Page 58 of Proof

Jj

He let me go.

A part of me still couldn’t believe it. Even though it was exactly what I’d asked him to do, I still couldn’t believe it. I also couldn’t believe how badly it hurt. Something inside of me was being ripped apart piece by piece and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

It had taken Boone several hours to come and get me after I’d called him with the satellite phone. I’d fully expected a confrontation with Cass when Boone had pulled up in his car, but there’d been no sign of him.

He’d vowed to never let me go and yet he hadn’t been there when I’d left. Selfish prick that I was, I’d wanted him to try one more time to ask me to stay because I’d known that I wouldn’t have been able to deny him. I would have spent the rest of my days trying to be the JJ he’d so fiercely cared for prior to the shooting.

I would have failed. I knew that and still, I’d been willing to put Cass through even more pain just so I could have him for a little longer. Had I always been someone who’d only ever beenconcerned with his own life and had overlooked everyone else’s? If so, why hadn’t anyone ever called me out on it?

God, that bullet really had fucked up my brain. Or maybe I’d been fucked up in the head before the shooting. I didn’t know anymore.

I didn’t know anything anymore. It was like every time I tried to make a decision about something, a wall went up inside my brain and I couldn’t see over it.

Even now, long after Boone had dropped me off, I was desperately trying to pretend that I was okay.

I was so far past okay that I couldn’t even see the line I’d have to cross just to be semi-normal. My entire body hurt. I felt heavy and light at the same time. My chest was so tight that every breath was painful. I wanted to throw up whatever was causing all the knotting and cramping in my stomach, but I’d already done that, and it hadn’t changed anything. Tears burned my eyes but refused to fall.

Two days earlier when I’d felt like this, I’d hightailed it to Tank’s. The emotions that had sent me there were a drop in the bucket compared to the pain currently locked inside of me.

I hadn’t even considered going to Tank’s after Boone had picked me up. The idea of letting some man touch me, let alone fuck me, made bile crawl up my throat.

I’d been sitting in the same motel room on the edge of the bed’s sagging mattress for most of the night and well into the morning hours. The fire that had been simmering beneath the scar on my scalp had been burning ever since I’d told Cass he had to let me go.

When Boone had arrived at the cabin, I’d fully expected some kind of confrontation with Cass as I’d descended the stairs from the little bedroom where I’d had another first with him earlier that day. I hadn’t realized it until after I’d left the cabin, but Casswas the first man I’d slept in a bed with. He was the first man whose arms I’d ever woken up in.

There’d been no confrontation. There’d been no Cass. When I’d reached the front door, the key that was necessary to turn the bolt had already been inserted into the lock.

Cass’s message couldn’t have been any clearer than that. Still, as I’d walked to Boone’s idling car, I’d intentionally dragged my feet in the hopes of hearing my name being called or a strong hand grabbing me from behind to stop me.

The only thing behind me had been a lifeless cabin.

I’d known from the moment Cass had desperately kissed me for the last time that I’d made yet another mistake. There were a lot of amazing actors in LA, but none could have rivaled his pain in that moment. That kind of agony couldn’t be faked. All the shit I’d said in the heat of the moment about Cass manipulating me for his own gain had been bullshit. He may have manipulated me in some ways, but none of them had been for his personal gain. Him wanting to find the proof of his innocence wasn’t something he’d wanted for himself; he’d wanted it forus.

I’d thrown that and more back in his face.

Missing Cass wasn’t the only thing that had me standing on the precipice of losing myself to the depths of my mind forever. The knowledge that Cass had needed me two years ago when he’d learned I was alive was like acid being dripped onto all the parts of me that were already raw and exposed. Maybe I couldn’t have gone to him right away, but I should have been fighting to free him from the moment Sully had told me that he had been arrested and convicted for the triple homicide and my own shooting. I might not have been able to remember that night or the weeks and months before his return from the military, but I should have instinctively known that Cass would never have hurt me, much less killed three innocent people.

Instead, I’d crushed my trust of Cass between my fingers until it had all bled out and there’d been nothing left to hold on to. Doing that had given me the freedom to create a new world for myself. It had given me the much-needed reprieve from all the nagging questions that had been swimming around in my brain.

Karma had finally found me and made me her bitch. There would be no outrunning her this time.

All I had now was a different set of questions that kept playing on a loop in my mind as I heard Cass’s screams in the background. When he’d been tossed into prison, had he mentally been screaming out to me to come and save him? Had there been actual screams for me when he’d been abandoned in solitary? Had he screamed for my brother or his own grandmother?

I knew in my gut that the internal scars Cass had mockingly described during my “interrogation” of him at the cabin had been a thousand times worse than he’d let on.

Cass had said he’d been given an hour outside every day, but I hadn’t believed him then and I didn’t believe it now. He had been convicted of shooting both a federal agent and a cop. The more sadistic prison guards who liked the power they wielded over their prisoners would have tortured Cass using the veil of vengeance for their brothers in blue as an excuse. They wouldn’t have even needed to touch him to do it.

How often had they left him without food, or even the presence of another human being? Had he even seen the sun after he was put in solitary? Even if he had been occasionally allowed to wander the prison yard by himself, would it have been enough for him to track the number of days that had come and gone? He’d asked me if I had any idea what it felt like to live without knowing what time it was. I might have lost time myself, but it wasn’t nearly the same thing. How many people took forgranted something as simple as being able to check the time of day?

I dropped my head and pressed the heels of my palms into my eye sockets as the pain behind my right eye grew.

As angry as I was with Sully, I needed him.

In truth, I needed Cass more. Cass knew how to help me. He knew how to make the pain go away. I hadn’t even told Sully about my condition yet.

Since I doubted Boone had simply left after dropping me off at the nondescript motel, it would be easy enough to signal him to see if he had any pain medication or could get me some, but I didn’t want to move. I deserved the pain. I’d earned it.

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