“No.” Peter rubbed at his forehead. “No. Did I….”
“How do you know Casey?” Angel asked, point-blank.
My heart pulsed in my throat.Should’ve talked to him. Should’ve told him. Fuck.
Peter’s laugh was raspy and mean. “Uhlig went to my high school, and now you’re fucking my son!” He transferred his attention back to me, and I was both glad and terrified at the same time. It was difficult to shake the old fears. “Just like you were fucking those other two guys, then. The ones you always hung around with. I knew it. Why do you think I kept coming at you? There’s no way you were this big fucking man if you were a pansy-assed—”
“Shut your mouth.” I held Angel tighter, and he huffed out a squeak. “You made my life hell because Merit and Creed were dating?”
“I’m done,” the judge boomed. I’d half forgotten we had an audience. The world rushed in around me. My head was a mess. The only thing keeping me from doing something that would land me in jail, too, was Angel, clinging to me just as hard as I was him. “Bailiff, remove the defendant. Now! Everyone else who wants to disrupt the Court, out! Or there are plenty of cells downtown. You will be charged with contempt.” She pointed at me and then Angel.Fuck no.I dropped a kiss to the top of his head.
“Judge, if you will. My client pleads not guilty.” Mr. Weston seemed like he was trying to keep a straight face as he said that with a hand out to keep Peter from falling over. Why wouldn’t he just sit down in a fucking chair?
The judge only glared at all of us.
“I saw those two one night,” Peter snarled. “Why else would you always be blocking me when I went after them? You were fucking them, too.”
“They’re my friends, and I love them.” I was shouting, shouldn’t be, but couldn’t stop.
Angel tugged on my arm. “What is fucking wrong with you?” he demanded, and I wasn’t sure who he was talking to, me or Peter. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
There it was, the question I’d been dreading. I’d hoped like hell I could avoid this.
“You all have thirty seconds to take this circus out of my courtroom,” the judge snapped. Four uniformed NGPD spilled in through the same door at the front Peter had used to enter, and I realized as they eyedmeup maybe I was the reason we hadn’t all been dragged out already. I had trouble reconciling the reality that people thought I was the scary one, since I wasn’t the man here who had hurt anyone recently.
The bailiff came after Peter, and he tried to shove the bailiff off and ended up sprawled on the floor cursing. Mr. Weston stepped over the divider and went to grab Angel, but I blocked him before he could lay a hand on my little brother. Mr. Weston simply grabbed my arm instead. “Move, move, move,” he whispered. “I don’t want to have to do more work today. Get out.”
“Bye, West,” the man sitting at the prosecution’s table said with a laugh. “Nice seeing you again.”
“Mr. Bidwell, I expect decorous behavior from the District Attorney’s office as well,” the judge scolded.
“Sorry, Your Honor.”
Mr. Weston gave me a mighty shove. We all turned to walk out through the crowd who had gathered to await their loved ones’ arraignments, which meant I had to tiptoe past people to get to the center aisle before I could exit. Angel ripped from my grasp to power walk ahead of me. The fact that he was slim and trim meant he dodged feet easier. He was through the doors and gone before I was even in the aisle, and I died a little with every second it took me to make it out of the room.
“Please don’t run,” I said as I burst out into the hallway behind him.
Angel stood there, arms flat at his sides, like a broken doll. People walked around him and there were conversations buzzing in the corridor that were beyond obnoxious. Lawyers stood around talking on phones and giving last minute coaching to clients. Everything seemed too loud.
“Hell,” Mr. Weston said as he burst through the courtroom door at my back. He shoved our coats into my arms and only then did it register that I must have dropped them in my attempt to catch up to Angel. “I have to go back and see what damage was done. Gaffin’s going to have all his time served already if he can’t make it through a fucking arraignment,” he grumbled and turned back to disappear into the courtroom. “Trust me when I say there will be no bail.”
Angel stared at me.
Guilt ate at my insides. I wanted to go to him, to hold him, but terror had twisted around me like barbed wire and kept me paralyzed. Would this be the end for us? Now he knew I’d hurt his dad, and maybe made his whole life hell. Why wasn’t he saying anything?
“Angel—”
“I need….” He held a hand up and walked away from me. I stood there for too long. He’d disappeared through the crowd and toward the busy front entrance by the time I made myself move. I chased him outside and down the gray cement steps into the cold. He staggered along the sidewalk like a zombie.
“Please, I’m sorry.” I rushed after him and draped my coat over his shoulders. He laughed and it sounded broken as he pulled my coat more firmly around him.
“No, I am.” Angel sobbed. He wasn’t crying tears, but his face was apple red and he clenched his eyes closed. Snow twisted through the air and caught in his black hair, beautiful and stark.
“I was part of the fight that messed him up. Injured him. Maybe if that hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t be hurting all the time. Wouldn’t need the walker, and you said he has a chair, too? We might have made him so bad he took it out on you.”
“Oh, holy fuck.” Angel turned toward me, eyes blazing, with a terrible look on his face that reminded me of Peter now that I’d just seen him in person. “Dad was driving drunk six years ago and jumped a guardrail into some trees. Yeah, his back was bad and stuff before then, but he didthat”—he pointed back toward the courthouse—“to himself. He did it on his own. He’s fucking lucky he didn’t hurt someone else. I think about that. What if he’d killed a family that night?”
“Really?” It was strange to feel happy in a moment like this, especially when Angel was closer to the edge than I’d ever seen him.
