He shook his head, staring at me with such intensity it made me self-conscious. “You’re amazing. I don’t know how you can be so calm. I want to kill them both.”
I shrugged. What other choice did I have? Falling apart wouldn’t solve anything but make me a victim again. I never wanted to be there again. I was going to do everything I could to get them both locked up, and then I was going to carry on with my life and be happy. They were not going to control any part of me ever again.
“Can we go now?”
“Of course we can.” He kissed my damp lips and stroked the side of my face. “I have questions I don’t know if you’ll want to answer, or even know if I want the answers to them.”
“I’ll answer whatever you want to know, but right now I just want to get back to Ali’s and have a hot chocolate, or a vodka. Please don’t let them get inside your head. Fuck ’em.”
Cole almost smiled; his eyes flicked in shock. “‘Fuck ’em?’ Wow, that was so un-Oakley.”
I laughed. “I know, but it made you smile.”
“Oakley, Oakley!” My name was screamed by a number of different people I didn’t know. The press was running towards us, holding up cameras and microphones.
Before I could blink a car door was opened, and I was being shoved inside. Cole got in and slammed the door.
“Go,” Mum barked at Jasper, and he slammed his foot on the accelerator. I almost laughed at the theatrics; it felt like we were in an action movie.
“Easy, Jasper,” Mum said, after we’d sped out of there like a bat out of hell. “We want to get back in one piece.”
“I just want to get her away from that. And anyway, you were the one that ordered me to go!”
“Well I meant ‘go but go responsibly’.”
I laid my head on Cole’s shoulder and smiled at how normal and petty their argument was. Under Mum’s revised instructions, Jasper drove ‘responsibly’ and we arrived home twenty minutes later.
“I’m going to lie down for a bit,” I said as we walked into Ali’s house. No one argued.
I climbed straight into my futon bed and pulled the covers over me, needing to hide from everything for a while. My make-up and clothes were still on, but I just didn’t care. I rolled into a ball and allowed the tears to fall. Dragging up those memories made me feel dirty all over again. I hated it.
Why couldn’t I just have had a normal dad? That was all I wanted, even when it stopped, I still wanted my dad. I really believed it was over, and everything was going to be okay again. I wanted him to love me, as strange as that sounds.
I just wanted the man back that carried me on his shoulders and played hide and seek with me. I should have known that he hadn’t changed. I should have done so much differently, but I had been stupidly hopeful.
“Oakley?” Cole’s voice made me cry harder. Go away! I curled into a tighter ball and tensed. The bed dipped, and the covers shifted. His smell filled my lungs, and I needed him more than ever.
I rolled over and snuggled into him, clinging to his body as if it were my lifeline. He wrapped himself around me, protecting me.
“Don’t cry,” he pleaded.
“Do you want to ask me questions?” I whispered.
“Shh, not now. You’re not ready to talk about it.” I had a feeling he mentally added, ‘And I’m not ready to hear it.’ “I love you so much, Oakley.”
“I love you too.” I snuggled even closer and let the quiet thumping of his heart sing me to sleep.
Chapter Seventeen
Cole
“Are you ready for this?” I asked Jasper as we stood outside the courtroom waiting to be let inside.
“Not really,” he replied. “This is a bad idea.”
Yeah, probably. Thinking about Max made me want to go postal, so fuck knows what I was going to be like hearing him lie.
“Cole, do you think she’s really okay with us being here?”
“I think so. She would’ve said if she wasn’t.”
She wouldn’t because she’d never tell anyone what to do, especially not Jasper when it came to their dad, but I didn’t want to tell him that. This seemed like something he had to do. I still wasn’t sure why I was here. To hear his side and see how he was going to try swinging it or to support Jasper since Oakley and Sarah were dead against going.
We’d only decided late last night that we were going to attend. A spur of the moment decision. Probably a stupid one too.
The door to the courtroom opened and people started filtering in.
“Well,” I said, “we should go in, I suppose.”
“Yeah.” He nodded but neither of us moved.
I slapped his back and took a step towards the door. “Come on.”
Jasper followed. Tension radiated from him. He was about to hear what lies his dad was going to spout out to make his sister look like a liar.