Page 191 of Things We Left Behind
Assface:I don’t know what point you think you’re proving by calling the cops on my team when they’re just trying to keep you safe.
Assface:Just because we’re not sneaking around having sex anymore doesn’t mean I don’t care.
Assface:I found your underwear behind the nightstand. Do you want it back?
The heyday of the Lawlerville courthouse looked as if it had occurred in the 1970s with its speckled tile floors, mustywood paneling, and ceiling tiles stained yellow from decades of cigarette smoke.
I shifted on the too-low, too-hard bench and stared at the door across from me.
The metal plaque on the wall readJudge Dirk Atkins. Behind that door were three people hopefully making Mary Louise’s dreams come true. And I was stuck out here trying not to gnaw my fingernails down to the bone.
And trying not to think of He Who Shall Not Be Thought Of.
On cue, my phone buzzed on the bench next to me.
Assface:Lina says you’re at the courthouse now. Good luck.
I glared at the text. It had been a week and a half since Lucian had kicked me out of his house. He hadn’t been back to Knockemout since. Between the library, my family, Mary Louise’s case, and my friends trying to oh-so-casually pump me for information about Lucian, I was staying busy. But not busy enough to forget that the assface existed.
I’d fallen into his trap twice now. If I fell a third time, I deserved to get mauled by the steel teeth of Lucian’s perverse whims. He cared about me. He hated me. He wanted me. He wanted nothing to do with me.
That was a roller coaster I didn’t need to get on again. I wanted stability, not volatility. A relationship, not a fuck buddy. A future, not a past.
I opened the dating app and, with a bracing inhale, started swiping.
The chamber door opened, and I bolted to my feet. My phone went flying.
Fran marched into the hallway, glaring at the district attorney, a man with wispy gray hair and thick glasses. He looked older than the forty-seven my internet search reported. But I supposed that was what the criminal justice system did to a person over time.
“Way to back me up in there, Lloyd,” Fran snapped.
The attorney’s shoulders hunched. “It’s not a good look to have a magistrate reducing his own sentences.”
“That sentence is out of line and you know it,” she said, standing pink stiletto to scuffed loafer with the man.
“Is there a problem, ladies?” came honeyed southern sarcasm from the doorway.
Judge Dirk Atkins was a good-looking man in his late fifties. He had a head of thick silvery hair and a dignified posture, and the tie under his black robes looked like it was Lucian Rollins expensive.
Fran’s face went from infuriated to impassive in half a second. The DA, on the other hand, looked as if he wanted the floor to swallow him up.
“No problem, Your Honor,” Fran said smoothly.
Judge Atkins bent down and picked my phone up off the floor. He glanced at the screen.
“That’s, uh, mine. Sir. I mean, Your Honor,” I said, holding out my hand.
He looked up at me with pale-blue eyes and handed the phone back to me. “And you are?”
“This is my associate, Ms. Walton,” Fran said.
“Well, Ms. Walton, I wouldn’t swipe right on that one,” the judge said, nodding at my screen. “He has a shifty look about him. A young lady like you can’t be too careful these days.”
“Uh, thanks?”
“We won’t take up any more of your time,” Fran announced, hooking her arm through mine.
“I take it it didn’t go well,” I said out of the corner of my mouth as she marched us toward the elevators.
