Which was where we were at now.
The sentencing.
Out of all the things I’d done wrong in my life, Trick was the worst mistake of all.
I wished, for his sake, that I’d never met him.
Fresh off deployment, wanting to help with his sister, he’d innocently been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I would’ve rather died than seen him go to jail.
Yet, we all knew that was where this was going.
Me getting on the stand was the last-ditch effort that my stepfather was taking.
I watched him across the crowded courtroom, my breath in my throat.
My arm throbbed, and the last thing I wanted to do was get up on that stand and relive what my father had done to me all over again.
But I’d do anything for Trick.
He’d saved my life.
Throughout the entire process, Trick never once looked at me.
He stared at the wall behind my head, and I felt like a hollowness had taken root in my soul.
“I call Swayze Marrin to the stand,” my stepfather’s voice filled me with horror.
God, this was the last thing I wanted to do.
I was still fucked up.
I walked with a limp, might always.
My nose was crooked as hell now thanks to my father breaking it.
And my arm still ached from where my father had snapped the two bones in half by stomping on my forearm.
I tried not to limp too badly as I took the stand.
I also tried not to look at anyone else but my stepfather.
He was safest.
“State your full name.”
I felt my insides churn. “Swayze Molly Marrin.”
My stepfather smiled warmly.
“Swayze, can you tell us about that night? Why were you there?”
“My father called and told me that he wanted to see me for my birthday, that he had something for me,” I explained.
“And was he on time?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
“How late was he?” my stepfather pushed.
“Um,” I hesitated, thinking back. “About three hours or so. I don’t know the exact time that I got there.”
“Do you know why he was late?” he wondered.
I tried not to look around at the courtroom. That way nobody would be pinpointed when I said what I said next.
“He was doing a drug transport and got a flat tire,” I said. “That’s what he said anyway. He parked the van filled with drugs somewhere and came to the bar because it was closest. He was going to borrow my grandfather’s truck.”
“How do you know this?” my stepfather asked quietly.
“Because I overheard his conversation on the phone,” I answered. “When he saw me in the hallway, he yelled at me and told me to go to his office. I did. When I got in there, he picked up the phone and called someone. After he was done talking to them, he looked at me with this weird look in his eye. He was stoned or something. I’d never seen him look like that before. When I told him I had to go home and got up to leave, he pushed me to make me stay in my chair. He pushed hard, and the chair tipped and I fell over it backward. When I got up, I was mad, so I tried to leave again. And he punched me in the face.”
“What else did he do?” my stepfather urged gently.
I swallowed hard.
“My nose started to bleed. And it was like he saw that and just… blew up,” I admitted. “One second he was punching me, and the next I was on the ground and I couldn’t even lift my hands to cover my face,” I explained. “I tried to lift my left one, and my entire forearm just flopped over to the side in one grotesque move. Forearm one way. Elbow the other. Hand flipping another way.”
The round of questioning went on and on and on.
“What happened when Mr. Wheat came into the room?” my stepdad asked then. “Was he mad?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But he sounded upset. When I heard his voice—it was at this point that I couldn’t get my brain to open my eyes. My face was too swollen—he sounded ravaged. He told my dad to stop, but the kicks kept coming. Then all of a sudden they stopped.”
“So you didn’t see anything?” my stepfather pushed.
I shook my head. “No. I was too broken to even open my eyes.”
My stepfather smiled. “No further questions.”
That was when the other lawyer stood up, his eyes narrowed on me.
I swallowed at the gleam in his eyes.
“Is it true that before this, your father never touched you at all?” the cross-examiner, Mr. Trent, asked.
I licked my lips. “My father had never beaten me up before. No.”
“Are you saying that he hit you?” Mr. Trent asked.
I shrugged. “He spanked me.”
“Therefore, this was nothing over a usual punishment?” he pushed.
“If you count bruising my butt so badly that I couldn’t sit for a week, no,” I countered.
“Before that day, he’d never taken it that far before,” Mr. Trent pushed.
“No,” I confirmed.
“Why did he get upset in the first place? Did he tell you his reasoning?” the lawyer asked.
I again explained what had happened with the phone call. Then the blood. Followed by the subsequent beating.
“You didn’t mention that before this all went down, your father caught you in the hallway with an older man,” Mr. Trent drawled.
My stomach clenched.
“We weren’t doing anything,” I told him. “When my father came into the hallway, we were barely even touching each other.”
“How old were you at the time?” he wondered.
I gritted my teeth before saying, “Seventeen.”
“And Mr. Wheat was twenty-one?” he pushed.
I shrugged. “We didn’t exchange our ages.”
“I’ve learned from a few sources that you were quite young when you lost your virginity,” Mr. Trent said. “That you were considered a ‘problem child’ by a lot of people. Your parents and the school included.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I got great grades in school.”
I was graduated now, actually. I finished by the skin of my teeth.
The grades might not have been as good as I’d wanted, but they’d definitely been better than they could have been.
The line of questioning deteriorated after that.
Pretty much, by the time he was done, the entire courtroom thought I was a slut with a chip on her shoulder who deserved to have my ass beat.
When I finally stepped off the stand and went to sit next to my mother, I knew that I’d done more harm than good by getting up onto that podium.
My mother curled me into her arm, and I chanced a look at Trick.
He was tense. His arms were loose at his sides, but his fisted hands underneath the table showed that he was pissed as hell and barely containing it.
Well that made two of us.
But I didn’t have as much of a reason as he did.
And when, four hours later, a verdict was read, I knew his pissed off attitude was even more warranted.
“Patrick Wheat is sentenced to twenty years. A possibility of parole at fifteen.” The judge banged his gavel, and that was that.
It was done.
I’d officially ruined Trick’s life.
And when they took him away in handcuffs, frog marching him out of the room due to the chains holding his feet together, I knew that I would never, ever be able to fix this.