Chapter Two
Olivia
I was on my way back to use the bathroom before I started cleaning up out front. I told Gail that I would come in early and make sure all signs of the party were cleaned up before Bull opened for the day. I heard a noise in the back office. No one ever really went in there so I was curious.
I was surprised when I walked up to the door just in time to see Dax shoving a bunch of security tapes in his backpack. When he turned around to look at me, he looked guilty as hell but relieved once he realized it was me. I wondered if Bull knew he was back there. Why did I really care? I didn’t even like Bull.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” he said. I could have asked him the same.
“I told your mom I’d come in early to finish cleaning up. I got a little…sidetracked last night and didn’t finish. I came back to use the bathroom and heard you back here.”
“You might want to be more careful around here walking in on people. Never know what you’ll see.” He laughed nervously.
He was right. I had seen Bull and the other guys disappear back there with any number of nubile groupies in the past. I shuddered to think what that visual might do to my psyche. I realized that he had done an excellent job of getting me off track. I was still curious about what I did walk in on and I wanted to ask him but he was looking at me with that look again, like I was the one who had done something wrong. It was the way he had been looking at me since he got home.
I finally blurted out, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He hesitated and I thought he wasn’t going to answer me at all. When he finally spoke it was dripping with sarcasm.
“I was just curious why you were back here. You had to know I’d be around. It’s Sunday and I have no life. My girlfriend dumped me and now she’s with my best friend. I tried to show her how I still felt about her after all of that last night…with a kiss. She just ran out on me. It was embarrassing.”
I ignored the reference to the kiss, but about the rest of it, he was right. I figured he would be there that morning. I didn’t want to say it that way though. It sounded too much like I was only there to see him. I was there to clean. I was fighting the joy building up in me from seeing him again.
“I was worried about you after I ran out. You were pretty drunk. I’m surprised that you even remember it.”
“It took me a minute,” he said with a grin again.
“I’m sorry if I overreacted. You reminded me a little bit of my dad after he got out of jail. He kind of went off the deep end and I never knew if he was using the meth and cocaine he was convicted of selling or if he just lost it in his head from being locked up.”
He gave me that look again. It was the one that said I was the guilty party.
At last he said, “I’m not your father, Olivia. Your father was guilty, he admitted it. I’m not a drug dealer, trafficker, or even a user. I told you then and I’m telling you now that I was not trafficking drugs. I was set up. I was the fall guy. If they got stopped because of who they are and what they do then it was likely they needed someone to take the fall. Unfortunately they picked me without giving me a vote.”
He had told me this before. When he was first arrested he used to call me from county jail every day and beg me to believe he was innocent. I really did try. I took his calls for the first month or so and I talked to Terrance about it. He told me he really didn’t know. He hadn’t thought Dax was carrying drugs and he didn’t even have a clue who he would be carrying for if he was running them.
I had my own ideas.
I was spending a lot of time around the club because of Terrance and I even tried talking to Bull. It was obvious that I wasn’t going to get any help from him though. He was secretive about things. If he did know something, he wouldn’t have told me. But, in all of that time I never heard a single one of them say anything about Dax being innocent either…not one word. Even his mother kept her feelings about it to herself. If he was innocent, wouldn’t they be jumping up and down, protesting his arrest?
“Okay,” I finally said. “Assuming that I believed that, I have to ask what you’re doing digging around in the closet, stealing security tapes.”
“I wasn’t stealing anything and just because I’m a parolee doesn’t mean I’m also a thief. My dad knows I’m back here. You can ask him if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you,” I told him. “What do you need security tapes for?”
“I’m trying to prove I’m innocent,” he said. His face suddenly looked like he hadn’t meant to admit it out loud. He used to trust me with his life, but now, not so much. I guess I couldn’t blame him.
“Why did Bull okay it though? That’s odd if his club is the one that set you up, don’t you think?”
“He knows I’m back here. I told him I was looking for tapes around the time a burglary took place here four years ago. What I’m really taking are the ones just before and after my arrest. I’m going to bring them back though, I’m not stealing them.”
“You think you’ll find something on these tapes that will prove you’re innocent?”
“I don’t know, but I hope so. I found some e-mails, Olivia, from Terrance to my dad. They were from the day before I got busted and say something about being all set or ready to go. They’re really suspicious because it’s like the information in the e-mails is purposely vague.”
“So you think Terrance had something to do with you being set up? That doesn’t make any sense, he’s your…he was your best friend. Why would he agree to do that?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out. Ask yourself this, Olivia. Why would my best friend think it was okay to date my girlfriend while I was locked up, ex, or not? Why would my best friend not visit me at least once in almost three years? Just think about it, Liv, really think about it.”
I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. The man I knew Terrance to be wouldn’t do that. I looked at his eyes and I remembered when he wanted me to believe that he was the man I thought he was and I refused. I let myself believe what everyone else said instead. What if I was wrong then and what if he’s wrong now and I make the same mistake with Terrance? Is my judgment really that bad?
I hated to think so, but the problem was sometimes I got the feeling that maybe Terrance was the man he thought I wanted him to be only when I was watching. I was upset when Dax first got arrested. I was repulsed by the thought that someone else I loved was going to be involved with selling drugs.
When my father was arrested I found out so much about him that I never wanted to know. My life was hell and all I could think about when it happened to Dax was that he and I had talked about getting married and having kids. I would never want to bring a child into the world that would be forced to feel the way I felt when I found out who my father really was. Dax of all people knew how devastated I had been over my father.
But Terrance had known Dax his entire life. They told each other everything from what Dax told me. I guess I always assumed that Terrance didn’t question Dax’s arrest because he knew Dax was guilty and he couldn’t bring himself to tell me. But even if he did know he was guilty, as his best friend he should have at least tried to do something to make the situation better or easier for him. Instead, he suddenly wanted to make it all easier on me. Terrance and I hadn’t even really seen that much of each other before Dax was arrested. Afterwards however, he seemed to be showing up everywhere, constantly on hand to comfort me.
He never encouraged me to give Dax a chance, to take his calls, or to go talk to him. A best friend should have done those things. What if Dax was telling the truth and the whole time I let him sit in jail, in prison no less, and I didn’t so much as write him a letter? He sat there all alone, thinking that no one cared enough to believe in him. My stomach felt sick and I suddenly felt like I had made a terrible mistake. I needed to do something to rectify it if I could.
I went back over to the closet and opened it. Sitting down on the floor, I pulled out one of the dusty boxes filled with tapes and started going through them, looking at the dates.
“What are you doing?” Dax asked me, confused.
“I’m helping you. I’m doing what I should have done three years ago, I’m listening…I’m not saying that I have changed my mind and completely believe you didn’t do it, but I’m at least willing to explore the possibility that I was wrong. If there’s something in here that can convince me and everyone else you’re innocent, I want to find it too.”
“Thanks,” he said, looking at me with his beautiful eyes and once again reminding me how in love we used to be.
“You’re welcome,” I told him.
I hoped that we would find it, even though it would make me feel like the biggest fool of all. I felt like I was going to throw up.