With more courage than I feel, I say, “There’s DNA.” I lift my chin. “The prosecution has your DNA.”
All humor vanishes from his expression. “If that’s true, what will they compare it to? I’m not in the system. And with no one to point a finger at me, Bates is still the main suspect.” He cocks his head. “And as one of his lawyers, I can easily state any foreign DNA was bad handling on the techs’ part.” He shrugs. “I’ve done so before. It always gets thrown out. Besides, it’s not my DNA that’s crucial. It’s the victim’s DNA that was discovered on Malcolm’s car.”
“You planted it there.”
He doesn’t deny it, and as the depth of his actions sinks in, I realize I’m the only one who knows the truth. “Then why do I matter?” I ask, my voice less unsteady. “All I have is some circumstantial claim that a judge or anyone else won’t take seriously.”
“Alexis, Alexis,” he says, grabbing my ponytail and pulling my head back, forcing me to stare into his stone-gray eyes. “You have Chase. Wrapped around your fucking little finger. That’s why you matter. That’s why you have to disappear. Because he will listen to you, and I can’t have that.”
He drags me forward, and my feet follow despite the urge to struggle.
This can’t be happening—how is this happening? My thoughts cycle like a vortex, funneling every detail that has led to this point in time. Every word, every step, every action intricately woven along the walls of my downward spiral—the distorted pattern formed to display my demise at the hands of a rapist.
As Mason shoves me over my desk, I don’t scream. As he tears my clothes from my body, I don’t cry. As he strikes me across my face, I don’t blackout.
I hold on to the light at the top of the axis. My actions may have been fated for me, but they were also fated for those I care for. My brother will get help. I believe he’ll recover. Chase has loved me. He’ll love again.
There’s only one thing left to fight for.
Me.
20
Abase
Chase
I’m not equipped to be a wreck.
Rumpled dress shirt. Hair disheveled from the continuous running of my hand through it. Sitting in a dark room, brooding. The damn ache in my chest is torture. And the worst part: the loss of control.
You can’t control someone else’s pain.
I swore to guard Alexis against hers. I promised I’d protect her. Instead, I caused her additional pain. When your pride gives up the battle and you admit to that failure, their pain becomes your own.
The simple fact of the matter is that I’m not built to be this wreck of a man. It doesn’t suit me—but that’s exactl
y what I am. Wrecked. I’m a fucking cliché.
And a wrecked man can only stare at his phone so long, his thoughts battering his brain, before he has to take action. I’m not above accepting my defeat—but I’m damn sure going to do everything to fix her pain.
To an outsider, it might look like the text I’ve been writing for the past hour is riddled with tired excuses—and likely, as Alexis has effectively turned me into her whipping boy, it is—but it’s also necessary.
I’d rather not put into a text what should be expressed in person, but I can’t let another second pass, putting even more distance between us, that she considers herself severed from me irrevocably.
I won’t accept that.
She’s asked for time. I’ll give her as much time as she needs, but she’ll take that time along with my reasons. With anyone else, there’d be no explaining myself. For Alexis, I’m making an attempt, even though I’ve backspaced and growled at the fucking phone the entire time I’ve been contemplating just how to explain those reasons.
I’m not built to bow under another, either. It’s not within my makeup to submit to another’s needs. Hell, it’s not within my makeup to submit. Period.
I toss my phone aside, then tug my necktie loose. By now, Alexis knows what I’ve done. My invasion into her life did have some benefit. I’m damn good at maneuvering the law, which made it easy enough to give her what she wants most: help for her brother.
That course was already in action before tonight, and maybe she’ll despise me for it—but she’ll despise me while accepting the help, because her love for her brother trumps her anger toward me. My betrayal was precisely that: a betrayal. Regardless if it was a betrayal I wasn’t aware of.
How you validate a conundrum like that, however, is the fucking question.
Uttering a curse, I grab my phone and add another line, to which I will finally send this damn text and be done with it. When her brother is healthy, and Alexis has had a reasonable amount of time to mend from the upheaval of her life, if I need to, I’ll bend her little ass over my knee and spank her until she concedes that she’s still in love with me.