Page 25 of By His Side

He turned before I could open it, his expression earnest. “I want to believe you.”

“No, you don’t.” My voice was flat and lacking emotion. Which was strange when it felt like one spark and I might go up in flames. “No one ever does. Not the jury. Not the judge. Not even my own goddamn mother, if you really want to know.” Fuck! I hadn’t meant that bit to come out. That was too honest. Although Darien had witnessed how frosty she’d been with me firsthand so I doubted it came as too much of a surprise.

Darien let out a frustrated sigh. “Talk to me, Felix. Don’t lump me in with everybody else. I want to understand what went on. That’s the only reason I looked up your case. If you’re telling the truth, then it was a huge miscarriage of justice.”

If. The word buried itself in my skull, like a persistent woodpecker who refused to halt its attempts to drill a hole until it reached my brain. “I can’t.” I reached around him to open the door, my body reacting when my arm brushed his despite the conversation we were having.

Darien might have stepped outside once the door was open, but his body language said he wasn’t happy about it. Well, tough. I’d invited him here for a fuck, not to psychoanalyze me. If he wanted to be a therapist so badly, he should have done that instead of being a probation officer. He slid his hands into his pockets. “I guess I’m leaving then.”

“I guess you are.”

He backed off a couple of steps. “Well, you know where I am if you change your mind and want to talk.”

“I won’t.”

“If you won’t talk to me, you should talk to someone.” He gestured to my hands, and I dropped my gaze to find them balled into fists. Instead of answering him, I closed the door to leave him on the other side of it. I didn’t wait around to see if he lingered, staggering into the living room and collapsing on the sofa.

I’d never considered that seducing someone brought them closer and gave them access to things you’d rather they stayed away from. But then there was no way I could have known that Darien would take it upon himself to read up on all things Felix Church. There was nothing online that showed me in a good light. And I knew that because I’d read most of the same things he had, masochist that I was.

“I know you.”

I whipped around to find Mrs. Featherstone peering at me over the garden fence. She’d looked old before I’d gone to prison. Now, she looked ancient, her hair completely white and her wrinkles seeming to have wrinkles of their own. She’d lived next door for as long as I could remember, which made her statement ridiculous. I carried on pegging my washing on the line, the day warm and windy enough that they should only take an hour to dry. My mother, on one of her rare visits home, had rejected my offer to do her washing as well. It seemed there was nothing I could do to please her.

Tamping down on the urge to tell Mrs. Featherstone to fuck off—because my mother would love that—I forced a smile. “Of course you know me. I grew up here. You used to tell me that if I kicked a football in your garden, you’d take a knife to it.” I didn’t add that it had happened once and she’d kept her word, my dad insisting once he’d bought a new one that football sessions stayed in the park from now on.

Mrs. Featherstone didn’t smile. No surprise there. I’m not sure I’d ever seen her smile. There used to be a Mr. Featherstone, apparently, but he’d run off with a flamenco dancer of all things when I was just a toddler and I had no memories of him. It was the reason, my father used to say, that Mrs. Featherstone walked around with a face like a slapped arse. His words, not mine. I really missed him sometimes.

She lifted her chin. “I didn’t mean that. I meant I know what you did. Everyone around here does.”

Her words had me scanning the surrounding yards, half expecting to see heads pop up one by one in response to her words. They didn’t, and if anyone was watching from the windows overlooking my mother’s yard, they were doing it in such a way I couldn’t see them. “I did my sentence.”

Mrs. Featherstone’s snort said she didn’t give a rat’s ass about the courts deciding to let me out, that if she’d been in charge, I would never have seen the light of day again. I carried on with my task, hoping she’d get the message that I wasn’t about to scuttle back inside with my tail between my legs. I had every right to be in my mother’s backyard and she couldn’t say a damn thing about it.

“Who was that man who visited you?”

Be polite. Don’t let her rile you.“Which man?”

“Two days ago. Blond hair. Young. Handsome. I hope he wasn’t an unsavory element. This is a nice place to live. It always has been.”

I lifted my chin and looked her square in the eye. “He’s my probation officer, if you must know, so he’s about the furthest thing from an”—it was so damn tempting to lift my hands and make quotation marks, but I resisted the urge—“unsavory element as you can get. He’s here to make sure I keep out of trouble.” She didn’t need to know that he’d spent his time inside the house fucking me into the mattress, which I suppose you could argue had kept me out of trouble. I certainly hadn’t been thinking of anything beyond his cock in my arse.

Mrs. Featherstone let out a huff. “I suppose you’re just staying with your mother until you get back on your feet?”

She didn’t say it, but the question was there of how long that would be.

My pegging became more aggressive. “I don’t know.”

Mrs. Featherstone didn’t like that answer much, her brows drawing together. Thankfully, I’d reached the last piece of clothing which needed adding to the washing line. “Nice seeing you again, Mrs. Featherstone,” I lied as I took my leave and went back inside. Next time I’d just use the tumble drier.

Chapter Twelve

Darien

Quinn’s Brasserie was always quiet at this time on a Saturday afternoon between lunch and dinner service. I’d had no intention beyond getting out of the house when I’d left, but somehow I’d ended up here. Muscle memory, maybe. There was no disputing that it represented something of a safe place for me. Somewhere I could linger to my heart’s content, with no one questioning how much longer I’d be here. It was just one of many perks when your brother owned a restaurant.

I found myself staring at my phone. There hadn’t been a single message from Felix since Thursday’s… Date? Assignation? Clandestine meeting? It was hard to know what word you were supposed to use when you paid one of your clients a home visit and fucked him. Whatever it had been, the lack of texts bothered me. Why was I getting the silent treatment?

Several possibilities came to mind, among them him still being pissed. Either that or he’d only ever wanted to get me into bed and now that he had, he was done with me. Had it been some sort of game? A bet? The thought that it might be the latter had my blood running cold, because that would mean he’d lied and someone else knew about us. Someone who, even if Felix kept his word and didn’t inform the authorities, might choose to in his stead.

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