“A warrant?” I turn and look up at my daddy, shocked by what I’ve just heard. “What are they talking about, Baron?”
His face is stony and unmoving. It’s a look I’ve not seen before.
“What are the charges?” he asks.
One of the officers glances down at me before answering. “If you’d just come with us we could discuss it in private—”
“The charges,” Baron presses. The officer sighs and shrugs.
“Sexual assault of the first degree.”
My stomach drops.
My first instinct was to protect him. But now…knowing what I know about him and how we met, I’m seized by a fierce panic that grips my body in a cold embrace. My mind starts spinning, as though my skull was full of fuzz, and although I’m chilled t
o my bones, a fear sweat breaks out across my body.
Sexual assault…
I don’t want to believe it, but can I really deny it could be possible after what happened between us? Baron must know how I’m feeling and closes his hands comfortingly around my waist. But the gesture has the opposite effect, and I pull quickly away and turn around to face him.
“It’s not true,” he says firmly. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ll figure it out, okay?”
I want to nod.
But I also want to cry and scream at him.
So I do the only thing I can do; I say nothing and just stare as he passes me and walks over to the officers, who put him in handcuffs and place him in the back of a police car.
My bright, wonderful day of romance comes crashing down around me, and as if the universe itself is conspiring against me, the sun goes behind the clouds, and I look up to see a dark storm in the distance making its way toward us.
This cannot be happening.
Dragging my feet, I walk over to the front door and pull, but it’s locked and I don’t have the key. I know it’s futile, but I try the side and back doors as well. They’re both locked too.
“Great,” I mutter as I pull out my phone. I scroll up to the contact for Mom and almost press it, but then I think about her boy-toy and the way she played Daddy for a fool, and I order an Uber instead.
In the fifteen minutes it takes for my ride to arrive, my brain goes haywire, sifting through the countless possibilities for my future – all of them horrible.
Baron is charged, goes to court, found guilty and goes to prison for life. I never see him, and my vision of him is destroyed forever, and I spend the rest of my life wondering how I could have ever fallen for such a monster. I push away everyone in my life and die alone as an old cat lady.
Or Baron uses his contacts to beat the charges, but I never believe he was truly innocent. I try to pretend I can be in relationship with him, but I’m kidding myself. I’m miserable, we break up, and I have nothing. No money. No man and a deadbeat mom.
But maybe he’s not guilty?
I hate myself for feeling like he probably is. For fuck’s sake, he assaulted me that night when Harry came over. Even I didn’t know that I wanted it then. Things could have easily gone the wrong way after that. What if he’s done this with other girls before? What if he read the situation wrong, and they didn’t want him? Or what if he just didn’t care…?
I’m choking back sobs for the entire ride back to the house. Just to make things worse, Mr. HNG8NCH is parked in the driveway. As I make my way up to the front door, the rain begins to fall. I reach the steps but don’t go inside right away. Instead, I stand there and let the rain soak me. The chill feels good; it helps to distract me from the anguish I’m feeling inside.
Maybe I’ll just sit out here and let the water carry me away…
But I’m not even allowed a tortured moment to myself. The front door to the house opens, and my mom’s boy-toy struts out, grinning like a dumbass who just got laid. Yuck.
“Oh, hey,” he smirks. “What’s going on? You must be Pintsy.”
“Pixie,” I reply.
“Ahhh. Pixie.” He looks like a frat leader, and without shame, totally checks me out. “I see you got most of your genes from your mom.”