Chapter 16
Tyler
I had to admit, on the drive home from the Catskills, I felt like kind of a wimp.
First, I had told Grayce about my parents. I had never told anyone I’d met that story – not the detailed version of it anyway, and I’d damn sure never told it to a woman I was fucking. What was it with this woman that made me so fucking weak?
Then, to top it all off, I told her I was okay with being friends. What sort of lame-ass, rom-com bullshit was that? I didn’t want to be friends with her. I wanted to fuck her, and only her. And I sure as hell didn’t want her fucking anyone else. Shit!
At least by the time we finished our hike, the mood was decidedly lighter. I took her to the Pine Needle Café near the park entrance for a bite to eat. It was an old place, a little run down, but the food was great and the people even better.
By the time we got back to the city, Grayce was opening up a little, talking and laughing with me. Her laugh was melodic and throaty. It went straight to my heart.
As we walked down the hall to our apartment, my phone buzzed. It was Steven.
“Hey, man. It’s my night off, remember?” I said as I answered.
“Sorry, Tyler, that’s not what I’m calling about.” His tone was serious. He was never serious.
“Shit dude, what’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news. That guy you clocked last night? Will Sanderson? He’s jacked up pretty bad. He had a pretty bad concussion, and his jaw is broken.” Steve’s tone was still somber.
“Good. He was a fucking predator, Steve. You don’t put up with that shit in your place.”
“Tyler, he’s a cop. He’s apparently ass-hurt that you took him out so easily, and he’s pressing charges. You probably ought to go down the police station and get it sorted out. Better to go to them than have them have to come to you,” Steve said. “Dude, I’m so sorry. Let me know if I can help you out. Kelly’s pulling the video now to see if there is anything that will help you. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Fuck! Fuck!” I hit my fist against the wall.
“Shit, what happened?” Grayce asked.
“I need to head out again. I’ve gotta take care of something.” I’d take a quick shower and get changed so I didn’t look like a complete thug when I went to the police station.
“Tyler?” she asked, then she put her hand on my arm. “Tyler, talk to me. What happened?”
I blinked and drew a deep sigh. “That asshole from the last night, he’s pressing charges against me for assault.”
Grayce got very quiet for a moment. Then she slowly started to shake her head. “Okay, that asshole wants to press charges? Two can play at that game. Besides, you’re showing up with your lawyer.”
“I don’t have a lawyer,” I replied.
“Of course, you do. My specialty isn’t criminal law, but I have some friends I can call for advice. You were trying to help me, and now you’re on the hook for it. I will not stand for that.”
I couldn’t help but let a little smile break across my lips. First, and most importantly, she wanted to help me. She was looking out for me. Second, she was so damn adorable when she was pissed.
We got showered and changed, then headed down to the police station. Once we arrived, Grayce told me as we walked in to let her do the talking as my legal counsel.
“You do realize how difficult that will be for me, right?” I told her.
“I do, which is why I’m reminding you now. You’re a professional at what you do. I’m a professional at what I do. Let me do my thing, and we’ll get through this.”
We walked in and she went straight to the officer at the front desk. “Hello, my name is Grayce Gladden. My client, Tyler Bennett, is here with me today. We understand a warrant has been issued in his name.”
“Bennett…Bennett. Yeah, here we go. Hey, Cooper, can you do an intake on Tyler Bennett?” The officer handed the man a folder and he ushered us through the door and into the squad room.
“You are Tyler Bennett,” the officer said, rattling off his birth date and driver’s license number. “That’s you, correct?”
“Yes, that’s me,” I replied. I looked at Grayce, and she shook her head side to side once and made a wiping motion across her lips with her finger, reminding me to keep my mouth shut.
“Tyler Bennett, you are under arrest for the assault of Officer Will Sanderson on the night of…”
My brain stopped working as he continued reading me what cop shows had taught me were my Miranda rights.
“Wait a minute,” Grayce interjected. “Officer Will Sanderson?”
“Yes ma’am. The man your client here assaulted was one of New York’s finest.”
Holy shit, I thought, this is bad.
The officer sat me down at his desk and Grayce sat beside me and gave him all of her information. She knew her stuff—she was a force to be reckoned with.
“Ms. Gladden, your client’s version of events,” the officer started, and she cut him off.
“My version of events, Officer…Cooper, is it? I was a witness. In fact, I am the victim that Will Sanderson was in the process of sexually assaulting when my client intervened. I’ll be filing assault charges of my own as soon as my client goes back for processing.”
The rest of the afternoon was a blur. The cop took my fingerprints and mug shot and put me in a holding cell to await arraignment. Grayce had told me all of this would happen, so it wasn’t as scary as it might have been.
A couple of hours later, I was in a courtroom in the next building, standing before the judge. “How do you plead, Mr. Bennett?” he asked.
“My client pleads not guilty, your honor. Grayce Gladden for the defense,” she said confidently as she strode around to join me at the table in the front of the courtroom.
“Your honor, the defense will show that my client was, in fact, assaulted by Will Sanderson when my client interrupted him in the act of sexually assaulting a female patron of the nightclub in which he works, Twist. Sanderson assaulted my client, who first warned him, then deflected Sanderson’s blows not once, but twice, before defending himself. My client is a respected and upstanding member of the community. We request remand.”
Damn, she sounded like a cop show.
“Your honor, the defendant assaulted Officer Sanderson completely unprovoked.” The prosecutor’s words caught my attention, but his appearance and demeanor suggested he might be phoning it in. “We request bail be set at fifty-thousand.”
Grayce said, “Your honor, my client is a public figure. He is well known in the fashion and advertising communities, and his face is currently plastered, forty-feet high, in Times Square. He is not a flight risk, and he has limited resources for bail. Request remand.”
“Mrs. Gladden, I am holding you personally responsible for ensuring he shows up for his day in court. Please tell Carter that Judge Perkins says hello. Remand!” He banged his gavel, and the clerk took me into a little room at the back of the courtroom where he uncuffed me and handed me a slip of paper with my court date and terms of probation.
I walked back down the corridor to the doors in front of the courtroom to find Grayce. I was grateful the judge had let me go home, thanks in no small part to Grayce. Still, I was fuming at the mention of her asshole ex-husband’s name.
When I saw her, a wave of relief washed over me. I was glad to be going home, and even more so to be going home with her.
“Mr. Bennett, let’s get you out of here,” she said. We walked to her Mercedes, and she kept a shoulder’s width of distance between us.
Once we had gotten a few blocks from the courthouse, she leaned over to me at a stoplight and hugged me, her arms tight around my neck.
“Thank God we got him to let you come home!” she said with a huge sigh of relief. “I’ll file a motion to dismiss tomorrow. I talked to the prosecutor and told him the part of the story that Sanderson hadn’t shared. He seems to think we can kill this whole thing. Can you believe that asshole is a cop? He’s supposed to protect and serve, and instead, he assaults women in bars who smile at him. Un-fucking-believable.”
When we got in the apartment, Grayce immediately shrugged off her jacket and kicked off her heels. I grabbed her arm and pulled her to me, wrapping my arms around her tightly, and laid my cheek on top of her head.
“Tyler, we said friends, remember?”
Ouch. My own words, coming back to haunt me. The phrase cut me right to my core.
“I know. I just wanted to say thank you,” I replied.
I went to work the next day as usual. My court date wasn’t for three more weeks, so I had to just go about my regular routine as usual. I talked to Steve. He said the cops had been by with a warrant for all their surveillance videos. He had already made copies and sent one set to Grayce, and took the other set home to his place.
“So,” Steve said, leaning back in his chair, “I told them, ‘Don’t worry, officers, we know you want to get this scumbag who assaulted one of our patrons. My guys are ready to testify about everything they saw that night, don’t you worry.’ Dude, you should’ve seen the look on their faces!”
The next couple of days were nerve-wracking, but they went by pretty quickly. Grayce was coming in after work and working on my case every night. If I came home early enough, sometimes I’d hang with her for a bit before she turned in. One night, I found her asleep on the sofa, so I picked her up and carried her to bed where she could at least sleep comfortably.
Early the next week, Grayce called me from her office in the middle of the afternoon. I think it was the first time she had ever called me on the phone. “They dropped it,” she said as soon as I answered. “They dropped all charges. You’re a free man, Tyler.”
I was so thankful, I swear I almost could’ve cried. At some point, it had occurred to me that if the criminal charges had stuck, it might affect my ability to become a counselor or psychologist – whatever path I decided to pursue.
I wanted to do something nice for Grayce. She had fought hard for me, and I had learned quickly that she was a fierce professional in her field. When she would talk to me about my case, her eyes had an intensity and determination that I had only seen one other time – the night we spent together.
I texted her before I left the gym.
ME: You coming home after work?
GRAYCE: I plan to. Got company? Should I stay at Ella’s?
Damn! She was clearly as determined as ever to stick with this whole just friends thing.
ME: No! I just wanted to talk when you get home. What time?
GRAYCE: 6? See you then.
I stopped at the organic market and picked up the ingredients to make glazed salmon and squash risotto. I grabbed a nice bottle of wine to go with it, then headed home to make dinner.
I was almost finished with dinner when Grayce walked in.
“Wow, smells good in here!” she said as she came into the kitchen.
She leaned back against the doorframe, feet crossed, hands in the pockets of her slacks. Loose, chocolate-brown curls pooled forward against her green blouse, onto the left side of her chest.
“I have a confession to make.” I walked up to her, but careful not to cross any boundaries without an invitation. “I wanted to see if you’d be home tonight because I wanted to make you dinner. I want to say thank you for everything you did for me – getting the charges dropped.”
“Tyler! Are you serious?” She stood up straight to face me. “You do remember how this whole thing started, right? You were just trying to help me. If you hadn’t jumped in, you wouldn’t have had all this trouble in the first place.”
“Grayce,” I put my hands on my hips and shook my head, “just take the thank you, and eat the dinner I cooked you, all right?”
She laughed. “Okay.”
“I’m going to get all this plated. It’ll be ready in fifteen minutes if you want to get more comfortable.”
Grayce came out of her room a little while later, wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I set up dinner on the kitchen island and poured us each a glass of wine.
“You’re a pretty incredible cook,” she said, taking a bite. “This risotto is amazing.”
I wasn’t sure if it was the relief of the charges being dropped, but Grayce was definitely at ease over dinner. She cracked jokes with me and laughed as we ate. After her second glass of wine, I started clearing the dishes.
“Wanna watch the latest episode of that comedy you like?” I asked.
“Sure! I’ll go queue it up.” She smiled and headed to the living room.
As I was finishing up the dishes, I heard a knock at the front door.
“I’ll get it,” Grayce said.
I walked into the living room, and Grayce was looking at a packet of papers. “Who was it?” I asked.
Her face was serious as she held the papers up. “It was a courier. Tyler, Sanderson has filed civil litigation…he’s suing you.”
“What? I don’t have anything for him to take. Can he do that?” I asked, sinking into the sofa beside her.
“I’m afraid he can. He is suing to recover damages from his fractured jaw and concussion,” she said, shaking her head. “But it gets worse.”
“How much worse?”
“His attorney…it’s Carter,” she said, putting the papers on the coffee table and dropping her face to her hands.
“Fuck! Grayce.”
She took a deep breath and looked up at me. “What?”
“He’s trying to goad you. You don’t have to do this. I can hire someone to help. I don’t want you to have to deal with that asshole.”
“No, I got us into this, and I’m going to get us out.” She slouched back on the sofa. This was bad, and could be a big mess, but I had to admit I liked hearing her say us. “I’ll countersue for my attack. He’s pursuing civil litigation because I sought criminal charges against him. I know Carter. We went to the same school and worked at the same firm. I know all his tactics, remember? If he wants to fight dirty, he better be ready for how dirty this fight will get.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. She put her hand on top of mine. I wanted to take her in my arms. I was trying hard to respect her wishes, but at the same time, I knew something had shifted between us.
When Grayce wasn’t around, all I did was think about her. When she was around, all I thought about was that look on her face the night we were together. She was happy, and relaxed, and free. I wanted to make her feel that way all the time. I had dated a lot of women, but no one had ever affected me the way she did. Grayce ignited some instinct deep within me. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to make her happy. She made me want to be…more. I was never going to be some boring suit with a stick up my ass like her ex. But for her, I wanted to be better. Was that love? Was that what Shane and Becky had? Hell if I knew.
I had called Jason earlier that afternoon to let him know everything had worked out with criminal charge. I also told him to get me every gig he could book. Modeling wasn’t a long-term play for me – not anymore. I’d told him I’d take whatever work he could get me – cologne, cars, hell, I’d even do work for one of those river cruises all the retired people take. I didn’t care. I needed to sock some money away and free up time by losing one of my jobs. I was going to go back for my graduate degree, and that meant I needed time to study and attend class.
Maybe it was arrogance, or even self-delusion, but I still thought I could change Grayce’s mind. I still felt something from her when she looked at me. If I could make her see that too, maybe I had a chance.