Another Life: Another Life Series #1

by Jasmine Denton

  “Move along,” the judge said.

  “You were granted temporary custody of your son after there was an incident involving a gun at his foster home, correct?”

  “Yes,” Julian said.

  “How’s the boy doing now?”

  “He’s doing great,” Julian said. “He’s been in therapy to help with the transition. You know, moving to Victory Hollow, finding out that Cameron and I are his real parents. It’s a lot for someone so young to understand… but he’s hanging in there like a champ.”

  “Would you say that Brady is happy living with you?”

  “Yes.” Julian gave a proud smile. “Very.”

  Caroline switched places with Mr. Bennett. “How old were you when you and Cameron first started seeing each other?”

  “I was sixteen,” he said. “Cameron was fourteen.”

  “Would you consider the relationship healthy?”

  He was quiet for a minute. Finally, he said, “No. Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “There were a lot of reasons,” he said. “Her home life and mine. We needed each other…sometimes a little too much.”

  “So after two years of this ‘needy’ and ‘unhealthy’ relationship, your sixteen year old girlfriend winds up pregnant. Yet you want to claim you had no idea the child was yours until a paternity test confirmed it.”

  “Like I said, she told me—”

  “But the relationship was sexual, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, but she—”

  “So you must’ve known there was a chance this child was yours. Yet it took you a year to even suspect it and another year to file for custody. You sit here playing the dutiful father, but what took you so long to act?”

  “I wanted us to be a family,” he snapped. “The three of us. She wouldn’t agree to it. She said Brady already had a home and we should let him go. And I just…can’t agree to that anymore, especially since that home turned out to be dangerous and unstable.”

  “And you were so angry about all of this that you began stalking her, didn’t you?”

  “That claim was never proven.”

  “Stalking is often difficult to prove,” Caroline said. “But you followed her to Georgia.”

  “For a divorce.”

  “Which you refused to grant her on several occasions.”

  “Because we couldn’t agree on custody arrangements,” he said. “Look…none of this is about what Cameron and I have done. I’ll admit we’ve both been bad parents. But I want a chance to do this the right way. I deserve that.”

  Cameron felt emotions inside her stir. Part of her wondered if this was coming from a sincere place. Then that sparked a feeling a dread, because anybody else might start believing him, too.

  All too soon, it was time for Cameron to take the stand. As she positioned herself in the boxed seat, she felt her hands tremble. She folded them together on her lap.

  Mr. Bennett questioned her first. As he approached her, she felt nervous and intimidated. “You were sixteen when you conceived Brady, weren’t you?”

  She remembered Sam’s instructions. He’d spent hours preparing her, instructing her to give short answers and reveal only the information that was necessary. “Yes,” she said.

  “Yet, in spite of being underage you made an appointment at an abortion clinic, didn’t you?”

  That threw her. She hadn’t thought about that day in a long time. “How did you…”

  When her gaze fell on Julian’s smug smile, she knew exactly how Mr. Bennett had gotten his information.

  She felt lightheaded. “I don’t see how this is…”

  “Did you or did you not make an appointment for an abortion?”

  “Yes,” she snapped, lifting her eyes to the lawyer’s in a glare. “Alright? Yes. But I didn’t—”

  “You got cold feet, didn’t you? So you met with an adoption agency instead. That’s how your aunt found out you were pregnant.”

  Why did all of this matter? No one had given Julian the third degree about his past. “Yes,” she said reluctantly.

  “So you kept this pregnancy a secret?” he asked.

  “I—”

  “And in all this time of making abortion appointments and meeting with adoption agencies, did you ever once see a doctor to make sure the baby was healthy?”

  She swallowed hard over a lump in her throat. Looking down at her hands, she tried to fight through her shame long enough to give this question an honest answer. “Not until my third trimester.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was hiding it,” she said. She cleared her throat. “I didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “Do you remember the night of June 22nd, 2012?” he asked.

  The way he seemed to pluck this date out of thin air had her concerned. “No,” she said cautiously.

  “Allow me to refresh your memory.” He walked over to his table and came back with a slip of paper. He handed it to her.

  As she read over the medical report, she felt her expression fall.

  “Will you tell the court whose medical record that is from?”

  “It’s from mine,” she said, clearing her throat.

  “What does it say you were treated for?”

  She blinked back a few tears of regret and focused her attention anywhere but on her brothers while she was forced to confess. “Alcohol poisoning,” she said finally.

  “Were you pregnant on June 22nd 2012?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know that the consumption of alcohol could have harmful effects on your baby?”

  The feeling of shame kept growing and growing. Right now, she didn’t feel like she deserved to win this case. “Yes,” she whispered. “I knew.”

  “Yet you chose to drink anyway. You do that a lot. Weren’t you involved in a car accident just shortly after arriving in Victory Hollow? Was alcohol involved in that?”

  “I—”

  “Your honor,” Caroline interrupted, standing to get the court’s attention. “The child in question was not involved in that car accident, so it’s hardly relevant.”

  “I’m simply trying to establish Cameron’s reckless disregard for the safety of herself and her child—especially when it comes to alcohol consumption. If she was drinking the night of her accident, what’s to stop her from drinking and driving when she does have the child with her?”

  “I’d like to hear Miss Baker’s answer.” Judge Mathews, an elderly woman who seemed startlingly stern, turned her gaze to Cameron expectantly.

  “Yes, I was drinking when I wrecked my car,” she said. “But I’ve learned my lesson. I would never—”

  “So, you gave your son away when he was born, refused to take him back into your custody several times and then ran away and left him in an unstable home. And it’s a good thing you didn’t take Brady with you, considering you couldn’t make it across the town line without crashing into the welcome sign.”

  She looked down at her hands, feeling another slew of tears come on.

  Caroline stood once again. “Is there a question in any of those accusations?”

  “Just one.” Mr. Bennett leaned closer. “Do you consider these the actions of a woman who loves her son?”

  She drew in a shaky breath as his words penetrated her walls and stirred up all of her insecure, emotional baggage. In the distance, somewhere far away, she could hear Caroline objecting to the statement, but it didn’t matter. The words were out and they hurt. Then, Mr. Bennett and Caroline switched places and Cameron knew it was time to start the emotionally draining process all over again.

  “We’ve already established that you made an appointment to have an abortion,” Caroline began. “Why did you change your mind?”

  Cameron tried to avoid thinking about that day as much as possible. Dragging up the memory now left her feeling weak and defeated somehow. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I was sitting in the waiting room…talking myself into it, telling myself I
was doing the right thing. Then, when the nurse called my name—or, the name I’d given them—I just couldn’t move. It felt like I’d frozen to my chair or something. I just didn’t go in.”

  “And later, you decided to take your aunt’s help instead of giving the baby up for a formal adoption,” Caroline said. “Can you tell us a little more about that?”

  “Everyone keeps saying that I just…gave Brady away,” she said. Before she could even start fully explaining, tears festered in her eyes. The more she spoke, the less capable she was of holding back the tears. “But it wasn’t like that—not at all. Once Anne found out I was pregnant…it’s like she hijacked all my choices.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She picked where I went and when, what doctors I saw. She even chose what I ate. Suddenly, everything revolved around the baby and what she wanted for him. Once I started showing, she even made me stop going to school. She hired a tutor instead.”

  “So she turned controlling,” Caroline concluded.

  “Very.”

  “Did the two of you ever argue about Anne’s decision to raise your child?”

  “All the time,” she said.

  “Did this contribute to the night you got alcohol poisoning?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Definitely.”

  ***

  Everyone stood while they waited for Judge Mathews to announce her verdict. Cameron felt like she was standing on pins and needles, each moment stretching on like an hour. Across the room, she could see Julian. He didn’t seem worried at all.

  “Mr. Stone has made a compelling case and raised some very valid concerns,” she began.

  Instantly, Cameron felt herself panic. A fluttering feeling filled her chest, making it difficult to draw a breath. She waited, her hand clutched tight around the edge of the table.

  Judge Mathews looked at Julian as she spoke. “It is for this reason that I grant his request for full custody.”

  She fell back a step, shaking her head in disbelief. All along, she’d known this would happen but that didn’t make her feel any more prepared.

  The judge turned her attention to Cameron. “This hearing is to determine the best interests of the child,” she said. “I think you still have a lot left to learn about motherhood, Miss Baker. So I’m awarding you supervised visitation. One hour every Saturday. We’ll readdress the length of these visits again in six months.”

  Cameron struggled to pull breath through her constricted lungs as a feeling of overwhelming darkness surrounded her. It felt like a cinderblock had landed on her chest, pinning her in a spiral of confusion and pain. While her body hurtled straight toward panic mode, her mind argued that she’d had this coming all along. She’d given Brady away—had she really expected a judge to give him back to her? Had she thought for one second that Mathews would look at both of them and not see Julian as the better candidate?

  She felt her brothers come up behind her, each of them taking an arm. Her gaze locked on Julian’s as they led her out of the courtroom.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sam raised the axe in the air, aimed and then slammed the blade down on a block of wood. The wood splintered, breaking in half. He picked up another piece and did it again.

  He was so lost in the motions—raise, aim, swing—that he didn’t pay any attention when Bela came up behind him. She leaned against the door to the garage, looking in.

  Picking up the two pieces of wood from the chopping block, he tossed them onto an ever growing pile. Sweat dripped down his brow as he bent to pick up another chunk of lumber.

  “You know,” Bela said, giving a glance at the rather large pile of chopped firewood. “We haven’t used that fireplace in years.”

  Sam swung the axe with one powerful blow, slicing the wood right down the center. “Well now we can start.”

  “How’s Cameron doing?” she asked.

  “About like we expected,” he said with another swing of the axe. “She’s at the Tavern now.” He chuckled as he picked up another piece of lumber. “She thinks she snuck out. I just didn’t see the point in stopping her. What else does she really have to lose, right?”

  That thought made him angry and he swung the axe down harder. This time one of the halves flew across the garage.

  She gave a slow whistle as his biceps flexed. “Don’t get me wrong, I love watching you do this. But you know what I love even more?”

  “What’s that?” He kicked the chopped wood aside and placed another piece on the block.

  “When you talk to me.”

  He eyed her a second. Then he gave the axe one last swing, lodging it in the block. “What do you want me to say? That I feel guilty? I do. I’m a cop, Bela. And I couldn’t do anything when my sister was raped—in a home I sent her to. I didn’t do anything to stop Anne from taking my sister’s baby. Or when she was tricked, convinced, blackmailed or whatever into marrying Julian. Or when the bastard sued her for custody. Where do you think we should start, Bela?”

  She shook her head sympathetically. “You haven’t failed your sister, Sam. There’s still time—”

  He turned and started dropping blocks of wood into a wheelbarrow. “I just gave Cameron that same speech. ‘We can fight this, there’s still time. This isn’t the end.’ But it’s all crap. Because we both know that I screwed up royally.”

  “Yes, you did,” she said. “We’re all thinking it, right? If you’d never let Cameron move away, then none of this would’ve happened.”

  Stopping, he took a deep breath, trying to fight through the suffocating guilt and shame.

  “But maybe her life would’ve been worse,” she said. “Maybe the Carver would’ve fixated on her instead of Amy. Maybe she wouldn’t have survived it. Things were ugly here for a long time, Sam. This place wasn’t any safer than Baltimore.”

  “I know,” he said, clearing his throat. “I know.”

  She came up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. Nuzzling her head against his shoulder, she gave him the kind and gentle advice that’d made him fall in love with her in the first place. “We could go crazy trying to figure out how things could be different, but the point is: they’re not. Nobody can change the past, Sam. We can only change the future.”

  He folded his arms across her, cradling her elbows in his palms. Letting himself lean on her, he whispered, “I don’t know what to do here. I can’t fix any of it.”

  “You don’t have to fix it. You just need to be there when she needs you.”

  ***

  Chad and Sam had spent the next few hours after the hearing convincing Cameron that she could fight the judge’s verdict. Their plan was rehab, then college classes or some other kind of self-improvement, as if this would somehow prove to the judge that she was competent and reliable. As if it that was easy to wipe out years of bad behavior in six months. Yeah, right.

  Cameron wasn’t sure their suggestions would help at all, but she only half-listened to them anyway. The rest of her time was spent in a daze of self-criticizing thoughts.

  The first chance she got, she slipped away to the Tavern, hating herself every step of the way. A little voice inside her head told her that this habit was likely the reason she didn’t have her son right now, but she drowned out that thought with a shot of Tequila. The more she drank, the angrier she became.

  After another hour, when she’d convinced herself she had nothing left to lose, she went knocking on the door to Julian’s rental house. It was ridiculously huge for two people, but that was just his way of showing her all the things he could give Brady that she could never provide.

  He pulled open the door and looked her up and down. “Go sleep it off,” he said, moving the door shut again.

  She wedged her way inside before he could stop her. “I just came to congratulate you in person,” she said. On the way over, she’d fought another fit of tears. The crying was over now, but it’d left her with the tell-tale sniffles. “You now have everything you’ve always wanted. How does i
t feel to win, Julian?”

  “Go home, Cameron.”

  “You definitely got your revenge.”

  He narrowed those cold, steely eyes on her. “I didn’t do this for revenge.”

  “You promised you would take everything and you did.”

  “This wasn’t about you!” He came closer, lowering his voice to a hushed whisper. “While you’re busy doing all of this soul-searching and lesson-learning, there’s a precious little boy who needs someone to take care of him. Someone who will put him first. That’s who this was about.”

  “Don’t stand there and act so self-righteous,” she said, disgusted. “Just two months ago, you were blackmailing me.”

  “What’s with all the yelling?” Brady’s tiny voice interrupted them, and they turned to see him standing just behind the gate that blocked off the steps. Wearing a pair of footy pajamas and clutching a stuffed animal to his chest, he looked like he’d just crawled out of bed.

  Cameron wiped her cheeks and looked down as that overwhelming feeling of shame engulfed her once again.

  “See what I mean?” Julian asked, pushing past her. He went halfway up the stairs. “It’s nothing, bud. Go back to bed and I’ll come up in a minute.”

  Brady looked at Cameron—studied her with those piercing eyes he inherited from his father. It was like looking into the eyes of a stranger; seeing they felt absolutely nothing for you. It staggered her, tore the breath right from her lungs.

  Finally, Brady turned and went back down the hallway to his bedroom. Julian turned, using his long-legged stride to quickly cross the room. Taking her arm, he used the other hand to open the door. Then he gave her a firm nudge out.

  “Don’t come back until you sober up,” he said, his voice tight. “I mean it. I don’t want you around him when you’re like this.”

  With that last insult, he slammed the door in her face. Shut out, Cameron fought not to cry right there in his doorway.

  Eventually she wound up at Shane’s. The second he saw her, he ushered her inside his apartment, murmuring words of reassurance. It struck her as so odd, how he could always claim that everything would be alright. Where did that faith come from? Would she ever possess it?