Taking Mine (34 page)

“Justin,” I say, breaking the silence. “What happened to your Jeep?”

He breathes deep before blowing it out through his nose, blindsided by my question, and equally annoyed. “Are you going to keep building your case against me, Lilly? Is that what you’re doing? Only asking the questions that you know catch me in a lie?”

“It’s a simple question.”

“Don’t deflect,” he says. “You already gathered that it wasn’t mine.” He shakes his head, turning away from me. “Don’t bother speaking to me until you’re ready to see the truth, because I’m tired of your games.”

“Really novel coming from you,” I say to his retreating back.

This really pisses him off and he turns, punctuating every step back toward me. He leans over, using both of his arms to cage me in against the bench. “I never played games, Lilly,” he says, his face turning redder by the second. “Everything I said and everything I did was because I was trying to protect you. If you need someone to direct your blame and anger toward, look at yourself.”

My head physically snaps back from his words, and he doesn’t even flinch. He pushes off the bench, his steely gaze locked on mine as he walks away, leaving me by myself for the first time in weeks. I look around to see if anyone noticed our interaction, but the front stoop of the courthouse is surprisingly vacant.

Good. No one can see the heartache that I’m trying to rope in as I force the lump in my throat down. I give myself five minutes. That’s it. I center myself, concentrating on my feet contacting with the ground, and my heartbeat matching the rhythm.

Justin is pacing outside of his SUV, a cigarette between his lips when I approach, but I don’t look at him as I pass by.

He says my name.

I ignore it.

He says it again.

I open my door and his hand slams it shut. It’s like his words slowly come into focus and I catch the tail end of his sentence.

“…really sorry.”

I try to concentrate on his face, but it takes too much effort, and I open my door and get in. He’s saying something through the window, but it’s muffled. I drive home, and I can’t recall how I got here. I walk inside, Justin on my heels, following me as I undress. I climb into bed, and he sits at the foot, everything he says fuzzy around the edges. I fall asleep feeling like my grasp on reality is slipping, my life jumbled into pieces too confusing to put together.

THE CORRECTIONS OFFICER
hands me back my ID, too bored and too busy to bother looking up from her paperwork to make sure I match my identity. With the amount of paperwork and background screenings it took to be approved, it’s strange that it’s so lax to actually get in the facility. The guard points to the rules hanging on the wall and tells me to read over them before I go through the metal detector. After a relatively personal pat down and pocket search, I’m directed through a door and into a room the size of a small cafeteria.

Kip stands from a table in the middle, smiling when he spots me. We hug, only briefly, the rules stating no contact longer than a few seconds, and we sit.

“You look good,” I say, pleasantly surprised by his appearance. His hair is cut shorter than I’ve seen it in years, and he’s wearing a uniform similar to scrubs.

“You look like hell,” he says. “Have you been sleeping?”

“Yes, Kip.”

“Don't roll your eyes at me. You look like you have two black eyes.”

I self-consciously run my fingers under the bags I know are there. Personal experience has told me this doesn't work, they don't magically disappear, but I can still wish.

“School is giving me a run for my money.” I chuckle, but it doesn't create the effect I was aiming for.

“Justin told me you're finishing off the semester from home because one of Jimmy’s pissants attacked you in class.”

I’m flabbergasted. “You talked to Justin? Why would you do that?”

“Lilly, you won’t tell me anything, and he's by your side twelve hours out of the day. If anyone knows what's going on, it's him. And it's on both sides of the equation.”

“You have no right.”

This triggers something in his calm facade. “Tell me that I don't have a right to know what's going on in your life when I'm the one who raised you,” he says, pointing to the table with every word.

Kip's never used the pseudo-father excuse before. I've said it, he's acknowledged it, but he's never incited it himself. He never wanted to overstep our dad's memory or belittle it in some way. But it is what it is, and for Kip to use it now means he's at the end of his rope, so I need to give him some slack.

“Everything's fine. Attacked is an exaggerated term for what actually happened.”

“He had a knife, Lilly.”

“Yes, I was there,” I say. “And why do people only say my name when they're mad at me?”

He sighs. “I don't want to fight. We only get an hour.”

“You're absolutely right,” I say. “We should talk about you. How's prison treating you?”

He smiles. “The food sucks, the people suck, and there’s a perpetual shortage of toilet paper in the commissary.”

I laugh. “Like on back order?”

“Purportedly I should be receiving my share sometime after Christmas. Lucky for me, my bunk mate has a thing for junk food, so I was able to trade two candy bars and a bag of chips for a roll.”

“Are you bored? Do you need me to bring you some magazines or something?”

“I'm allowed to receive a monthly subscription, so I’m going to do that, and they sell mp3 players. They’re supposed to be assigning me a job on Monday, so hopefully it'll give me something to do.”

Kip's attempting to put on a brave face for me, and I need to give that to him. If I look like I'm falling apart or that I feel sorry for him, it'll only make things worse. Kip's a doer, and inside prison he can't do much of anything other than fret over all the things he can't change.

“So…were you ever going to tell me about the bank account Dad left?”

He runs his hands through his hair, folding his arms over the table. “I was going to tell you eventually. I didn't even know it existed until I went through all the paperwork I found in the hall closet a few years ago.”

“That's a lot of money. Where would he have gotten it from?”

He gives me a look. “I don’t know, but I never touched it. I mean, we were surviving without it.”

“Barely,” I say.

“We survived,” he repeats. “But now it's yours.”

“I don't know, Kip,” I say, scared by the thought of possessing that much money.

He shakes his head, already gearing up to argue. He's probably already mapped out all the bullet points in his head. “No shop is going to hire a female mechanic and that's if you find anyone who will actually take you seriously. Once you get into graduate school, you won't be able to work, and you're going to need money to pay tuition and live on. You can't do that working as a waitress or at an ice cream shop.”

“I'll pull out student loans.”

He snorts. “That's your best argument? Are you sure law school is right for you?”

I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Fine. But I'm only taking half. The other half is for you.”

“Agreed,” he says. “I'm going to need you to put money into my account every month if I'm going to keep having to bribe people for toilet paper.”

We laugh, it’s a little too loud, and a guard warns us to keep it down. “Lilly,” he says, growing serious. “I need to tell you something.”

“Kip, I really don't think I need any more surprises,” I say, only partially joking.

His grimace looks painful when he says, “The raid at Toby's was a setup.”

“Yeah…I've kind of gathered that,” I say, sarcastic.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Not in the way you think. Justin, um—” He pauses to clear his throat, and I find myself holding my breath at the sound of Justin’s name. “I knew Justin was undercover.”

Definitely not breathing. Matter of fact, I might be dead because there's no way in hell this is real life. “What,” I mumble.

“Justin came to me after you found the evidence at the shipyard. He met me outside of Toby's the next day, saying he had something he needed to discuss with me. He explained that he was an agent undercover for the DEA and that we had gotten mixed up with a case they've been investigating on John Monroe, a prominent drug trafficker in the area.” He pauses, giving me time to digest what he's told me so far. “He proposed a plan. I would set up a meeting with Jimmy to distract him from the DEA confiscating the evidence at the shipyard.”

“The weekend Justin took me to meet his family,” I clarify.

“Yes,” he says. “We didn't want you to be near if it went bad.”

“But it did.”

He nods, solemn. “When Jimmy found out that his product was confiscated, he retaliated. He held Dan as ransom and demanded that we pay for the merchandise he lost plus interest in twenty-four hours, or he was going to kill him.”

“How did Jimmy know who turned him in?”

“He didn't. Lance said we were just suspect.”

“And how do we know that Lance wasn’t the one that told him?”

“Because Lance tried to warn us that Jimmy was going to jump the gun. We scheduled to meet at Toby's and said we'd bring the money in exchange for Dan. Justin said it would be enough evidence to arrest Jimmy in the act.”

“I was never supposed to be there,” I say, the pieces falling into place.

“No,” he says. “You were never supposed to be implemented in any way. Up to that point, Justin hadn't mentioned your name.”

“It was always supposed to be you who got off scot-free with the plea deal,” I say, horror slowly seeping into my veins.

Kip's smile is melancholy as he nods slowly. “Neither one of us was going to serve time.”

Water pools in my vision and I shakily try to keep them at bay. “This is all my fault.”

“No. No, Lilly. You just walked in at the wrong time. That's it. We should have told you what we were planning.”

“Why didn't you?” I say. “It's not like I would have disagreed.”

“Justin thought that if he went through with it, and everything turned out all right in the end—”

“That I would be able to forgive him for lying to me,” I finish.

“He looks like shit, Lilly.”

I know. I’ve seen him. It's an entirely different heartache now. This one is self-fulfilling.

THE SKY IS OVERCAST
when I step out of the prison doors, but the glimpses of sunlight through the clouds hurt my sensitive eyes. Visitation ended over an hour ago, but I allotted extra time to refill Kip's account and to cry in the bathroom. I tried to reduce the swelling by splashing cold water on my face, but I double-checked, and I still look neurotic. At this point, I should just get used to it. The wind cuts into my freshly dried cheeks and I duck my face from the sting. The inside of my car is my shield as I start to get in. Justin's engine follows mine, and he exits the parking lot right behind me.

I only drive a few miles before I pull off the interstate and park behind a dingy bar that's closed for the day. I don't bother looking up as I open the passenger door to Justin's SUV when I get in.

“Can you do me a favor?” I ask, finally gaining the courage to meet his eyes. Shame fills me as I find weariness pasted across every inch of him. I've done that to him. I pull a folded note from my pocket and hand it to him. “Can you make sure Dan's wife, Melanie, gets this and the money that I left with you?”

“If that's what you want, of course.”

I nod. “It is.”

He retrieves his wallet and slides the paper in it, placing it in the middle console for safe keeping. I need to say something, but every quiet second expands in the confined space, and I fight the urge to chicken out. His thumb runs over his bottom lip and it makes me smile.

“What?” he says, a confused smirk kicking up the side of his mouth. “What are you smiling at?”

“Did they not teach you how to hide nervous ticks?”

He pulls his thumb back and looks at it. “I never realize when I do it.”

Reaching over the middle, he cautiously runs that same thumb along my cheek. His touch is feather light, almost like he’s worried it’ll break me. “I'm so sorry,” I say.

His lips part as he breathes in my words. His touch stills, and I lean into his hand, all but begging for him not to stop. “I shouldn't have said what I did at the courthouse.”