“Please talk to me. Something has been bothering you all weekend. Is it because of my panic attack? I’m fine, I promise. Jere? Did something happen at the club?”
He pressed his lips to the back of my neck, and I thought he might be crying, his body quaking against mine.
“Talk to me, baby. You know you can.” I stroked his arm in an effort to calm him, hating he thought he couldn’t talk about his emotions.
He let go and moved to sit on the edge of the bed, bunched in on himself as if he were weighed down by whatever had happened. I moved next to him, kissed his shoulder, and took his hand in mine. I ran my hand up and down his arm, watching the way the little hairs on his skin parted from my touch.
“I did something bad, Danny,” he finally said, his face ragged.
“What did you do?”
Shaking his head, he stared at the floor. I said nothing, giving him time to sort through his thoughts, knowing he’d find a way to tell me what he was thinking.
“I lied,” he finally said, his body shaking against me as his breath came in ragged pulls.
“About what?”
“I didn’t go to the gym, or to work,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay.” Biting my lip, I asked, “Where did you go?”
“Tohisapartment,” he said and looked at his own torn knuckles as if it was the first time he was seeing them.
Something uncomfortable and cold beat through me, turning my chest to ice. My heart jumped once, twice.Hisapartment. I didn’t need to ask because I knew Jere had a dark side. It was something he tried to hide from me, but I’d seen it with the bullies, and I never imagined… Through tears, I said, “Please Jere, tell me what you did.”
He shook his head again as if he couldn’t face it.
The doorbell going off made me jump and he shot to his feet. A voice drifted in from my opened window, “Daniel Becker? Jeremey Nowaki? It’s Detective Rosemont. Ineedto speak with you.”
I grabbed his arm and pleaded, “No, stay with me.”
“I have to be a big boy, Danny,” he said, refusing to meet my eyes.
I shook my head, not sure what I was denying and linked our hands, refusing to let go. Whatever was going on, he wasn’t going it alone. The doorbell jingled again as we made our way downstairs, my vision swirling. I wanted to pull him back upstairs, lock us in my bedroom and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist.
“Jere, come back upstairs with me—”
He flung the door open to an anxious looking Detective Rosemont who didn’t even bother asking if he could come in, just stepped inside. Things like search warrants and remaining silent bounced around my brain, but I couldn’t think or speak.
“Mr. Becker, Mr. Nowaki,” he said icily. He withdrew a little notepad from his pocket, but his arm was in a sling, so he stuffed it back inside after realizing he couldn’t write. “Funny thing, but have you heard the saying, crime doesn’t sleep, so neither do we? I was at home doing some captain-mandated resting last night when I got a call from a colleague that didn’t get the memo I was on medical leave, telling me they picked up Freddy Burton last night. It seems he said something to the wrong person and landed himself in the hospital. He hasn’t said anything, partly because he doesn’t remember, mainly because they had to wire his jaw shut.” His gaze slipped down to our linked hands and Jere’s bruised knuckles. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that?”
I gaped and gave everything away by looking to Jere for an explanation, when I should have saidHow terrible, officer! But we know nothing about that.Instead, I focused on the wrong thing, imagining Jere tracking this guy down and beating him to a pulp. And a part of me, an entity that had been born the night I’d been assaulted, completely approved.
“Multiple broken ribs, broken nose, broken jaw, several teeth missing.” He paused for effect. “Skull fracture. He's lucky some transient found him and flagged down a police car instead of leaving him there.”
I swore, Jere tipped his chin up, subconsciously proud of the laundry list of injuries. I was aware we should say something, and I wanted to shout at Jere to deny, deny, deny, but I was in shock. I was terrified he was about to be hauled off in cuffs. Worse, I thought he might fight and end up being shot. How was this happening?Why, damn it? We were finally happy, and the universe was trying to tear us apart. Fuck speaking to the manager, I was going straight to corporate.
Detective Rosemont withdrew that notepad again, running his thumb across the glossy surface as if it were a comforting thing for him. “What was that? You were here all night? Can anyone vouch for that?”
It took me a moment to realize this detective was establishing an alibi for us. Even Jere seemed caught off guard and the why of it ceased to matter. His brows reaching for his hairline was like a smack to the back of my head.
“Oh…yes, Detective Rosemont. We werehere all night… Ah and I can verify that because—” I wracked my brain for a reason, my pulse racing. I could form a viable plan of action down to the details, but under pressure all the ideas were like a blur, coming at me too fast to mean much of anything.
“We were fooling around,” Jere finally spoke up, his grip tightening around mine until I thought my bones would snap. “All night, because he is insatiable, and I can’t say no to him.”
I regarded him with a flush of embarrassment.
“Okay, great.” His head was cocked down at his notepad, but his glare was solely on us, silently communicating—don’t fuck this up. “I checked surveillance footage around the area Freddy Burton was found and would you know, the only working cameras were having issues so they didn’t capture much. And there were no witnesses, so it is what it is. You realize this will probably delay the trial seeing as the law explicitly commands the defendant to be fit unless the judge approves a motion to separate, but that remains to be seen.”
