Chapter Sixteen
“Bella!” Asher sounded stunned. “Where the hell did you get that?”
“You know where I got it, Asher!” I shook the barrel of the gun up and down carelessly. “I got it from your truck! What are you doing with a gun, anyway, Asher? Are you planning on doing something you aren’t telling me about?”
The cocky and sure of himself look was gone from Trevor’s face for the first time since we walked in the door. “Look, Ms. Reynolds, you got it all wrong, I swear.”
“Oh, so it’s Ms. Reynolds now? I’m not so crazy anymore is that it?” I moved closer to him, pointing the gun at his chest. “Shut up! You’re done talking! Now I’m going to be the one doing the talking! And the only thing I want to hear out of your mouth is what happened the night you hit my father and left him there to fucking die!”
It was too late for him to be polite, I already knew what a little shit he was. He wanted to act like he hadn’t been laughing in our faces since the second we walked in. Well, it was a little late for that now.
“Bella,” Asher moved behind me. “Listen to me, you don’t want to do this.” He put his hands on my shoulders and tried to move me away from Trevor.
“Asher,” Paul’s voice was clipped, worried.
“Just shut up, Paul,” Asher warned him. “Bella, listen to me…”
“You’re right,” I told him between tears. “I don’t want to do this but I have to, it’s the only way to find out what really happened to my father.” I dodged toward Trevor and stuck the gun into his chest. “TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED TO MY FATHER!”
Paul made a move toward me but I stopped and turned the gun on him. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” He froze in his tracks, helpless. I knew I was being crazy, I felt it, but what did I have to lose anymore? Asher. Asher was what I had to lose, a voice reminded me.
“Please, don’t do this,” Paul told me. “Don’t hurt my son.”
“No one is hurting anyone.” Asher was next to me, his hands on my arms. “Bella, listen to me. I want you to give me the gun, I want you to give me the gun right now.”
I could hear him and I knew what he was saying made sense but I felt frozen in place, unable to move my hands in his direction. A part of my soul was refusing to let me do the right thing until I found out the truth about the wrong things.
“No, not until he tells the truth,” I whispered.
“Bella,” Asher told me. “Look at me, look right at me, nowhere else, okay? I promise you that he will pay for this, he won’t get away with what he did, but not like this, okay? Not at the cost of you throwing away your life too.” He pushed a piece of hair behind my ear. “I can’t let you do that.”
“You can’t?” I asked, still crying.
He shook his head. “I need you too much.”
The words sunk into my soul, snapping me out of my trance and soon I was letting Asher take the gun out of my hands. He emptied the bullets out onto the table and sighed in relief, pulling me into his chest and holding me tight. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again, do you understand me?”
“I’m sorry,” I muffled into him, shaking. “I’m sorry.”
“Shh,” he told me, petting my hair. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”
Maybe it was because the seriousness of the situation just hit him, or maybe it was because he was scared to death since I had just held a gun to his head, or maybe it was just that he felt bad that I looked like such a broken mess… but finally, Trevor cleared his throat and began to talk in a normal tone, a human tone.
“I didn’t hit a deer, you guys are right…” He sounded too small, so worn down. When he saw the look on my face he rushed on. “I didn’t hit a deer but I didn’t hit your dad either! I swear to you!”
“Trevor,” his father said, fearful. “Don’t say another word!”
“No, dad, I didn’t… I didn’t hit him! I swear to you!” He looked at his father and started to pace back and forth a few steps, visibly stressed. “I just… I didn’t take the truck to work that night. Me and Jeff drove into the city to check out this new club that was supposed to be off the hook…” he swallowed, looking at his dad for a reaction.
“You did what?” Paul shook his head, looking more shocked than angry and ran his large hands over the slightly wrinkled temples of his under chin. “Oh, Trevor, go on…”
Trevor blew out a breath, looking more like the kid he was now and not the man he had been pretending to be. “I guess we were talking to these guy's girlfriends and we didn’t know it and before we realized what was happening the truck was getting trashed… I didn’t… we paid some guy to tow it to the garage and then made up the lie about hitting a deer so you wouldn’t flip out on take away the truck…”
“So, that’s why you’ve been acting so guilty?” Asher asked.
I moved away from the safety of Asher’s chest and shook my head. “But why didn’t you just say that?” I didn’t want to believe that we were back to square one when it came to my father but something about the look on Trevor’s face made me think he was telling the truth. But was he? Could he really be? We had found specs of my dad’s paint on his car…
“I was scared of getting in trouble but I swear I wasn’t the one who hit your dad, Bella.” He looked down at the ground. “I wouldn’t just… I wouldn’t have just left him there like that without any help. I might be a fuck up but I still have a heart.”
I looked up at Asher, wanting to read what he thought was happening. Asher was pretty good at knowing when someone was lying or not and even though a part of me was screaming he was telling the truth I wasn’t sure I could trust myself to be rational right now. I mean, a few minutes ago a part of me was screaming that he was guilty as hell.
Paul cleared his throat loudly, shaking his head. “Asher, Bella… I’m sorry for what’s going on, really, but… just like you have things going on in your family, I have things going on in mine. I’m going to have to ask you guys to leave so I can sort this out.”
“But… you aren’t…” I cleared my throat. “You aren’t going to call the sheriff?” It was hard to believe that a guy like Paul and a kid like Trevor wouldn’t call the cops after I had just pulled a gun on them. They had a reputation around town for being screw-ups and low on moral standards, why would they just let me walk away without taking the chance to stick it to me? The action wouldn’t match their reputation.
Paul shook his head, an exhausted and sad look plastered on his face. “Don’t you think we’ve all been through enough pain and trouble without adding on anything else, Ms. Reynolds?”
In that moment I saw Paul Ryan for what he really was; a single dad with a bunch of kids that he loved but never could seem to control, caught in a life that would pull the rug out from underneath him the second he felt like he was starting to get ahead.
But he wasn’t a bad person or a vicious person…
If he had been he would have called the cops out of spite.
Out of the need for revenge.
Asher put his hand on my shoulder, guiding me toward the door and not stopping until he had pushed me out onto the porch. He closed the door behind us and latched his deep eyes on to mine, slipping his hands behind my neck and forcing me to look up at him. “Have you lost your damn mind, Bella? What the hell were you thinking? Pulling out a gun!”
“I wasn’t thinking, okay?” I snapped. “Clearly.”
Asher shook his head, still offering up no explanation as to why he had a gun in his car in the first place. “Bella, you can’t do shit like that, do you understand me?” He looked angry and stern like he was talking to a child who hadn’t listened one too many times.
“Why not?” I huffed. “If you can carry a gun why can’t I?”
Asher shook his head, frowning. “We aren’t playing this game, Bella, not right now. If anything would have happened in there you would have been giving up your own life, not just that kids in there do you get that? Did you think about that? Did you think about what would happen if your dad woke up to that?”
My heart stopped in my chest.
Of course, I hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t thought about jack shit.
Asher sighed when he saw the look on my face and yanked me toward his broad chest, letting the heavy beating of his heart take over the rhythm of my breathing. “You don’t get it… if something happened to you…”
He let his words hang in the air, letting the wind fill in the spaces.
He didn’t have to finish, the fear was one I was starting to share. I wasn’t sure how I had made it this far but I was starting to be very aware of the fact that it would feel a million times harder without Asher by my side. The thought of having to face any of this without him was suddenly terrifying to me.
The sound of tires on the dirt as they neared us snapped me out of my emotional daze and forced me to look up at the police cruiser that was pulling down the drive.
“What the hell?” I whispered, taking a step forward.
The police car wasn’t the only one present, seconds later three more cars followed. Doors were slamming loudly, men in uniforms coming toward the house in all different directions. The sheriff was at the head of the line, leading the pack with a pile of documents in his hand and a serious look on his face.
“What is this?” I looked at Asher.
Had they called the cops on me after all? The idea made little sense. Paul seemed like the kind of guy who was true to his word and even if he had, no way they would have gotten here that fast.
He kept his eyes locked on the sheriff. “No idea.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me after him, using his body to shield my body from the mob of angry looking men in blue heading straight for us.
“Asher?” The sheriff looked surprised. “What are you doing on this side of town?” He stopped in front of us, using his hands to pull his belt up over the roundness of his stomach.
“Just checking in on Paul…” he trailed off, letting the words hang the same way he did moments earlier on the porch with me, not wanting to show all our cards until we knew the hand the sheriff was about to play. “Everything okay, Sheriff?”
The sheriff held his hands up, stopping the group of men behind him and looking back and forth between Asher and me before letting his hands linger on my face for a few beats. “I was going to give you a call once we got back down to the station, Bella, but since you’re here I guess I can let you know now.”
I moved closer to the sheriff. I had known him since I was a little girl but back then he was just a young deputy, trying to prove he had what it took to play ball with the big shots. His hair was gray now, his skin wrinkled, and his teeth tinted with a slight yellowness. The one thing that reminded me of his one-time youth was his smile that somehow managed to remain young after all these years.
Asher held on to me tighter, bracing me for neither of us knew what.
“What is it?” I gulped and squeezed back.
“We’re here to serve a warrant for arrest in regards to your father’s case.” The sheriff shook the papers in his hands up and down as if to prove his point. “The evidence is in and we’ve found the person responsible.” He patted me on the shoulder and waved his men around him. “We’re going to get your pop some justice.”
“Sheriff,” I called out after him. “I…” Even I could hear the desperate tone in my voice. Something felt so unsettling about this entire thing. Trevor hadn’t looked guilty of anything other than being a scared kid keeping secrets from his dad. But what did I know? If someone was guilty of something the cops were more likely to figure it out than I was. They wouldn’t just arrest someone without a heavy amount of evidence. “Are you sure?”
He shot me a sad smile. “It’s okay, Bella, we got him.”
And then he turned around and walked up the steps toward the house ready to tell a young boy that his life was completely over. It was a punishment equal to the crime they were so sure he had committed, yet somehow, all I could do was clutch on to Asher for support as they carried him out in handcuffs seconds later.