Page 120 of Overdue I Love You's
“Working with wood is the closest I got to the feeling of home. It lasted an hour, but I looked forward to it every month.”
“Do you still make stuff?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Haven’t gotten the time to. Work keeps me busy.”
“You should make time for what you love doing, Dean.” Golden hues of the sun intercept with the wind swaying over us. “Especially when that’s what helped you get through the years inside.”
He stops walking again which in turn forces me to stop.
“Woodworking isn’t what got me through the years inside, Nova.”
He’s staring at me like…
“There was this girl.” I keep listening like my whole body didn’t just freeze. “When my case was a jury trial, no one looked at me. They already decided I was guilty, but she… she saw me and smiled.”
A part of me thinks I should be jealous, but I’m not. “Have you ever met her?”
“You’re not the least bit curious as to why I was in prison?” Dean’s head tilts with curiosity.
I shrug. “Knowing isn’t going to change how I feel about you.”
“Even if my crime was killing someone?”
While the thought scares me, one look at Dean and his cautious eyes removes all my fears. “The only crime I’d care about is you breaking my heart.”
“Never,” he shocks me with the soft, unfiltered intensity before he turns to the road.
“She was eighteen and had that innocent, fresh out of the country look to her. It reminded me of myself. Before my brothers were born. Before that day.” Dean scratches his jaw, looking at me from the corner of his eye. “She was the only one voting me innocent and when they took me away, I heard her say that she believed me. Knowing that even a single person thought I was good made me believe in humanity. It helped me through those four years.”
A bird’s hum snaps him out of his daze. “My family, too, of course.”
“Reminds me of when I was on jury duty,” I continue. “I tried my best to be like the girl from your trial. Smiling, waving, being human as some would say. The judge hated me, the other people on the jury thought I wanted to sleep with a bad boy dude,” my eyes widen. “Which I didn’t, by the way. I don’t remember much, just thatI was eighteen. Moved from Cornwall two months prior and that I knew the guy wasn’t guilty.”
“How’d you know that?” He asks, roughly.
“Sometimes you look at a person and you know. I looked at him and knew there was more to the story.”
“Psychopaths are good at pulling people's heartstrings,” he sounds defensive.
“Maybe,” I shrug. “Doesn’t matter what I thought, he ended up convicted.”
“Do you remember him?”
“The bad boy?”
He nods.
I shake my head. “He’s blurry. The whole day is blurry, actually. I spent that whole trial defending rather than ogling him. But honestly,” I take a breath because remembering that time and who I was is a bit of a rollercoaster. “I hope he’s out and getting used to life.”
“Maybe you’ve passed by him on the street by now.”
I laugh. “I would’ve known.”
Dean hums. Then asks, “Your dad was in prison too, right?”
“He was managing a restaurant that acted as a gambling den. He didn’t know about it. Signed some papers stupidly. The owners ran off. He took the blame. The end.”
“Very quick summary for someone who yaps.”
