‘You should go home, Ryan,’ she said, still not meeting his gaze. ‘I’ll send the police over when they get here. Let’s not make a show of this for the neighbours.’
‘What about Marshall?’ He inclined his head at Thomas’s back.
‘I think I’ll be safe with him. He’s hardly going to do anything if the police are coming, is he? I’ll take him inside and clean him up.’
The thought of her doing anything with that asshole was enough to make his blood boil. He wanted her to tell Marshall to leave, for her to ask Ryan to protect her. He wanted her to look at him the way she had last night.
Not like this. Never like this.
‘London I—’
‘Just go, okay?’ she interrupted him. ‘Don’t make this any worse than it already is.’
His chest was aching from all the emotions fighting inside him, ones he couldn’t quite name but were making his heart pound like a marathon runner. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to punch Marshall again, or just scream out in frustration.
‘If he touches one hair of your head I’ll be over here like a shot. Just call me.’
‘I can look after myself,’ she said again. ‘I don’t need your help.’
And wasn’t that the truth? Any other time he’d be rooting for her, glad that she could stand up for herself. But right now, he wanted her to need him, the same way he needed her.
There wasn’t anything else to say. He took one last look at Juliet. She was searching frantically through her bag for her keys. She didn’t want him there, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to stay and watch her let Marshall into her house.
So he turned around and started walking down the steps. He’d barely made it to the driveway before Thomas called out again.
‘Better line up a babysitter, Sutherland. Your ass is gonna be in jail before the afternoon is out.’
‘Shut up, Thomas. Get in the house.’ Juliet’s voice was as terse with Thomas as it had been with Ryan, but somehow that gave him no satisfaction. He squared his shoulders, covering the hundred yards between their houses with long, heavy strides. Though the air around him was chilled, it felt as oppressive as a hot, humid day. Heavy and pressured, just like his thoughts.
His truck door was still open, from when he’d run over to check if she was okay. He reached in and grabbed his keys and his wallet, and the papers strewn across the passenger seat.
The papers he’d just signed to sell his shares, along with the proposal to buy the wharf. He could just take the money and run. Grab Charlie and leave. He owed Shaw Haven nothing. He owed his family nothing. And as for Juliet, he had no goddamned idea who owed who.
The first thing he did when he walked into the house was call his lawyer. The second, once he’d splashed his face with cold water and slammed his palm against the cold wall tiles until it hurt, was an altogether different call. One he made from the living room, staring out of the window that overlooked Juliet’s yard. He stared aimlessly as he waited for the call to connect, scratching his chin and wondering how the hell things had gone so crazy so fast.
‘Hello?’
‘Sheridan, it’s Ryan. I need your help.’
25
Come, let’s away to prison;
We two alone will sing like birds i’ th’ cage
– King Lear
‘So you admit you hit him?’ The cop leaned back, frowning. ‘Why did you do it?’
‘Don’t answer that.’ Frank was already pissed. Mostly because Ryan freely admitted to punching Thomas Marshall. What was he supposed to say? No doubt Thomas’s face was bruised, as was Ryan’s hand. Plus there was at least one witness that Ryan never intended to have up on the stand. He wasn’t planning on fighting this. He just wanted to get out of here.
The cops picked him up just after lunchtime. The cruiser pulled up outside Juliet’s house, and two uniformed guys went in, spending around an hour doing who knew what in there. After that, they followed the same path Ryan had taken earlier, crossing the front yards of the two houses until they came to his door. He opened it almost as soon as they knocked.
They took him down to the station straight away, and put him in a cell until Frank arrived later in the afternoon. And for the past hour he’d been sitting in this small room, his large body almost too big for the orange plastic chair they’d given him, answering the same questions over and over, until he was getting bored of his own voice.
‘I hit him because he was rude to Juliet.’
‘His wife?’ The cop looked surprised. ‘Mrs Marshall?’