“I tried to break it off with her. I offered to let her keep the apartment, and I would pay the rent. She could focus on getting herself help, and I would take care of Dawson full time in the interim. She was heartbroken, but it had nothing to do with Dawson. She kept telling me I couldn’t leave her. That’s the only thing she cared about. Eventually, she got the point that it was really over, and she calmed down. I thought everything was fine. She went into the bathroom, and I fed Dawson and put him down for bed. But the next thing I knew, the cops were banging on the front door. When I let them in, they arrested me on battery charges, and I couldn’t understand what was happening until I saw her come out of the bathroom with a bloody face.”
“Oh my God,” Gypsy murmured. “She beat herself?”
“She smashed her face into the mirror and told the police I did it. I was charged and booked into the county jail that night, and it didn’t matter what I told them. They didn’t believe me.”
Gypsy curled into herself, glaring at the floor as she considered the circumstances. “That’s so awful. They had to figure out she was lying at some point, right?”
A dry laugh ejected from my throat. “It only got worse from there. My parents bailed me out, but she’d been granted a restraining order against me which included my son. I wasn’t allowed to see him or contact her. I abided by the rules because I knew it was the only way to get Dawson back eventually. I had faith in the system. I had faith that somewhere along the line, somebody would figure it out. But they didn’t. And when she started using a phone she’d registered in my name to send herself threatening texts, it only compounded the problem. Stalking charges were added, and I was brought back to jail. This time, my parents didn’t bail me out. They didn’t know what to believe, I guess.”
“But you were their son,” Gypsy said. “How could they not believe you?”
“It happens more often than you’d think,” I assured her. “Things can get so skewed in a courtroom that people find themselves questioning things they never thought possible. But regardless, it wouldn’t have mattered what my parents believed. The court-appointed attorney didn’t believe me either, and it was evident in court. He did his job with the least amount of effort required on his part, and that was it. The judge handed down my sentence, and I was convicted on both charges with a two-year sentence.”
“What a load of bullshit,” Gypsy snarled.
“I didn’t care about the sentence. My whole life had been ripped apart, and the only thing that mattered to me was Dawson. She took him away to punish me because I wouldn’t stay with her. I was worried for his safety and well-being, and nobody would listen to me. I requested welfare checks. I did everything I could, but they left him in her care.”
Gypsy shook her head in disgust. “Just another kid falling through the system.”
“They failed him.” I pinched my eyes shut. “I failed him.”
“What happened to him?” Gypsy pressed.
“I was a few months away from my release when the warden pulled me into his office and sat me down. He told me that Dawson was gone. He’d been gone for two weeks, and I didn’t even know it. Nessie had been getting violent with him. Hitting him. Kicking him. I don’t know the extent of it. He had internal bleeding and died from the injuries because she never took him to the hospital. He was three years old.”
The numbness I’d always felt whenever I spoke those words seeped into every crevice of my soul, and I couldn’t think of anything else to add. That was the end. That had always been the end for me. The day Dawson died, I stopped living too.
I didn’t know what Gypsy would think. I was almost relieved she hadn’t said anything at all. But when I opened my eyes and they fell on her, there were fresh tears on her cheeks. Those tears were for Dawson, and maybe a little for me too. I couldn’t recall ever sharing the grief with anyone, and it was a comfort to have a companion in my darkness, even if only for a little while.
MY BODY MOVED BEFORE MY mind could process what I was really doing. It wasn’t my conscience, but my heart that led me to him.
I’d been torn about this man from the very beginning. From day one, I had declared that I could only ever hate him. But between the shadows of last night and the early light of day, something had changed between us. He knew my darkest secrets, and now I knew his.