An attorney shows up within the hour. Clean suit. Sharp eyes. Knows every deputy by name. The pawn shop gets tapedoff. Bethany’s body gets wheeled out. Someone in the crowd whispers, “That’s the girl.” Someone else mutters, “Told you she was trouble.”
I keep my spine straight. I keep my mouth shut. I do not cry.
Doesn’t get any better. The prosecutor makes sure of that. Two stab wounds. No witnesses inside the shop. A dead club officer’s wife. It looks bad on paper.
But there are cracks in it.
My blood is on the handle first. The hardware store next door has a grainy camera that catches Bethany storming across the lot, face twisted, hand already inside her purse before she even hits my door. She had a gun.
Holler testifies under oath that Bethany threatened me before, that she was unstable, that she staged her own disappearance at Herrington Lake to manipulate the club.
Lottie cries when she talks about the threats, about the way Bethany cornered me at the salon, at church, at camp.
Royal provides statements about Pearly Gates trying to frame me earlier, about planted evidence, about the warning notes.
None of it erases Bethany on the tile.
But it paints the picture clear enough that even Hell has to squint.
When the prosecutor asks me why I stabbed her a second time, my voice shakes, but I don’t dress it up.
“Because I was scared,” I say. “She told me she planned to cut out my eyes, my tongue. I thought she’d get back up.”
“You were afraid for your life?” he presses.
“Yes.”
“You were angry?”
“Yes.” I swallow. “But mostly scared.”
It ain’t heroic. It ain’t pretty. It’s human.
Oaks is released two days later.
The lake story collapses for good. Bethany had been alive. Checked into a spa in Cincinnati. There are receipts. Security footage. Lies stacked on lies until the whole damn thing looks like a tower that should’ve fallen sooner.
His arrest becomes a spectacle. He claimed he pushed her in. He was ready to take the fall. For me.
That should feel romantic.
It doesn’t.
It feels heavy.
When I see him outside the courthouse, the first thing I notice is how tired he looks. He’s always been solid, controlled, dangerous in a way that felt deliberate. Now he looks like a man who’s been bracing for impact and finally got hit.
His eyes find mine across the steps. Everything in my chest pulls toward him.
He moves first. Of course he does.
He steps close, not touching me yet, just breathing me in like he’s checking that I’m real.
“You okay?” he asks, voice rough.
I nod.
“You hurt?” His gaze drops to the bandage on my arm.
