Before We Fall

by Courtney Cole

  I slip from the seat before I cry on his broad shoulder again as I remember how he’s always been there for me. When I turn to close the door, Brand is looking at me, his blue eyes soft.

  There’s something there, something gentle, something different from the way he usually looks at me. It suddenly seems not-so-brotherly, and my stomach wavers. But then he covers it up.

  “Jacey, you are good enough. That wasn’t what I meant. All I meant was that you’ve got to try harder to make better decisions. And you can always count on me. You know that. Call me when you get your court date. I’ll go with you.”

  I nod and slam the door closed, watching his taillights until they disappear.

  The look I’d just seen in Brand’s eyes bothers me. A lot. It’s the same look I see in the eyes of every other man on the planet, but it’s something I’ve never seen in his before. Until now.

  My heart sinks a little. I can’t have Brand thinking about me in any other way other than sisterly.

  I need him.

  I need him to be the person that he is to me, the person he’s always been, a brotherly figure. Someone I can count on. Because so few people in life have ever been that to me. And if anything changes with Brand and me, everything will change, and I can’t deal with that on top of the rest of this mess.

  With a sigh, I head up to my little bungalow, kicking off my shoes along the way.

  I unlock the door to my tiny one-bedroom place and jump into the shower to wash away the feeling of the jail. I can’t help but feel gross, like the feeling of the jail cell has burned into my skin and there’s only one way to get it off. To scrub until my skin is bright pink and almost raw.

  When I finally feel clean enough to towel off, I pull some underwear and a T-shirt on and collapse into bed to get a few hours of sleep.

  The problem is, sleep doesn’t come.

  I was arrested tonight, for god’s sake. Not only that, but I was arrested with one of the most famous actors on the planet. Dominic’s smoldering green eyes refuse to stay out of my head, his expression taunting me.

  It’s like he saw me. He saw that someone died because of me. He saw that there’s something so fundamentally wrong with me that my own parents don’t want anything to do with me. That I’m flawed.

  He saw all of that. He looked into my eyes and saw it. And then he turned away and left me to rot in the jail cell alone.

  He’s a fucking asshole.

  I might be a horrible judge of character, but even I can see that.

  I toss and turn in my Egyptian cotton sheets. I’m horrible with money, and I always seem to spend it on things I shouldn’t. One of my splurges is always good sheets. But even they don’t help me sleep tonight. Or this morning, I mean. I glance at the clock. Five thirty A.M.

  I know Gabe’s up. He usually gets up and goes for a run at five. Because he’s just that into self-torture. I sigh and grab my phone, punching in his number. I might as well tell him and get it over with. It’ll be better if he hears it from me instead of Brand.

  “What’s wrong?” he answers quickly, only slightly out of breath and without bothering to say hello. He knows something’s wrong if I’m calling this early.

  “Don’t kill me, okay?” I ask. I hear him sigh.

  “No promises,” he mutters.

  It all spills out and by the end, there’s a long pause.

  “Jace, it’s a good thing you’re there and I’m here,” he finally says. “Or I might kill you.”

  “I know.” I sigh. “But seriously, Gabe. The drugs weren’t mine.”

  “That’s not the point,” he tells me tiredly. “You’re still at Saffron, and you always seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You’ve got to pull your shit together. I don’t know what else I can do for you.”

  “That’s what Brand said.” I shake my head, even though Gabe can’t see it. “I’m trying, Gabe. It seems like I take two steps forward and then one step back all the time.”

  “You’re going to have to keep moving forward.” He sighs. “It’s the only way you’re going to get anywhere.”

  He’s quiet for a second. “I can’t come out there, not right now. Maddy’s due in a couple months, work is insanely busy, and I’m trying to get a lot done so I can take off for a bit when the baby’s born. You’re going to have to handle this on your own. I’ll call around and get you a lawyer, but you’re going to have to go see him on your own. Can you do that?”

  I try not to get pissed. Of course I can handle it. I’m not an imbecile.

  “Yes,” I finally answer. “Surely it won’t be that big a deal. It’s my first offense. I’ll get my own lawyer and everything will be fine because I didn’t do it. It wasn’t mine.”

  “Tell that to the judge,” Gabe mutters as he hangs up.

  That’s exactly what I do six days later as I stand in front of a judge in a dingy Chicago courtroom for the first time in my life.

  As Dominic Kinkaide sits behind me flanked by four lawyers compared to my one, I tell the judge everything, how I’m certainly not guilty and how the pot wasn’t mine. How I’m floundering a bit, but I’m definitely trying to pull my life together.

  But it doesn’t matter. I can see that in the judge’s steely eyes as I try to plead my case. Nothing I say is gonna matter.

  I’m screwed.

  Chapter Five

  Dominic

  Well, this is new. I’ve never been in a courtroom before.

  That’s not exactly true. I did sit in a seat like this when I was in the movie Annihilated. I played a sadistic serial killer/rapist, so I’ve seen the inside of a courtroom. Just never in real life. I’ve never sat and waited to be judged, waited for my fate to be decided by someone else.

  Not for real.

  It turns out, real life is fucking frustrating.

  I sigh heavily and turn to the lawyer closest to me. Like the three sitting around him, he’s buttoned up in a white shirt and dark suit, wearing a shrewd, businesslike expression. My manager hired them, a whole team of legal sharks. If these guys can’t get me out of this, no one can.

  “How long is this going to take?” I ask the head lawyer. Tom, I think his name is. He glances at me.

  “However long the judge wants it to take,” he answers wryly. “Just sit back and relax. You’re going to be fine. You’re lucky that Mr. Evans is refusing to press charges against you, or you’d be here for assault as well as drug charges.”

  I slump into my chair, impatient, and kill time by watching the blond chick standing in front of me. Jacey.

  The girl who may or may not have gotten me arrested for drugs.

  I watch her tear-streaked face and the way she so sincerely pleads her case with the judge. I almost think that the drugs really weren’t hers. But if they weren’t hers, I don’t know whose they were. They sure as fuck weren’t mine.

  She turns away from me once again, and my eyes sweep over her from top to bottom.

  She’s got a tight ass, I’ll give her that, barely concealed in a short skirt. My brother would say that she’s got an ass like an onion, hot enough to make him cry. As for me, I can just imagine burying my dick in it, pressing my face to her shoulder blades, reaching around her and…

  I stop myself, shaking the random fantasy out of my head.

  This isn’t the time or the place. I turn back to my lawyer. “Did you get those assault charges dropped for her?”

  He stares at me. “Yeah. I pulled a couple of strings. She’s only being charged with possession of marijuana now, like you. I don’t know why you care though. It’s probably her pot to begin with.”

  I don’t know why I care, either. Other than the fact that she didn’t even know me, but she jumped in the middle of a brawl and tried to stop it. And afterward, she had stood with her little body in front of mine, almost as if she was shielding me from Cris… even though I’d accidentally clocked her in the face.

  Why had she done that?

  I don’t fucking know. But I f
eel a little responsible that she was even there. Even if it was her pot, she wouldn’t have been there in the first place if it hadn’t been for me. And I can’t help but think back to the look on her face when I walked past her in her jail cell as she sat there covered in my blood.

  She looked utterly vulnerable in a jail cell full of hookers. That’s when I called my attorney and had him get her assault charges dropped. If I hadn’t done that, she’d have been there all night.

  Oblivious to my musings about her, she stands in front of the judge now, giving him a sob story about how she’s trying to pull her life together or some shit. But the judge doesn’t even blink, he just stares down at her sternly from his perch above.

  “Young lady, you do need to grow up. And I know that some judges like to give pretty little things like you a break. But I’m not in the business of being an enabler. So, you should learn right here and now that this kind of thing isn’t a trivial matter.” The judge pauses to stare down at her sternly.

  “I’m finding you guilty of possession of marijuana. I’m sentencing you to ninety days’ community service at a local youth center and six months of probation. Learn from this, young lady. I don’t want to see you here again. If you perform every bit of your community service as ordered, I will think about expunging this from your record. My bailiff will give you the details.”

  Jacey turns around with tear-streaked cheeks, and I suck in a breath over her sentence. My lawyer shakes his head.

  “Don’t worry about it. She must’ve rubbed him wrong. You’ll be fine. She’s got a second-rate attorney who can’t argue shit. You’ve got me.”

  Unfortunately, as I stand in front of the judge a few minutes later, I can see that having four attorneys isn’t going to do me any good. In fact, it might just have the opposite effect. The judge’s eyes glitter as he stares at my legal team.

  “So, son. You think you can come to Chicago and do illegal drugs, then just hire a team of lawyers to get away with it?”

  “No, sir—” I start to argue, but he doesn’t give me the chance. He holds up his hand.

  “Uh, uh. I don’t want to hear it. I find you guilty of marijuana possession and I sentence you to ninety days of community service and six months of probation. I realize that you live in California, but you will remain here in Chicago until your community service has been served.”

  Before I can even say a word, my attorney sputters.

  “Objection!” he protests. “My client has obligations in California. He has a new film hitting production next week. In order to work and support himself, he must return to California. Can’t he serve his community service there?”

  The judge looks at us drolly. “Are you telling me that your client is on the verge of destitution if he can’t return to California? I find that hard to believe, and if that is the case, I of course would need to see some verification of that.”

  My attorney backpedals. “Of course that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that that this is his first offense and he deserves some leniency. If he’s not allowed to return home, it will drastically affect the production schedule of his next film, which will have negative ramifications for my client.”

  The judge smiles now, a humorless grin. “That, counselor, is not my problem. It should serve to teach your client a lesson. The sentence stands. The crime was committed here, the sentence will be served here. If he serves it out in complete compliance, it will be expunged from his record. The bailiff will have the details.”

  I’m stunned as I sit staring at my hands. Did that really just happen? I’m stuck in Chicago for three months? And I have a criminal record now? Holy shit. I glare at my high-priced lawyer.

  “So, apparently, you’re a second-rate attorney who can’t argue shit, either.”

  I ignore his protests and push away from the table, following the bailiff to learn the details of my sentence. Before the bailiff ducks into a room, he waves me toward Jacey, who is sitting on a bench in the hall. I join her, and together we sit and wait. She’s not crying anymore, but she seems just as distraught.

  “Can you believe this?” she moans as she drops her head into her hands. “Oh my god. This is crazy. If you would just tell them the pot was yours, this would all go away. You’re the freaking movie star. I’m sure you’re quite accustomed to making things disappear.”

  I stare at her mulishly. “Yeah, things like your assault charges?”

  Bright red flashes across Jacey’s cheeks and she looks away.

  “Thank you,” she finally answers reluctantly. “I don’t know why you did that, but thank you.”

  As she speaks, something crosses her face and she turns to me sharply.

  “Oh my god. You got those charges dropped because you felt bad about framing me for this, didn’t you? You can’t have this kind of publicity, so you made it look like the drugs were mine. But you’re not totally soulless, so you made my assault charges go away to make up for it. Oh. My. God.”

  She stares at me with her ridiculous thoughts swimming in her eyes, and I shake my head in annoyance.

  “Fuck that,” I snap. “The drugs weren’t mine. Period. I got your charges dropped because I felt like it.”

  I look away from her pointedly, dismissing her. Instead, I concentrate on the bustling people in the hall, including a hulking blond guy hovering nearby. Jacey’s boyfriend, probably. He’s exactly the kind of guy I would picture her with: a meathead who mindlessly follows her around like a puppy. It makes total sense. She definitely seems like the kind of girl who wants someone who will just bow to her wishes. I sniff in disdain, then close my eyes.

  I get two minutes of peace until my phone rings and my manager’s name pops up. I know he’s been anxiously waiting to hear what happened here, probably tapping his expensive Italian leather loafer against his marble office floor.

  Yeah, he’s just that ostentatious. Ridiculously so. In addition, he drives a Ferrari, bright yellow for maximum impact. I always tell him his dick must be microscopic for him to need that much attention.

  I answer the phone now with a sigh, not relishing this conversation. “Hey, Tally.”

  “What’s the verdict?” Tally doesn’t even bother with a greeting.

  “I’m stuck in Chicago for three months,” I tell him. “Community service. Then six months probation. If I’m a good boy, my record will be wiped clean.”

  Tally erupts into a string of swear words that would make any sailor or truck driver cringe. I hold the phone away from my ear until he’s finished.

  Finally, he takes a deep breath, calming himself somewhat.

  “Fuck. This is bullshit, Dominic. The studio is going to be furious. Not only is this going to fuck with the schedule, they hired you in part based on your reputation. You aren’t a troublemaker. You’re a mysterious, sexy star. You keep things private, which keeps people guessing about you. This… this fucks with that. Everyone is going to assume that you’re an addict now, and that’s not the image that we’re trying to convey. I’ve got your publicists already on it, trying to spin it for you. But be prepared. News of this has already hit the web.

  “Also, you’ve got to see if you can at least come home on the weekends. Maybe they can work in some scenes then. Find out if that’s a possibility and then call me back. I’ll hold off calling the studio until I hear from you.”

  I don’t bother pointing out that the studio won’t be happy about going over budget by working the crew on weekend hours. He knows that. He hangs up without another word, and I let my head fall against the wall behind me as I stare at the ceiling.

  I can feel Jacey looking at me.

  “Will you get fired?” she asks hesitantly. I sigh.

  “Maybe you should’ve worried about that before you brought pot into my car.”

  I stare at her, hard, and she doesn’t flinch.

  “It wasn’t mine,” she answers coldly, then she turns her face away and doesn’t say another word. I almost believe her. To be fair, i
t’s hard to know who might’ve gotten into my car. With all of the people in and out of Sin’s house, it could’ve been anyone.

  The bailiff emerges finally and approaches us with a handful of papers.

  “You’ll both be serving your community service at Joe’s Gladiators, a youth center here in the city. Joe Hudson will be your supervisor. He’s the owner of the place. Every week, he has to sign one of these for you.”

  The bailiff hands us each a bright yellow paper.

  “It’s like a report card. Joe will fill it out and sign it. If you fail to appear for work, if you do a bad job, if you don’t do what is asked of you… in fact, if you sneeze wrong, Joe can refuse to sign it. It’s in your best interest to keep him happy. Judge Kumarowski doesn’t fool around, and if you have to reappear, he won’t be lenient. On the other hand, if you do exceptionally well, he’ll reward you for your good behavior by expunging this charge from your permanent record and removing your six months’ probation period.”

  The bailiff stares at us both firmly. “Any questions?”

  Jacey shakes her head, but I hold up a finger. “Will it be possible for me to go home on the weekends to work?”

  The bailiff scribbles something on his paper. “I’ll check with the judge and get back to you. It’ll probably be fine. Anything else?”

  Jacey and I shake our heads.

  “Good. You’re free to go. You should both report to Joe’s by ten A.M. on Monday.”