor. This is where I have to tell her that I know exactly what she did: that she didn’t deserve to go to prison or be tried as an adult.
Who the hell does that? Tries a fifteen-year-old girl as an adult?
“You didn’t,” I say, my voice coming out gruff. I lift my head, my gaze clashing with hers. “I know what you did: you didn’t deserve the punishment.”
She shakes her head, her eyes misting over with the threat of tears as her bottom lip wobbles.
“My gran… she needed them.” Her voice is so small, her shoulders coming down as she tries to become as small as she can.
I hate it; I hate how hard she’s being on herself.
I take two giant leaps for steps and wrap my arms around her, pulling her head against my chest before I plant a soft kiss on her temple.
“She needed the pills.” She hiccups a sob, clutching onto my back, her nails digging into the tensed muscle. “She hadn’t been able to walk for a week, and they wouldn’t give them to her because she was so far behind on all of her payments.”
She lifts her head up, showing me the tracks that are running down her face from the tears that have escaped. Lifting my hand to cup her cheek, I let my thumb swipe them away. “I know, baby.”
“You don’t.” She shakes her head emphatically, pulling away and running up the stairs where the steel and wood move aside, allowing her to get back into my cabin.
“Lex!” I follow her up, watching as she makes a beeline for the door.
“I shouldn’t have come.” Her hand clutches the door handle, ready to pull it open but I don’t let her. I smash my front into her back, pinning her to the door.
“Don’t you dare,” I murmur, my hands clutching onto her hips. “Don’t you dare fucking walk away from me.”
Her breaths stutter, her back moving against my chest as she tries to catch her breath.
“You deserve better,” she says, her voice holding no conviction whatsoever.
“No.” I grit my teeth, spinning her around before I move my face closer to hers. “I don’t give a fuck what I deserve, what I want is you.” I pause a beat. “All of you, not the part you allow others to see, but the parts you keep locked away.”
Her eyes flit between mine, looking for the truth. Yeah, baby. You won’t find a single lie in these eyes.
The sound of the wind wraps around the cabin, the trees moving and making their own melody. But inside, all that there is is silence as we stare at each other, neither one of us willing to talk first.
“Okay,” she whispers, her eyes flicking back to the sofa briefly.
I see her meaning and pull back, waving my arm before she steps forward, sitting down and clutching her hands in her lap.
She closes her eyes, lines forming around them as she squeezes them tightly. “I went there with good intentions. They weren’t going to hand over the medication without money, so I thought if I maybe begged them, even if it was just for one script, that they would feel sorry for me. I could hear her crying at night in pain, and the night before was worse than all of the others.” She shakes her head, opening her eyes but not looking at me. “Her son, my uncle, wouldn’t help; he wouldn't give her any money.” She pauses. “He was her power of attorney and yet he did nothing.”
I reach my hand out, taking her small one in mine as I silently encourage her to continue.
“When I got there, I didn’t mean for it to escalate the way tha
t it did. I had a bat with me…” She looks up at me. “But only because I was going to softball practice, I wasn’t going to do anything. I swear, Evan, I wasn’t.”
“I believe you,” I reassure her, my heart breaking at the devastated look in her eyes.
“He wouldn’t give them to me: the pharmacist. He said that he was told not to give her a single tablet until she paid her bill. I didn’t know what to do.” Her chest heaves. “I started to scream at him, the bat in my hands waving about the place.” Her hand flutters up to her throat. “I screamed so loud at him that my throat burned. But it didn’t matter anyway, because he must have seen something... something that he didn’t like because he threw her prescription at me as he backed away from me like I was a crazy person.”
Her hair floats around her face as she dips her head and I move forward, taking her face in my hands and pulling her toward me as I lean back. Her head drops to my chest, her ear right over my heart as she continues, her fingers tracing an invisible pattern on my stomach.
“I spun around and ran out of there as fast as I could, but I didn’t know that there was a worker in the back room that had called the police.” My hand smooths down her hair, whispering down to her shoulder as I pull her closer to me. “They scared me, I didn’t know… I… I don’t know why I did it, but I swung the bat.”
I clear my throat after she’s silent for a few seconds, her breathing evening out the longer she half lies on me. I tangle my legs with hers before saying, “I don’t understand why they tried you as an adult. You should have been out before you turned eighteen at most.”
At my words, her back straightens, the atmosphere changing as she pulls back, her face coming level with mine as her eyes turn dark and stormy.
