“These are serious accusations you’re making,” the defense lawyer continued.
“Well, Mikki is a troubled girl. You have to understand that. I feel sorry for her. It’s not her fault.”
“Why do you say she’s troubled?”
“Well on top of how she used to make accusations against me – accusations that were so bad I eventually had to break up with her – she doesn’t have healthy relationships. After all, the baby she lost, her stepbrother was the father.”
I felt Jaret’s body stiffen next to mine.
Holy shit.
Had Tom just said that?
I obviously wasn’t the only one who thought that, as the entire room began to buzz with the murmurs of reporters who had just gotten a scoop.
“Order! I call this room to order!” the judge shouted, banging his gavel until finally the murmuring died down.
There was a giant lump in the back of my throat. I was going to puke. This time, there was no way I could avoid it.
I got up, stepped past a number of people in the other pews, and forced myself to slowly leave the courtroom.
As soon as I got outside of the room, I started to cry. I ran down the hallway, tears streaming down my face, until I finally reached the ladies’ bathroom.
I sat down on the floor of the bathroom, practically hyperventilating.
How the fuck had Tom known? Was it just a guess? Was he just trying to humiliate me in front of all these reporters? If so, it had worked.
I was going to be a laughing stock in front of the whole country.
A woman left her stall walked past me, by the way she was dressed and the papers she was holding I was sure she was one of those highly paid lawyers. She gave me a sympathetic look before leaving me alone in the bathroom.
Two minutes later, the door opened again. It was Jaret.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“You look like you could use a bit of support.”
“This is a girl’s bathroom, Jaret.”
He just shrugged.
“Oh kitten, you’re always such a stickler for the rules,” he teased.
“What does it matter? Look where a life of following the rules has gotten me. That fucker’s just ruined my life.”
“Only if you let him.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Jaret sat down on the floor next to me and placed an arm around my shoulder.
“You realize he went into this just trying to humiliate you. Of course he has no chance of winning this trial. Are you kidding? You saw him testify, his excuses are a complete joke.”
I nodded.
“So if you let this ruin your life, if you let it humiliate you, then he gets what he wants. But you know what? If you get up, if you face this head-on, if you take the judgemental looks from people who don’t know you, and you let it slide off your back because those people don’t matter, then what has he done? Nothing, other than seal his own fate. He’ll go to jail, and you’ll go back to your own life. Two weeks from now, no one’s going to remember this trial anyway. You know how quickly stuff slips out of the news.”
I was loathe to admit it, but Jaret was actually making sense.
“I love you so much,” I told him at last.
“I love you too,” he replied. “Now if you want we probably have time for a quickie in one of the stalls before you go back out there and face the world,” he added, and he got a light punch in the arm for his trouble.
“Well, it was worth a shot.”
“Not when we get caught and arrested because there’s like a million lawyers in this building.”
Jaret grinned and stood up, then grabbed my hands and helped me to my feet. He was right. I was going to do this. I wasn’t going to let Tom win. I was going to get my own life back, and I wasn’t going to let a vindictive ex take that away from me.
He’d already taken more from me than I was ever going to forgive him for. I wasn’t giving him this, either.