Page 33 of Finn (Dirty Misfits MC 6)
She leaned forward. “What happened that night, Finn?”
My gaze fell to my opened beer. “One night, in the middle of the night, I hear something banging against my window. I wake up and see Melody downstairs throwing shells she had found in the sand out in the backyard and I snuck out to go see her. She was sobbing. I mean, crying so hard she couldn’t breathe. So, I took her into my arms, held her, and kept telling her that things would be okay. And she was a fucking mess, Sloane. Her clothes were ripped to shreds. She had bruises already forming around her neck and down her legs. I got her to tell me that her stepfather was drunk, and then I was the one that asked her if she had been raped.”
She clenched her jaw in fury. “He got drunk and raped her.”
I closed my eyes. “The only person I wanted to kill that night was him. The only person whose blood I wanted spilled was his. But, Melody was so sweet and so kind and so adamant, and she stopped me because she wanted me to take her somewhere.”
“Let me guess: to the drugstore.”
My eyes slowly opened. “Was that in the file?”
She nodded. “Yeah, it was. That’s where your testimony picked up.”
I chugged back the rest of my beer. “I did as she asked. I took her in the middle of the night to this twenty-four-hour pharmacy and told her to wait in the car. I walked inside, told them that the Plan B pill was for my girlfriend, and they didn’t hesitate to sell it to me. I didn’t want her going through the humiliation of walking into a place looking like she had only to ask for something like that, so I did it for her. And after I bought the pill with my parent’s credit card along with a bottle of water, I took it back out to her so she could take it.”
“You were there when she needed you the most,” she whispered.
My stare clung to her face. “When we got back here, I asked her if she wanted to stay. I told her that my parents wouldn’t ask any questions whatsoever if she wanted to stay, but she said that her stepfather was on the night shift that evening so she’d be safe going back home. But, her stepfather had called in sick that night, so he was home when she got home.”
Her eyes slowly widened. “Oh, my God.”
I swallowed down the bile creeping up the back of my throat. “I’m sure you want to know how I know that he called out, so here’s the skinny: her stepfather told me. That next morning, his hungover, bullshit piece of ass showed up on my fucking doorstep with two other police officers and tried to arrest me on the spot. Dad stepped in between me and the officers, demanding to know the charges, and as Mom carted me off into the kitchen I heard them saying something about Melody. And when I peered out the kitchen window, I saw her--.”
I couldn’t continue. It was like a wave had crashed over me and flooded my nostrils. I felt myself drowning in my own anger and I forgot how to breathe.
And it wasn’t until I felt Sloane’s hand on my shoulder that I drew in a long breath through my nose.
“The sand was coated in blo--blood,” I choked out. “She was face-down, just--just spread eagle. And I remember vomiting up my dinner before I fell to my knees, and Mom kept whispering that she knew I was innocent. That I couldn’t be capable of something like this.”
She squeezed my shoulder. “What did your dad think?”
I wiped at the tears that had escaped onto my cheeks. “Dad was the reason I got juvie instead of being tried like an adult. But, that’s not even the kicker.”
She dipped down, her eyes finding my own. “What’s the kicker, Finn? You can tell me.”
My stare slowly gravitated to hers. “When that man was shoving me into the cop car, he admitted what he had done. He admitted that he had killed his own fucking stepdaughter, and that I’d take the blame for it.”
Her hand slid down my arm before her touch faded away altogether. “Have you told anyone about this? What her stepfather said to you?”
I shrugged. “My lawyer. But, he said it would be impossible to prove.”
She nodded slowly. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“And since he was a big-wig cop, it would’ve been easy for him to stack the deck against me.”
She cleared her throat. “Unfortunately, you’re also right about that.”
Silence fell between us and I couldn’t look at her any longer. I stood to my feet and tossed the empty beer bottle into the trashcan before making my way out of the kitchen. I didn’t want to be around anyone anymore. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts and my memories.
