Page 80 of The Boy from Half Moon

“No,” I confessed. “Not exactly. Josiah saw me beat up Franklin.”

Tate’s face changed instantly. I’d never seen him look so serious. He pulled a notepad out of his briefcase and wrote inside. His mouth was pinched, and his entire body stiffened as he adjusted his position to face me.

“It seems best that we remain attorney and client, Luke. You’re correct about no longer dating me. We have a fight coming up and having our personal emotions involved would not be wise,” he explained.

This Tate was someone I didn’t recognize. He seemed angry and disappointed in me. And the way he looked up from his notes made me feel like a stranger to him all of a sudden. Like any other client he worked with.

“So we aren’t trying to be a couple anymore?” I asked.

The driver’s eyes glanced at the rearview mirror, quickly looking away when I caught his eyes with mine.

“That is what you inferred just a moment ago,” he stated, here again using big words and acting like every other man I’d ever encountered who wore a suit.

“But I said that to protect my family,” I argued. “But maybe now…”

Tate raised his hand and interrupted me. “Your original impulse was correct, Luke. The best thing going forward is keeping our relationship professional.”

The hurt I experienced after his words had to be written across my face, but he stared at me like he couldn’t see my pain. His face was blank; like I was a stranger.

“Yeah, I guess,” I responded, turning my attention to looking out the window again. The ranch was only a mile or so ahead. “I’ll have to stay on the ranch,” I said. “We don’t have any money, Tate.”

My admission softened his words. “I’m helping you for free, Luke. I care about you and your family,” he said. “Please, just check on your family. If they want to leave with you, I’ll figure things out for all of you. But if they won’t leave, I want you close to me, not on that ranch.”

“At your place?” I asked, tugging on the bottom of my shirt and wishing I had something good in my life for just once.

“If you’ll stay with me, yes. It’s a cost-effective way to save money,” he explained. “If you go to trial on this case, Luke, hundreds of thousands of dollars will be spent.”

“I can get a job,” I offered, wanting to take some burden away from him.

“We’ll see,” he replied.

We pulled in front of the closed gate to the ranch. Brother William stood guard, surprised, I assumed, when I stepped out of the Uber.

“You’ll wait for me?” I asked, leaning back into the car. He nodded. “I’m sorry for everything, Tate. I truly am sorry that I’ve disappointed you.”

“I’ll be right here,” he whispered, sadness in his voice.

Brother William let me in, and I trudged up the hill to the compound, not turning back to Tate because I didn’t want to cry. We hadn’t even gotten started, and whatever we’d had was over. I wasn’t sure I cared whether I went to jail anymore.

I should’ve seen this coming. God never answers my prayers.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: Tate

“You cannot defend that boy from Half Moon, Tate,” Browning Senior stated. “Junior already represents the wife of the victim. She’s suing the accused.”

“Suing him for what? The accused is worth fuck-all. He hasn’t even been charged with anything,” I stated, perhaps too angrily. I turned to Alec. “What a coincidence you’re attaching yourself to the widow, Alec.”

“She called me,” he replied, smirking like the rat he was. “Besides, Tate, representing the kid you’re fucking? Come on. Really?”

I glared at Alec, but what did I expect? The man was a tool of the first order. “Just to be clear, I don’t have a physical relationship with the defendant. And it was the accused who called me! And he called me first, I might add, and before your ambulance-chasing ass got ahold of the wife,” I added.

“But I already have a signed agreement, Tate. What do you have besides a broken heart?” Alec asked.

I turned to Senior. “Are we representing the wife of the victim or the possible defendant?”

Senior looked like there were a thousand other places he’d rather be. I’d first spoken to him personally less than a week ago, so it was difficult to read Alec’s father. In that fruitful meeting, he made me a full partner in less than three months of being there, doubled my salary, and asked me to consider leading his firm in the future.

“I’d rather not be involved in any of this shit, to tell you the truth,” he declared. “But the only client that’ll be paying me is the dead man’s wife. I assume the boy has no money, correct?”

---