Justified

by Jay Crownover

  When the tears started, there was no stopping them.

  When the sobs began to rack my body, I shook from head to toe with the force of them.

  It was loud and ugly. It was wild and uncontrollable. It was overwhelming and painful.

  Trying to manage that level of emotion was beyond my current capabilities, so I simply let go and broke down into nothing more than exposed feelings and raw reactions. I’d wanted a moment to fall apart. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to hold myself together quietly enough. Case reappeared and got front-row seats to my sudden hysterics. Through the veil of tears flooding my eyes, I could barely make out the look of absolute horror on his handsome face.

  First, I’d invaded his private sanctuary, now I was shattering into a million delicate pieces, which he no doubt felt responsible for cleaning up and putting back together.

  “I’m s-o-rr-y.” I hiccuped the words out of my damaged throat. “I don’t usu-ally act like th-is.” I lifted my good hand to swipe at my face, but it was shaking so badly it never made it.

  Somehow, I had vibrated my way off the side of the bed and was curled up on the floor. I heard Case swear from somewhere over my head, and a moment later his big frame was folded into a sitting position next to me.

  “Come on, Counselor. I’m not the best with crying women. I’m at a loss as to what to do here.” His hard shoulder pressed into mine, and I could feel the warmth of his thigh where it was pressed against the outside of mine. “We’ve know each other a long time, even if we were never very close. I’ve never seen you break. Not even when we were younger. You never let anything the other kids said about you bother you. And not now when you’re cold as ice in court, even when things don’t go your way.”

  He sounded slightly impressed, and my heart didn’t know what to do with that new information.

  His admission that he was in over his head with my outpouring of emotion was oddly endearing. I was sure he had to comfort victims of crimes and the loved ones of those who were taken while he was on the job. He couldn’t be as much of a stranger to tears and hysterics as he was making out, which meant he was struggling with how to comfort me, not just another victim.

  I sniffed loudly and went still as stone when I felt Case wrap one of his arms around my shaking shoulders. It was the first time he’d ever touched me not out of necessity. My already overtaxed system felt like it was going to short-circuit. I finally managed to wipe some of the moisture covering my face away, but I couldn’t stop the shivering, or the silent sobs making my body quiver.

  “Every single time I’ve pushed, you’ve pushed me right back. That doesn’t happen a lot when your last name is Lawton. My father had so many people living in fear of retribution it became commonplace for most locals to simply move out of my way. Not you. You’ve always stood right in the center of the path. It was cute when we were teenagers. I should’ve checked up on you when I came home after the army. Still not sure why I didn’t. But I do know, without question, that even though you have a lot on your plate right now, none of it is anything you can’t handle. You are one of the strongest people I know.”

  His quiet assessment of my character and our shared history stunned me into silence and shocked the flood of self-pity right out of me. Not to mention the fact he called me cute. Even if he was talking about teenaged me, it still made my bruised heart flutter. My reply was stark and honest because all of my defenses had taken a hell of a beating the last week.

  “I’m really good at hiding how I feel. I was back then, and I still am.” I sniffed again and told myself not to sink into the comforting heat radiating off of his big body. I wanted to crawl into his arms and hide away from the rest of the world. “I hated what those kids called me in school. No one wants to be known as the weird girl.” And no one wanted to feel alone and lost. I turned my head slightly, so I was looking at him. My words put a small frown on his face and pulled his dark eyebrows down. “No one has ever seen me break before now. I’ve always been broken, I’m just very good at keeping the cracks covered up. Right now, I’m not sure I can keep them from showing. I honestly don’t know if I’m equiped to deal with all of this. I feel very much in over my head. I’m used to helping other people escape the danger they’re in. I don’t know how to handle being the one who needs protection.”

  We grew quiet, staring at each other wordlessly. His eyes were impossibly blue this close. I wasn’t sure what I was searching for in their azure depths, but I couldn’t seem to look away.

  Case’s arm tightened where it was slung around my neck, and he used his hold to slowly tug me closer. For a very fleeting second, I felt the brush of his lips against my forehead. If I had two working hands, I would have pinched myself to make sure the barely there caress was real and not imagined. How could such a small, insignificant gesture feel like the most important thing to ever have happened to me? Who could cry when they could no longer breathe? I let my head rest against his shoulder and took a shuddering breath. I felt completely surrounded by him, totally engulfed within his heat and his scent. It was a heady sensation, one that quickly had my head spinning in all kinds of dangerous directions.

  “I know a little something about building a life on a shaky foundation built mostly of lies and deceit. About projecting a confidence you don’t feel. I spent so much time pretending to be someone I wasn’t, so no one looked too closely at what was going on at home, I forgot the man I actually wanted to be.” He sounded slightly forlorn about it.

  “So who did you end up as? The man you were pretending to be, or the man you wanted to be?” I was still trying to figure out a way to be the woman I always intended to be, and I was curious if he felt like he’d grown past the kid trying to be perfect as a smoke screen.

  “I think I ended up being half of each. There is no changing the past. At some point, we just have to learn to live with it. It’s always there, always something we should learn from. I’ll never lose sight of the person I had to become to survive my father, and I’ll never not be the man who made a long list of drastic, desperate decisions to protect his family. I live with those choices, both the good and bad, every single day. But I’ve lived enough life at this point, and I know I need to set a good example for my son, that I think I managed to get a little bit of the man I wanted to be mixed in there. I couldn’t be the man I am now without being the man I was back then. I’m a better man, a better father for each and every struggle I faced. And you’ll be better when the dust settles and you see you’re still standing.”

  I sighed and felt him squeeze my arm reassuringly in response. The simple touch was so much more settling and calming than any of the thousand times David told me everything would be fine after a good night’s sleep. I didn’t feel like I was being placated or patronized. I felt like I was being heard and sympathized with. I never would have guessed a big, tough, hypermasculine man like Case was so full of empathy and compassion. I was starting to see him in an entirely new light, and I liked what I was seeing.

  “Thank you.” The words were hardly more than a murmur but I felt like I screamed them from the top of my lungs.

  “For what?” He sounded genuinely curious over where my gratitude was coming from.

  “For listening and not telling me everything is going to be fine. For being nice to me even with all the history we have between us. You’re a good man, Case Lawton. That’s the kind of man you ended up as…” I let my thrashed voice trail off as he shifted where I was leaning against him.

  I tried not to feel bereft as his warmth pulled away.

  He climbed to his feet next to me, a scowl screwed into place on his rugged features. Without a word he reached down and helped me get awkwardly back to the side of the bed. I blinked in surprise at the sudden movement and the shift in energy between us. It was almost as if I could feel him firmly shutting the door he’d tentativly opened to a possible truce between the two of us.

  “I tried to tell you I was a good guy when you took my kid away from me, and I
missed most of his growing up. I’ve done my best to prove it over and over again, but none of my actions mattered because I was still Conrad Lawton’s son, which made it far too easy for everyone to believe I would be no better as a father than he was. Even you.” He plowed his fingers through his dark hair. “I have to make those calls. Let me know if you need anything.”

  He was out the door in a couple of long-legged strides. I thought he was going to slam the door behind him, but he left it open wide enough so that he could hear me if I did call for him. I listened as his heavy footsteps tapped across the hardwood floors, carrying him a safe distance away.

  He said there was no way to forget the past, that it was always there to learn from. In our case our common history felt like a wide chasm there was no getting across. We’re standing on opposite ledges with very different views on how the events between us played out. I could never tell Case things could have been so much worse if Becca had gotten her way and manged to spread those damning rumors about his time working under his father.

  If Becca’s accusations got out, no one would trust him to do the right thing, and the scandal that ensued would have all but guaranteed the judge took away his son for good. Plus, it would ruin his career. People would accuse him of being exactly like his father. I didn’t want Case—or Hayes—to have to go through that.

  I never decided if my decision was totally ethical. But I truly believed it was the best choice for Hayes—the most important person in the Lawton custody battle. He needed Case in his life. It was a choice I thought about a lot. If it ever got out, I would be in the tricky postion of having to anwser for never doing anything with the accusations Becca made. Initally, I could cover my bases with attorney-client privillage. The things Becca said about Case didn’t need to go past my office door. But once she fired me, I could have done something about the claims she made. Obviously, I couldn’t tell the former sheriff what Becca accused both of them of, but I should have said something to someone so they could investigate any wrongdoing. It was too late for the traumatized young woman, but there were so many other people out there in the same situation who needed to know if they asked for help they were going to get it. It was my biggest secret. One of the reasons I kept my distance from Case was because I didn’t want him to ever have the chance to prove to me I made the wrong choice by keeping my mouth shut. As long as Case did his job and upheld the laws, as long as he protected everyone, my concious was clean.

  Choking down a moan of pain, one that had nothing to do with all my bumps and bruises and everything to do with the way my soul was starting to ache, I wiggled my way fully onto the borrowed bed and stretched out. I closed my eyes and blocked out everything spiraling out of control.

  There wasn’t enough Spackle in all of Texas to patch up the way I was cracking apart now.

  Chapter 8

  Case

  Fuck you and fuck that bitch lawyer.” I stepped back as a cigarette butt was flicked in the direction of my boots. “Kayla woulda come back if that prissy bitch hadn’t talked her into taking my kids and leaving me. Aspen Barlow didn’t have any right to get involved in our personal business. What happens between a husband and a wife should stay between them.”

  It had been a very long week. I was still dealing with the fallout from the shooting at the hospital. My shoulder still felt like it was on fire if I moved wrong. I missed having my kid around every single day. And I was exhausted from tiptoeing around my own home all the time. I knew it was the best place for Aspen to be right now, but that didn’t mean I was at all comfortable having her there, especially since she was still so weak. How close she came to death was obvious every time I had to help her do the simplest of tasks. And the emotion that welled in me when I thought of her no longer being around was confusing the hell out of me. Needless to say, I was more short-tempered than normal and in no mood to deal with Jed Coleman’s attitude.

  I cocked my head to the side and regarded the man in front of me through narrowed eyes. Jed Coleman was a repeat offender. I’d arrested him for everything from driving while drunk to domestic battery. I was able to make the charges stick on the DUI, but my father had been of the same mind as Jed on the domestic battery. Dad wasn’t big on keeping wife-beaters and child abusers behind bars, believing, like Jed, men who raised their hands to their families had a right to do so. Fortunately, the last time Jed went after his wife my father no longer got a say in how he deserved to be punished. Conrad no longer had his title; I did. I put Jed’s violent ass in the slammer and gave an internal cheer when his wife agreed to press charges against him. When I heard Kayla Coleman hired Aspen to handle the divorce, I honestly believed she was going to finally be free of the man who made her and her kids’ lives a living hell.

  “So, you were pissed about Kayla hiring Aspen? Did you decide to do something about it?” I crossed my arms over my chest and gave the wiry, twitchy man a hard look.

  He took out another cigarette and stuck it between his chapped lips. “I ain’t seen Kayla or the kids since the judge put the restraining order in place. I had to have my brother pawn everything I owned to post bail. All my guns, my truck, my TV. Sure, I want to give that cunt lawyer a piece of my mind, but I wouldn’t put it past her to have me locked back up. She’s got connections and money I don’t have. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear she was boning the judge who handled the case. He didn’t waste any time taking my kids away from me.”

  A waft of acrid smoke was blown in my face from the new cigarette he lit up, but I refused to react. I’d been met with pretty much the same kind of animosity from every disgruntled spouse who took up a spot on the list of possible suspects who might want to put a bullet in Aspen’s head. She was not popular among the degenerates and reprobates. It was also highly unnerving to hear the less-than-favorable thoughts I’d once had about Aspen spoken out loud by people I would never want to associate myself with. A sliver of shame lodged its way under my skin, and all I wanted to do was pick it out.

  “Your brother pawned all your firearms?” I knew Jethro Coleman, Jed’s older brother pretty well. I’d actually run against him for the sheriff’s position when my father finally agreed to walk away. Jethro was one of the old guard. A cop my dad had molded in his own vision. They guy was just as dirty as my old man, and just as prejudiced and biased. I’d gotten rid of him as soon as he gave me a viable reason to take his badge and gun. He hated me almost as much as I told myself I hated Aspen. I tried to look past Jed into the interior of the trailer he was now calling home. “I don’t suppose he saved the pawn ticket for them?” It would be really hard to shoot up the hospital without a weapon.

  Jed sneered at me. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  Of course. Nothing was ever as easy as the cop shows on TV made it look. “Where were you Monday morning between ten and noon?” There was a narrow window for the shooter to get into position and take a shot. They would’ve had to know Aspen was getting discharged and what time she was leaving the hospital. Considering one of the nurses had revealed Aspen’s condition to my sister with very little prodding, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine another member of the staff passing her discharge information along if asked.

  “Why? I told you, I ain’t seen my whore-wife or my kids in weeks. If Kayla says otherwise she’s lying.” He puffed his thin chest out and blew out another cloud of smoke in my direction. “I can prove I was nowhere near her Monday or any other day of the week.”

  I arched an eyebrow and rocked back on my heels. He might have an alibi for the shooting, but every single derogatory word he’d used during our conversation matched the ones painted on the walls of the lady lawyer’s office. Maybe I was looking at more than one perpetrator after all. “How can you prove it?”

  Jed smirked at me and gave me a grin that made my skin crawl. “I got me a new girl. I was with her Monday morning. Since I ain’t got a truck no more, she’s been driving me around. You can ask the neighbors. They were outside when she dropped me off.”

>   I bit back a sigh and jotted down the woman’s name and contact info in the note app on my phone. I had no doubt Jed was going to take his hands to his new girlfriend as soon as she pissed him off. That was just the kind of guy he was. He’d gotten used to his older brother being able to clean up his messes for him.

  “I’m gonna follow through with this, Jed. If you’re lying, things aren’t going to be good for you.”

  He snorted and flicked his still lit cigarette in my direction. I was considering writing him a ticket for littering just to make a point when his next words had me going on alert.

  “Things ain’t been good for anyone in this town since you forced your old man out. He understood how things work. He got it. You’re still pissed you couldn’t get out of this town and now you’re taking it out on those of us that like the way things used to be around here.”

  The way things used to be meant picking and choosing who was guilty or innocent based on my father’s long-held prejudices and not the actual law. I lived with it for as long as I could, because I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t leave Hayes, and when I first took the job working under my old man as a deputy, I really thought I was doing the best thing for my family. I was used to looking the other way when my father did things I didn’t agree with, even if they turned my stomach and made my skin feel too tight. I originally had this idea I would be able to change things from within, that I would be the one to balance out my father’s blatant corruption. I underestimated how quickly my father’s influence and position could poison me, and taint what little faith in justice I had left. It took almost no time at all for me to be as miserable at work as I’d been growing up under his heavy thumb. I’d started drinking and getting angry at all the choices I’d made that put me right back at the starting line of my life. Eventually, I was so caught up in my own downward spiral I forgot about trying to subvert my father’s influence over Loveless. But I was smacked in the face with his crooked ways when he put the nail in the coffin of my custody case by trying to strong-arm the judge. That was the moment I said enough was enough, and I determined that I, and Loveless, deserved better than Conrad Lawton in control of the reins.