by Hazel Parker
In short, I had to ignore the urges. I had to ignore that split second of erotic and romantic tension. And I had to ignore everything that was not related to my case.
Still…
“Listen, everyone whom I have dealt with has struggled and feared what would happen when cross-examination began,” she said. “It’s extraordinarily stressful, and the opposing lawyers are under no requirement to be polite. In fact, many of them are deliberately brash and rude in an attempt to get someone like you to crack. But it’s like anything else. If we practice enough, there’s a very good chance we will survive, and we’ll get you either completely free or facing only a couple of minor charges.”
I nodded as I struggled to contain all of the emotions flowing through me at that moment.
“Is everything OK, Splitter?”
It felt like the perfect time to confess how I was feeling. I don’t think she was asking the question to see if everything was OK with the club. She was asking it to see how I felt, and while such a move was incredibly empathic, I think she sensed how I felt about her.
But did she feel the same way? My gut said… my gut actually said yes.
But my gut also said that Amber was a strong woman who could recognize her own faults and weaknesses, and that if I kissed her, she would realize what she had done—no matter how much she may have enjoyed it—and choose to step back. I could not allow myself to confess this, at least not with everything still ongoing.
“I’m nervous as hell,” I said, still leaving the door open for me to confess my feelings for her. “I’m scared that I’m going to go to prison. I can’t ever admit that around the Saints. If they ask me if I’m scared, I make some comment about fu… roughing up the guards in prison. I make some remark about blowing shit up, sorry. But only Trace knows how volatile I am.”
I sighed, looking out the window on the other side. I didn’t want to face Amber as I admitted to my weaknesses. It’s just not what a Saint did. To do so would mark weakness, and while weakness might have been seen as acceptable vulnerability in some circles, in the circle of the Saints as a whole, it was nothing more than a chance to pick on someone.
What I had said was true. Trace was the only person whom I could be fully honest about my emotional valleys and peaks around. The rest, I just am a hard ass motherfucker.
“I just want this all to go away, most especially based on what you are saying about the state not having a ton of direct evidence. If not, and they don’t like to prosecute cases they can’t win, it seems like they’re desperate. Which, I get it, we ruffle some feathers and shit, sorry. But… I mean, come on! You know! It’s just…”
To my surprise, a tear streaked down my face. Now I was really glad that I wasn’t facing Amber. I would have to make sure that I got my face clean before I saw her, lest she think me some sort of weak, pathetic excuse for a man.
“Hey, Splitter,” she said. “It’s alright. We all deal with these thoughts. We all have things we’re afraid of. Even me.”
I waited for her to elaborate, but she did not. I suspected that there was something she wasn’t telling me about, something that she was going through… I kind of wanted to know, just because of how I felt about her, but I could not make the argument that it was in favor of helping the case. That argument just was not valid.
And if it was, well, Amber would have said something specific about it by now. It wasn’t my business, at least not on a professional level.
If things became personal, though…
“For right now, though, we just need to focus on what we can control, OK? I know it’s hard. You’re telling me a lot of things that I need to know but are also very personal. If I’m being honest, I have never had a client whom I felt as close to personally as you. But… we have to remain professional, OK?”
Was that just the equivalent of the “I like you, but we have to remain friends” conversation? It sure seemed like it.
But then… why would she still be looking at me as she is right now?
“I agree,” I said, still not facing her. I did wipe my face with my hands, though, so it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out I was feeling emotional to some degree. “This is a nice little bond we have.”
From my vantage point, I could see Amber in the reflection of the window, and I could see her smiling in a way that suggested she didn’t think I could see her. When I turned, having finally felt enough faith that she wouldn’t judge me as a crybaby, the smile became more professional, but I knew the truth.
We were both lying to ourselves a little bit about how much we liked each other, but that was OK. It was part of the dance, anyway.
Wow, didn’t think I would be this calm and rational about something like this!
“Do you need anything else from me?” I said, hoping to preempt her questioning my facial expression.
“No, not at the moment,” she said, very softly, as if she felt like words were interrupting something special between us. “I will message you for our next meeting. We’ll need to practice cross-examination. And understand this, Splitter: they will try to rattle you. So when we do our cross-examining, I will try to rattle you. But you have to keep calm. Even just looking guilty can be as bad as having evidence of guilt. Understood?”
“One hundred percent,” I said, even though I knew full well both of our minds were elsewhere.”
“Good. In the meantime,” she said as she put the car in reverse and began driving me back home to the shop. “Let’s let you catch up on some sleep, hmm? Since it is well before your wake-up time.”
I just chuckled at that and let my face stare out the window. I was in good hands with Amber. I truly believed that. It just sucked that I acted like such a crybaby, almost literally, around her.
After a couple of minutes of silence, I wanted us to make sure our last memory of this car ride was not awkward silence or a deeply emotional conversation, but something more lighthearted.
“So can I guess,” I said, “that when you woke up this morning, we were still partying?”
“That depends on what time you think I woke up.”
“Hmm,” I pondered. “Well given the fact that you are an actual hard-working human being who has a strong reputation in her field and doesn’t drink much… I’m going to say you were up by eight.”
Amber just started cracking up. I quickly realized that my notion of what was very early and what was actually very early were two very different things.
“Try six. So, wait, does that mean you were partying until eight this morning?”
“Me? Nah,” I said, which was the truth. “I passed out sometime around two or three in the morning. But these parties have a way until it’s the last man standing. And so I wasn’t surprised when Trace was up this morning.”
“I think he was just hungover,” she said. “Like you.”
“Oh, calling it as you see it; I see how it is!” I said, and soon we were both laughing.
She pulled up to the shop, and I turned to her.
“Thank you again for everything, Amber,” I said.
I went for a hug, and though she seemed resistant at first, she fell into it once my arms were around her. It wasn’t so much she didn’t want the hug as I think she didn’t want what the hug implied, but once it happened… well, who was to resist?
“I’ll see you…”
“Soon,” she said. “Sooner rather than later.”
That’s exactly what I want to hear.
“Good,” I said.
With that, I got out of the car, waved goodbye, and headed back to the clubhouse for some much-needed sleep.
If I could shake off my oddly giddy excitement from how that car ride had ended, that was.
Chapter 6: Amber
What is going on with me?
And… what should I do about it?
I didn’t pull away from the shop until I saw that Splitter had completely entered the clubhouse, assuring me that he wasn’t going to have a nap in the middle
of the street. That might have been a stupid thing to assume, given he held his own in the car, but…
Some sort of different instinct was kicking in with me. It was less lawyer, less professional, and more… tender and caring. I’d even put my hand on him, something that I would never do. I had sworn that I would never give any of my male clients any indication that I was even seeing them as a friend, let alone as something more; even when such an act would have been ideal and practical, I usually avoided it.
But now? I’d hugged him. I’d put my hand on him. And, oh my, had we had a long and very intense stare.
It was all just nearly too much to contemplate in the immediate aftermath of my divorce. I’d only signed the paperwork two days ago, and now, I was already touching and embracing another man?
God, is this OK? Am I moving on too quickly? Or is what I’m doing just what’s best for me? I mean, Josh has already moved out… he’s out of the picture. But still… it’s just so fast…
For the rest of the car ride back to my place, I prayed, and I prayed for guidance and an answer. I wasn’t necessarily doing anything illegal, and from the perspective of a man with a woman, I did not think it was wrong. But ethically…
Catholic guilt is a real thing.
But then again, so is the attraction and energy that I have to Splitter. I can’t explain it, it just is.
While I had admittedly gotten food for clients before, most of it was as a professional courtesy and as something I brought to the office for meetings; it was most certainly not something where I ate in the car with them while they were hungover and emotional. I had also played therapist before, but always from across the desk and never so close as to touch the individual.
There were some blurred lines right now. And I couldn’t say if I felt guilty about the fact that I almost didn’t care that there were blurred lines.
At the very least, I had a feeling that if I could hold out until after the trial… well, some things might just go down after. I didn’t know what—Josh was the only person I had sexually been involved with, and I kept telling myself that I needed to save myself for my next marriage.
Except, well, as much as it might have been against my prudish nature to admit it… I loved sex. I really, really enjoyed it. When Josh and I had come together on our first night, I wondered why we had spent several years never doing it. Between us, I always phrased it as making love, in part because Josh was something of a romantic in bed.
But a part of me craved for that rock-the-bed, break-the-chair, slam-against-the-wall kind of sex that books and movies suggested. Part of me wanted to know what that was like, if for no other reason than to compare it to what I had. And when I looked at Splitter, a motorcycle club member, an outlaw, a bad… a bad man in the best way possible—I still could not bring myself to swear—well, I had to admit, now that I allowed myself to think of it, my mind did go there.
I just had to figure out whether or not it was wrong to have sex outside of marriage after a marriage. And if it was… was it going to stop me?
I can’t believe I just had that thought. Wow. Confession on Sunday is going to take up quite a bit of time. I hope Father Johns is understanding of everything I am going through.
If nothing else, at least Splitter made for an ideal type of client post-divorce in that he made it easy for me to forget everything that had happened in the previous few days. Of course, such forgetfulness was very short-lived, especially when I had to go home to the house that I had once been married in, but with it so recent and so close in the mirror…
Yeah, how could I forget such a thing?
I pulled up to my house and parked the car. Before I got out, though, I checked my email, just to see how soon I would have to get back to the office.
The answer, unfortunately, was within the hour. I had about five emails from the same soccer star, begging me to see him as soon as possible, along with a few other arrogant notes and headlines.
“I am your most important client. Call me.”
“Are you really going to keep me waiting?”
“This is URGENT!!!”
“You need to call me NOW!”
“I’m changing if you don’t call now.”
I rolled my eyes, knowing full well said soccer star’s troubles—he just was facing a reckless speeding charge of going 110 miles per hour on the freeway. He hadn’t committed murder, he hadn’t burned down a building, and he hadn’t stolen weapons. Even if the judge decided to throw everything at him and punish him in the most severe way possible, he wouldn’t face anything worse than a suspended license and some fines—and given that he made millions of dollars a year, a few Uber rides would not kill him and quite honestly might save him.
But that was the nature of taking on high-profile cases. None of them had ever heard the word no in their life, and none of them ever expected to. Granted, most of them backed down when I reminded them who was in charge, but a client like Splitter was a nice way to remind folks of how to behave in a client-lawyer profession.
Just ignore all of our romantic and flirtatious behavior, thoughts, and words.
I sent the star an email back, advising him that I had other clients to deal with and would call him around noon. I knew that he was going to be mad, but I also knew that just a few quick words of encouragement and soothing would have him back to his chipper, normal self within seconds.
I got out of the car to immediately see a photographer snapping a photo of me from the streets.
“Really?” I said, unable to hide my frustration. “You’re going to take a photo of me getting out of my car? I’m not Jennifer Lopez, you know.”
I muttered under my breath, but the cameraman continued to snap photos, the shutter of his camera going off. I was tempted just to walk inside, slam the door, and take a deep breath, but there was something unusual about this. Why was he on my street? What was it about this particular instance that made me nervous?
So rather than ignore him or yell at him, I decided to do something that most lawyers seemed to fail to understand but what worked remarkably well—I sought to empathize with him.
“Hey,” I said, walking over. “What’s going on? How come you are here?”
My tone was soft and gentle, and I think it caught the photographer off-guard. He certainly visibly relaxed when I moved forward and didn’t yell at him as I imagined over ninety percent of his subjects did. He even smiled.
“I’m on assignment to cover you right now after your divorce,” he said. “We saw you in a car with some man in Green Hills.”
Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. This can’t be good. This definitely cannot be good.
“What do you mean?” I said, trying to play coy.
“Here, take a look,” the man said.
Someone from behind our car, while we were at Brothers Bagels, had snapped numerous photos of us in the car leaning forward, talking, and even one of me extending my arm forward to touch him. The photos also showed Splitter’s tattoos, making it very apparent that there was no mistaking him for just some random guy. The paparazzi had me in the car with Splitter.
My mind began to race as I wondered what this would do to my legal career. The photographs were not incriminating per se—it wasn’t like I was being caught having sex with him or kissing him—but the things they suggested were not positive. I didn’t think the California State Bar would disbar me, but… why risk it?
This was not quite the worst-case scenario, but it wasn’t exactly a great look. My mind began to rush.
“I was working and client confidentiality restricts me from commenting further.”
And with your kind constantly hunting me and trying to get the inside scoop on what’s happening.
“Are you sure that’s it?”
I looked down and saw that the camera he was using was still recording. Realizing that everything that I was saying here was going to be public at some point, I just smiled and said, “Yep.”
I then turned and walked inside,
ignoring the further inquiries from the photographer. When I closed the door, I literally slumped to the floor, exhausted and disappointed in myself.
And then, following in Splitter’s lead, I began to cry.
My whole life was turning into one giant mess at the moment. I couldn’t control myself around the bad biker boy client, my marriage had fallen apart, my other clients were acting obnoxious and arrogant, I had to work on Sunday… I just felt like a woman steering the Titanic by herself in a field of icebergs. Hitting one not only was likely, it seemed completely inevitable.
Much of this, I knew, was precipitated by the media coverage that would follow me, which disgusted me and disheartened me. I began to seriously empathize with my clients who constantly complained about the persistent media coverage of their private lives; when I’d first started as a lawyer, I could understand it as an outsider, but I couldn’t truly appreciate how much it disrupted things and made it difficult.
Now, though? It was a mess.
I knew that was the ground point for all things stressful and negative in my life. If I could find a way to get rid of that, if I could find a way to eradicate the danger of that in my life, then things would get much better. I could never get rid of it, but I could account for it and mitigate the damage so much that it would be like it was actually eliminated.
I knew what this meant, though.
Splitter and I could never be seen in public again. And since my office was considered public—and now, apparently, my house too—there was really only one place I could think of where we wouldn’t be in public. And it was the place I had just been to that left me feeling a little repulsed. That, however, was the price I paid for unwittingly violating my own rule about laying low and not making oneself a public figure of notoriety.
For the next twenty minutes, I must have sat against that door praying non-stop for a different kind of answer to come to me. I felt like I was sacrificing some serious morals by agreeing to do business at the Saints’ shop, but I could not find a better answer. We would have to meet there and the Saints would have to take care of the media.
