Page 77 of Legally Ours

"I'll be back in a few hours," he said as he leaned in for a brief kiss. "Stay here for me? Naked?"

I glanced at the clock. It was just before five a.m. I was tempted to pull him back into the sheets, give him another kind of exercise to help him expel the demons he was trying so hard to fight. But I knew it would be temporary, and since he had woken me up once tonight already, I was happy to get a few more hours of sleep.

"Be on time," I joked lightly. "We're leaving at nine, with or without you."

For that, I received a light smack on the side of my thigh.

"Just try it," Brandon growled, and with another enthusiastic kiss, he bounded out the door, leaving me to my sleep.

~

At nine a.m. sharp, Dad, Bubbe, Brandon and I sat in the back of the Escalade. Zola had taken statements from all four of us over the last month, along with a number of other potential witnesses, so that when the police were finally able to locate the man (who turned out to be much more slippery than they anticipated), the D.A. would be ready to pounce.

"But it cannot be between us...cannot be..." Brandon murmured as he went through a speech that Cory had sent him. He looked up, brows furrowed adorably. "Cannot be between. Be between. Does that sound funny to you, or have I just read this too many times?"

I shrugged. "It's a little awkward. You say 'be' twice, but it's not grammatically incorrect."

Brandon gave me an irritated look as if to say, "Yes, I know that," and went back to reviewing the speech. His early morning run hadn't done much to lighten his mood. He was missing a breakfast event with some kind of union this morning, and wouldn't be back in time to prepare for another fundraiser at a hospital tomorrow night. Cory was predictably furious.

"You know you don't have to do this," Brandon said as he stilled my nervous hands. "We can turn around."

He smiled at my dad in the very backseat, looking for encouragement, but Dad just played with his mustache and looked out the window. Bubbe didn't respond, lost in an audiobook.

I sighed. "Yes, we do. You don't have to do this. Really."

Brandon just gave me a half-smile and cocked his head. "Yes, I do."

Today was a formality––the arraignment that would determine whether or not a trial would move forward. Zola was of two minds about what might happen. They had amassed enough evidence to lock Messina up ten times over on different charges, with Dad's and my statements as the cornerstone of the entire prosecution. It was still possible Messina would take the plea bargain the DA was offering: twenty-five years instead of the potential life without parole. But at the same time, Messina had proved to be unpredictable in his responses. We had no idea what he would do.

"The good news is, he's a flight risk since he evaded arrest for so long," Zola had said over the phone. "So, the judge likely won't grant bail if he decides not to take the plea."

But he didn't state the worst-case scenario: that the judge would be paid off somehow, or by some strange twist, the defense would manage to get the case thrown out. At which point Messina would be back on the streets, and my family would be on his shit list.

We arrived at the courthouse just before one, with enough time to file through the metal detectors and take our seats in the courtroom. Various people sat in the gallery, waiting while the court took a lunch recess; many others were held in the jail connected to the courthouse. I didn't see Messina. Part of me wondered if I'd actually blocked out what his face looked like, but when I closed my eyes, I saw it clearly. The sweaty, flabby jowls and lips that smacked over stained teeth just before he hit me––these things would never leave me, and I hated him for that.

Brandon glanced at me again from where he was studying his phone.

"Hey," he said.

I looked up, eyes wide.

"They won't throw it out," he said, with that uncanny ability of his to read my thoughts. "There's too much at stake here. They won't throw it out."

I took a deep breath and nodded. The rational side of me knew that was true. It was the other side of me that was still petrified about the possibility of this man back on the streets, looking for my family.

After a few more minutes, Messina himself was escorted into the courtroom wearing a bright orange jumpsuit like he had stepped off a bad crime drama.

"The Kings County Criminal Court is now in session. The Honorable Judge Leland Reynolds presiding."

The bailiff's voice rang through the courtroom, and everyone stood while the judge filed into the room and took his seat behind the bench.

"Please be seated, everyone," he said in a low, monotone voice, and we followed. After a few moments, he glanced over the files prepared for him, and then called up the Messina case.

Zola stood and introduced himself, after which a short, greasy man in an ill-fitting brown suit announced himself as Messina's lawyer: Primo Cipolla.

"I see he didn't go with a public defender," Brandon whispered, trying to make light of the situation.

I pursed my lips, unable to smile. Appearances could be deceiving. Cipolla looked like he modeled his personal styling right out of Goodfellas, down to the slicked-back hair and the oversized suit. But that didn't mean he wasn't a good lawyer.

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