by Julie Cannon
“Her name is Leigh Marshall. She’s a member at Copperwind. Marcus can give you her number.”
“You don’t know it?” Bernie asked.
“It’s in my phone in my apartment.”
“Okay. I’ll get it from him. How is she going to react when I call?”
“I have no idea,” Peyton said honestly. “She didn’t know.”
“That you were on parole?”
“Anything,” Peyton said flatly.
“Is she, uh…”
“A one-night stand?” Peyton asked, the question almost sticking in her throat. When Bernie nodded she said, “No. We’ve been seeing each other for a while.”
“Okay. Let me see what I can do. I’ll get your laptop and look at the recording. I’ll show it to the judge assigned to your case, and if it’s as clear as you say, the charges should be dropped and we can keep her out of it. Until then, sit tight.” He started to rise from the metal chair.
Panic rose in Peyton’s throat, threatening to choke her. Claustrophobia overwhelmed her; her breathing quickened, and her hands started shaking. Bernie sat back down, his beefy hand covering hers. It was little comfort.
“Take a deep breath, Peyton. You’re going to be all right. I’ll go to your place right now and get the recording in front of the judge as soon as I can. Your arraignment is scheduled for three this afternoon. Hopefully you’ll be out of here to have dinner in your own kitchen.”
Peyton had pulled herself together by the time her attorney left. The guard escorted her back to her cell, a little rougher than he needed to be, the handcuffs too tight. She’d learned never to complain or it just got worse. When the cell door behind her closed, Peyton sat on the cold, hard metal bench to do the only thing she could—wait.
Chapter Thirty-two
“She’s what?”
When Leigh had gotten home and collapsed just inside her front door, she remained there until the sun started coming in through the shutters. She’d managed to call her admin and had her cancel her meetings for the day. No way would she be able to function today. She finally managed to get up and into the shower and make it to the restaurant to meet Jill for lunch, after she’d stopped at an AIDS clinic for a blood test. She would make an appointment at her gynecologist this afternoon.
“She’s an ex-convict. She killed the man that kidnapped and assaulted her little sister.”
Jill dropped her fork, the clatter on her plate causing heads to turn their way. “Holy fuck,” Jill said, echoing her own sentiment for hours.
“Was it like self-defense or something?”
“No. From what I read he hadn’t gone to trial yet. She just shot him in his driveway.”
“Holy mother fuck.” Jill fell back in her seat, the shock on her face mirroring how Leigh felt.
“I guess there was a tape or something he made, so it was pretty clear he did it.”
“Why did she do it? I mean, I know why she did it, but what did she say?”
“I didn’t read where she ever made a statement anywhere.”
Jill looked confused. “How did you find out about this?”
“I learned about it at two thirty this morning when her parole officer was standing in her living room.”
“What? Wait, what? Are you seeing her? You need to start at the beginning,” Jill demanded.
Leigh relayed the events leading up to Peyton’s parole officer barging into Peyton’s apartment. When she finished, she was exhausted. She’d been up for over thirty-six hours, several of which were sex-filled, the last ten with more than a little emotional shock thrown in.
“Jesus, Leigh. What are you going to do?”
“I certainly can’t see her anymore. I can’t have that mess in my life. If Larry or anyone else at work found out…I’ve got enough to deal with. I don’t need this spectacle piled on.”
“To quote a cliché, she’s served her time and paid her dues to society. Doesn’t she have the right to start over?”
“Of course she does,” Leigh said quickly. “But not as part of my life.”
“Leigh, you like this woman. Give her a chance to explain.”
“What’s to explain? She killed somebody.”
“Yeah, but the guy deserves to be dead. Don’t you think there are some mitigating circumstances here? I know you’re upset—”
“Upset doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel,” Leigh shot back. “I feel used.”
“How did she use you? You just said you two were just having a good time.”
“She didn’t tell me she’d killed someone, that she’d been in prison,” Leigh said, like that was explanation enough.
“Did you tell her that when you were fifteen you broke into your boyfriend’s house and stole his T-shirt after he broke up with you?”
“That’s not the same.”
“No, it’s not, but my point is.”
“Well, you’re going to have to spell it out to me. My mind is mush.”
“It’s not like you were getting serious and needed to share each other’s life stories.” Jill stopped, her eyebrows scrunching together. She looked at Leigh hard, understanding dawning on her face. “You fell for her.”
Before Leigh had a chance to refute Jill’s observation she said, “Don’t lie to yourself, Leigh. I think you’re upset because of how it would look having Peyton in your life.”
“Don’t I have a reason to? She killed somebody, for God’s sake. What’s my mother going to say? And my dad? Holy crap. He’ll shit bricks.”
“Aren’t you maybe getting ahead of yourself? Have you spoken to her today?”
“No. The last I saw of her she was being tossed into the back of her parole officer’s car. I have no idea where she is. Even if I did, she’s the one who deceived me. She needs to come to me.”
“Will you listen to her?”
“What’s there to say, Jill?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Leigh. I know you’re brilliant, but there is more to the story here than what you read in a few articles on the Internet.”
It was more than a few stories, but Leigh didn’t correct her. “It seems pretty cut-and-dried to me.”
“How can you be so flippant?”
“I’m not,” Leigh snapped, then immediately felt remorse. She had no reason to take it out on Jill, who was only trying to be helpful. “I’m sorry. I’ve been up since six yesterday morning, and I’m exhausted.” She pulled a twenty from her wallet and laid it on top of the bill the waiter had left between them a few minutes ago. “I’ve got to get some sleep.”
Leigh stood and kissed Jill on the cheek. “I’ll call you later, okay?” She didn’t wait for an answer, just went out the front door to head home.
Leigh was tired, but too tired to sleep. Even though her body was exhausted, her mind was still moving, albeit at a much slower pace.
She didn’t want to sit and think. She needed to be busy. She just wanted the entire relationship with Peyton to go away, fade into the background of her brain and not come out again. She knew it was childish to think that if she ignored it, then it hadn’t happened. But she just wanted to erase it from her memory.
* * *
Peyton wasn’t home by dinner but did collapse on her couch in time for the late news. She wasn’t the headline, thank God, and was relieved when her name wasn’t mentioned anywhere. Somehow, she had managed to escape this ordeal without notice.
Bernie had been able to retrieve her laptop and show the recording to the arraigning judge, who promptly dropped all charges and released her. The director of the parole department had met with her and Bernie for three hours, taking her statement of not only the incident she recorded, but the other times Conway had been in her apartment. He vowed to look into her allegations.
A knock on her door made her jump, but she calmed down when she heard Marcus’s voice.
“Peyton? You okay?”
Peyton’s arms were heavy with fatigue as she opened the door.
“Hey,” Marcus said, looking a
t her.
Peyton knew she must look a mess. She was wearing the same clothes she’d had on yesterday, complete with jailhouse funk. She’d seen dark smudges under her eyes when she used the bathroom just before Bernie picked her up.
“Hey” was just about all she could say.
“You okay?” Marcus asked again, concern in his voice. He didn’t make any move to come in, and Peyton was grateful for that. She wasn’t up to twenty questions or entertaining.
“Yeah.”
“Need anything?”
“No. Just to get some sleep.” She probably wouldn’t, though, the nightmare of almost returning to Nelson too fresh in her mind.
“Come over for coffee in the morning if you feel up to it.” That was Marcus’s way of giving her the option to talk if she wanted to.
Bernie had told Peyton that Marcus had come to the jail, but since he wasn’t allowed to see her, Bernie had managed to convince him to go home. He looked almost as tired as she felt.
“Thanks. I might take you up on that.”
Marcus turned and walked back down the stairs, and Peyton closed and locked the door. Bernie had returned her laptop, and as tired as she was, Peyton made sure it was ready to record again, if need be. She refused to be caught off guard if Conway came back, this time looking for revenge.
It was after midnight when her head hit the pillow. It was the pillow where Leigh had lain her head, and she inhaled deeply. Leigh’s scent still clung to the fabric, and a thousand images flashed in her mind. Leigh straddling her, her back arched, head thrown back in pleasure. Peyton’s hands covering her breasts as Leigh rocked against her. Leigh looking at her, her mouth between Peyton’s legs. Leigh laughing when Peyton tickled her, sighing in pleasure, calling out Peyton’s name every time she came.
She replayed every time she and Leigh were intimate, knowing memories would be all she’d have from this point forward. Peyton rolled onto her side. Sleep refused to come so she got up and dressed, grabbed her keys, and headed out the door.
Chapter Thirty-three
Leigh jumped at the knock on her front door. It was late, and it was either Peyton or maybe even that sleazy guy—her parole officer. He frightened her, and she didn’t want to see Peyton until she had a better handle on her emotions and a grip on the new reality of who she was.
Leigh had fallen for Peyton, hard. She was strikingly attractive and had a body that made her senseless. In a very short time, Peyton had learned how to make her beg for release and plead for more at the same time, and she wanted to spend the rest of her life discovering every nuance of her. Until her recent discovery.
Leigh didn’t know if she was angry that Peyton hadn’t trusted her enough to tell her or scared shitless because of what she’d done and what it implied. Logic and emotions were at war inside her, and she was exhausted with the up-and-down and back-and-forth attempt to make sense of it all. She needed peace and quiet to sort it out, and being in the same room with Peyton would definitely not bring that.
Peyton made her crazy. She turned her orderly world catawampus, which made her very uncomfortable. She avoided chaos at all costs, studying everything at varying angles and weighing the pros and cons. She’d been determined to be viewed as a professional and not labeled a typical woman, with all the stereotypical emotions and weaknesses that accompanied that title, however much bullshit it was. She’d practiced long and hard and trained herself to process a magnitude of information in an instant and make well-reason decisions.
Since Peyton had come into her life, she couldn’t think straight, often daydreamed, and felt like a schoolgirl with her first crush. She was full of energy, almost euphoric, and butterflies flitted around in her stomach all day. She was a mess and, after the last twenty hours, a fucking mess.
“Leigh?”
A mass of emotions churned as Leigh thought about pretending she wasn’t home. She was relieved it was Peyton but wasn’t ready to see her.
“Leigh, please open the door.” Peyton’s voice was muffled by the thick, metal door.
Leigh opened the door but only a few inches. She needed the barrier between them to keep her head straight. The instant she saw Peyton standing in the warm glow of her porch light, she knew that wouldn’t work.
“What do you want, Peyton? It’s late.” Leigh offered the time as an excuse, hoping that would make her just go away. She didn’t know if she had the strength to do it herself.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Peyton, I’m exhausted. I ca…don’t want to talk to you right now.”
“Leigh. Let me explain.”
“You should have told me before you fucked me!” Leigh exploded, her nerves closer to the surface than she realized. She was shocked at her words and the emotions behind them.
Peyton stepped back as if she’d slapped her, hurt and anger clear on her face. She pulled her lips in and frowned. “If that’s the way you think about what we shared, I can’t do anything to change your mind. But you owe me the courtesy of listening to my side of the story.”
“I owe you?” Leigh asked dumbfounded. “I owe you?” she repeated. “I’m not the one who kept something as big as this to herself. I owe you?” she asked again, at a loss at this entire conversation.
“Leigh, it had nothing to do with us—”
“Nothing to do with us? Are you out of your fucking mind? It has everything to do with us. You killed someone. And you can actually stand there and tell me it has nothing to do with us?” Leigh had fully opened the door some time during the last few seconds.
“If you’d have let me finish, you would have heard me say that it had nothing to do with us in the beginning. I thought we were just…a…a thing that would burn itself out. I didn’t see any need for you to know.”
“Don’t you tell any of the women you sleep with?”
“It’s not like an STD,” Peyton said, running her hands through her hair. “They’re not going to catch something. If you’d just let me—”
“And what are you going to say? Whatever I want to hear so we can continue this, this…” Leigh waved her hands between them. “What did you call it…thing?”
Peyton stood straighter, her expression serious. “I never lied to you.”
“And lying by omission is okay?”
Peyton put her hands up as if signaling her surrender. “Look. We’re not going to get anywhere standing in your doorway. May I come in?”
“No.”
“Leigh, please.”
Leigh felt her resolve waver, and before it did, she said, “I can’t talk to you right now, Peyton.” She closed the door before the memories of how she felt when in Peyton’s arms changed her mind.
Chapter Thirty-four
“You had cameras on us?” Leigh asked, sounding both appalled and furious.
“No,” Peyton said quickly, trying to defuse the situation. “I only used them when Conway came in, and you saw why.”
They were sitting in a back booth in the Copperwind restaurant. It was six days after she knocked on Leigh’s front door, and Peyton had been shocked when Leigh called and agreed to see her.
“I turned them on just before I opened the door.”
That explanation seemed to appease Leigh, though she might not be happy when she realized the one in the bedroom had probably caught her getting dressed.
“Conway is a prick, and I knew he was doing stuff he had no authority or right to do.”
“Like that?” Leigh asked, motioning to Peyton’s bruised face and the black stitches on her cheek.
“He never laid a hand on me before. It was always words and innuendos and sarcasm. He—”
Leigh held her hands up. “Wait. Start at the beginning. The very beginning.”
“I killed someone,” Peyton said simply, because it was that simple. Sure, there were circumstances, there always were. But the details didn’t matter.
Peyton told her story. It was factual and without emotion. She’d long ago buried those emotions; s
he’d had to in order to survive. Slowly and methodically Peyton recounted the events of the days leading up to the morning she went to prison.
Many different emotions crossed Leigh’s face. Shock, horror, disgust, fear, anger, pain, and many more. Somewhere in there, Peyton thought she caught a glimpse of compassion.
“And you couldn’t have told me before we…” Leigh gasped and put her hand to her mouth as if she wanted to throw up.
Peyton didn’t answer. She had nothing left to say.
“I’m sorry. I can’t have this in my life.” Leigh slid out of the booth.
Peyton didn’t watch her walk away.
* * *
“She killed someone.” The words kept echoing in Leigh’s head like the dull throb of a bad headache. The shutters were closed in her living room, the lights dim. Jill was seated beside her on the couch.
“She told her story in almost clinical terms and added very little emotion to the facts. It was almost as if she were reading the investigation report written by the detectives.” It had taken two beers for Leigh to tell Jill all the events leading up to this point. “I’m not even an armchair psychologist, but is that her way of distancing herself from the actual event? I don’t know if I’d be so unemotional. But then again, it happened more than ten years ago. Do you ever put something like that away and move on?” Those were only a few of the questions Leigh had been asking herself. She was rambling, her thoughts still scattered.
“It seems as though she’s trying to,” Jill said quietly.
“What am I supposed to do?” Leigh asked, now pacing the room. “Does she expect me to simply say, ‘Hey, no problem. People kill each other every day. It doesn’t reflect on their character or whether they could or would do it again.’ What dream is she living in? And what do I say to my friends and my family? ‘Mom, Dad, this is Peyton. She’s an ex-con out on parole for murder. She can’t leave town, so going to the lake house this summer is out of the question.’ That would bring all conversation to a halt around the bar-b-que pit.”
