Despite what his neighbor was able to accomplish, snoring away on the tiny bench, holding cells were no places to get some rest. The lights were bright and they buzzed real loud, and the ghosts of all a man’s bad decisions sat right down next to him.
He could pace, try and burn out the anxiety, but he’d learned from hard experience that didn’t work for him so well. He would only get more wound up. About his brother. About his own stupidity, letting it dictate shit even now.
I’m a grown-ass man. Alex is a grown-ass man. What am I doing?
The only thing for him to do was go deep in his head. And think about music.
But, for some reason, tonight it just wasn’t working.
Because he’d called Helen.
Yep. He was locked out of his head because of a woman. And all he could think about was her. And wonder if he hadn’t just made a huge mistake. He had a couple of handy reasons why he called her – reasons that weren’t totally lies – the biggest one being that he needed to tell her. About the album. The songs.
“Sullivan?” The door swung open and the young cop stood there. “You’ve made bail. You’re free to go.”
It was just before six in the morning, which would mean that Helen had a lead foot and no problems on the highways.
Micah stood up, his knees creaking and his back sore from resting against the cold concrete. He walked through the door and past the newbie, and felt the cop eyeballing him the whole way.
Micah grinned, his blood sizzling in that familiar way. Try it, he thought. Just try it.
But fresh new cop kept his cool and Micah walked out of the holding cell down a hallway, past processing and through another door that had to be buzzed open, and then he was in the main lobby of the Monroe County Jail.
And there was Helen.
She stood up from the chair where she’d been sitting and smiled at him awkwardly.
And all the bullshit reasons aside, he knew in his heart of hearts he called her because he wanted to see her again.
God. She was beautiful.
Her blond hair was pulled up onto the top of her head, bits of it falling down around her ears. She wore a green cotton skirt that came down to her knees and that denim jacket she’d worn the last time he saw her. Beneath it was a purple tank top that hugged her curves and her tight waist.
Part of surviving his childhood had been forgetting a lot of it. Some therapists had tried to convince him that just because his brain didn’t remember, it didn’t mean that his body didn’t remember. Which, when he was younger, he’d thought was bullshit.
But he’d been brought to his knees lately with memory. With the way sunlight came through a dark curtain. The smell of bacon in the morning. The touch of an icy-cold hand on his wrist.
All that to say, when he looked at her, at Helen, he felt something. Something deep and profound and real in his body. He didn’t know if was desire or memory or some powerful mix of the two, but he stood at dawn in the Monroe County Jail and felt weak at the sight of her.
He smiled and she smiled back, that cautious, careful smile that made him mad to know more about her.
But she wasn’t alone. There were a dozen people standing in the lobby. And it took no time for him to be recognized. One woman gasped and pushed her elbow into another woman’s side. They started whispering.
Time to go, he thought.
“Hi,” Helen said awkwardly, crossing the small hallway to him. “You okay?”
“Are you?” he asked, noting the dark circles under her eyes, which he knew were his fault. He wanted to feed her and tuck her into a bed immediately.
“Fine,” she said, with a tired but real smile.
Behind her a guy was getting his phone out.
Fuck.
“Mr. Sullivan?” The sergeant stood behind the big desk with the plexiglass shield. He shoved a little plastic tray out through the slot and Micah grabbed his wallet, his phone and the cash he’d had in his pocket when he got arrested. His hat went immediately on his head like it had the power of protecting him now. But that cat was way out of the bag.
The sergeant held out a clipboard and Micah scrawled his signature across the bottom. Information about court dates and legal aid that would never really matter because Jo was so good at making this stuff go away.
“Thanks gentlemen,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure.”
“Can we…ah…can we get a picture?” fresh new cop asked.
Oh man, he was too tired to fight it. And giving in to this stuff was the fastest way to make it go away.