Fighting to Be Free (Fighting to Be Free 1)

Mark nodded, frowning. “Yeah, Ellie. He…. He killed someone. He was let out of juvie a few months ago, around the time you two met actually.”

I couldn’t breathe.

Killed someone….

Jamie had killed someone? Did Mark seriously just say that?

“No,” I muttered again, trying not to let myself even entertain that thoughts. He was wrong. My Jamie couldn’t kill anyone; he was too adorable and sweet.

Mark held out the last piece of paper to me. “Yeah,” he stated. “I don’t have any details because this is all they sent over, but it says he was sentenced to four years and two months in juvie for murder. He was only fourteen.”

Murder. The word made my blood go cold.

I snatched the sheet out of his hands, not believing him but the words were clearly printed there. His name, date of birth, known affiliates - which consisted of Terry, Ray and Brett, along with a load of others that I didn’t recognise. It showed the dates of his sentence. He was released from juvie just over a week before I met him.

Suddenly it felt like a fog had been lifted off of me and I could suddenly hear words that Jamie had spoken to me all those months ago in his crappy bedsit. ‘That’s my little sister, Sophie. She died. She was murdered, four years ago.’

“Oh God,” I muttered, feeling my eyes fill with tears as reality of it all sunk in. Jamie had murdered his little sister when he was fourteen?

“You okay? You look a bit pale. Want to sit down?” Mark offered taking hold of my elbow and guiding me to sit back into my car.

My heartbeat was so loud that it was almost deafening as I pictured the little girl from the ruined photo, the smiling one wearing the yellow dress. She had been murdered….. by her brother? My boyfriend?

There had to be some mistake, there had to be some explanation for it - maybe an accident but he was charged with murder? I needed to see him. I needed to look him in the eye and ask him. I needed him to tell me that the person that I’d fallen hopelessly in love with, wasn’t in fact an act, that the Jamie Cole that had stolen my heart actually existed and wasn’t just some delusion.

Had I really let myself fall in love with a murderer?

Chapter 22

~ Ellie ~

Pushing Mark’s hands off of me, I twisted in my seat, facing the front, pulling my keys out at the same time. My hands were shaking so badly that it took three attempts to get them in the ignition.

Mark leant into the car and frowned at me angrily. “What the hell are you doing?” he growled.

I gulped and turned the engine over, groaning in frustration when it roared loudly but didn’t start.

“No!” I cried angrily, slamming my hand on the steering wheel. Now really wasn’t the time for my stupid car to conk out on me! I tried again, this time pumping the gas - finally the engine caught, spluttering a few times before ticking along nicely.

“Ellie, where are you going? Do you really think you should be driving? Your damn hands are shaking!” he shouted angrily, moving quickly and grabbing for the keys to turn the car off.

“Mark, get out!” I ordered, knocking his hand away and then shoving on his chest as hard as I could. I put the car into drive and crept forward, making him jump backwards so that I wouldn’t crush his toes. The forward momentum made the door start to swing inward, so I gripped the handle and caught it, slamming it shut as I headed out of the parking lot.

The drive to his apartment seemed to take forever. Questions were forming in my head, so many questions. And anger, a lot of anger was settling in the pit of my stomach because the guy I was in love with hadn’t told me any of this. I asked him to be honest with me and he’d told me about the cars - he also told me he did other stuff for this Brett guy, but he wouldn’t tell me what. I knew it was bad though, I knew he hated doing it, I knew that he didn’t sleep properly on the nights that his knuckles were bruised. But I never pushed the subject because he didn’t want me involved. Murder was different. And this was his past; he’d lied to me by keeping this from me, allowing me to fall in love with a person that didn’t actually exist!

When I pulled up outside I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go in or not. What if he told me it was true?

What if he had murdered his little sister…. how was I supposed to feel about him then? Would I look at him differently? Would I no longer want his hand to take mine because subconsciously I’d be thinking about the fact that those hands belonged to a convicted murderer?

I groaned in frustration and put my head on the steering wheel. The anger was still there, but sadness was taking over as the dominant emotion in my body. I loved him so much, maybe too much. What was I going to do?

After taking a few deep breaths I forced myself out of the car. His truck was parked in his allocated space so I knew he’s be here - he’d told me he wasn’t starting his ‘job’ until eleven so I knew I’d have time to speak to him before that.

Zombie-like my legs carried me up the two flights of stairs and I stopped outside his door. My whole body felt cold, I didn’t want to know but I had to. Why did Mark have to tell me? I was perfectly happy not knowing this little piece of earthshattering information, but now my life was threatening to fall to pieces around me.

“Please let this be a mistake,” I whispered as I knocked on the door. In my head I was imagining all sorts of scenarios, accidents that could have resulted in her dying but because he’d done something wrong then he was charged with her death - maybe a car accident in a stolen car or something….