The Pretend Boyfriend (The Pretend Boyfriend #4)(10)
Author: Artemis Hunt

8

Sam can see that Brian is extremely troubled.

He is home tonight, and she guesses that Delilah has released him from his duties. But why? It could be as mundane as her having to attend an office function tonight. It could also be as sinister as him having done something to displease her.

Whatever it is, she’s frightened for him. She senses that a woman as psychologically disturbed as Delilah would never let him go easy.

She makes both of them a simple meal of salad and butternut soup. They talk about the gym. About Thor running the gym while she’s away and annoying all the other trainers. Brian laughs. She smiles at him. It’s good to see him laugh. She hasn’t seen him laugh in a very long time.

After dinner, he says gravely, “I have something to tell you.”

She tenses, but tries to appear outwardly calm.

He takes in a deep breath. “I did something really stupid.”

He tells her, in fits and starts, about Delilah and the ‘deal’ he made with her. She listens, not interrupting, until he finishes.

He looks up at her expectantly. “Well, are you going to ream me out?”

Tears come into her eyes, and she blinks them away.

She says, “So you did this because she promised you she would withdraw the charges against me?”

She is trembling.

He did this . . . for me.

The stupid, stupid lunk head. How could he have done this? Sacrificed himself like that at the altar of the woman who ruined him . . . for her? Of all the moronic, imbecilic, unbelievable things to do! She envisions him being used like a sex slave for days on end and shudders.

He didn’t technically tell her what went on in bed between him and Delilah, of course, but she can well imagine it. All those positions that woman probably made him contort himself into. All those surfaces she made him f**k her against. All those things with his hands and mouth and c**k that she made him do to her. One can get moist just thinking about it . . . and outraged.

He flinches, as if he’s expecting her to go mental on him too.

But she doesn’t. She doesn’t straighten the crooked smile that appears on her face, and she knows it’s there because the corners of her mouth are starting to ache from it.

“Why’re you grinning?” he demands.

“Because of you. You dopey, loony dumbbell. Whatever possessed you to do such a thing? You might as well throw yourself into the fire and make a deal with the Devil himself.”

He flushes. He says in a low voice, “It isn’t only because of you, although you are the main reason I did it. I feel as if I owe her something for what I did to her. You know . . . back in college.”

“Brian, you can’t keep on blaming yourself. What happened to Adele was rotten, yes, but she made her own choices. And she has punished you well for that. She has no right to demand this . . . this travesty from you and go on punishing you. No one has the right to do that to another human being.”

For all his bravado, he can be so emotionally irrational at times. But perhaps there lies the root of his problems. He has the emotional maturity of a teenager, even though physically and professionally, he’s all grown up. It had a lot to do with him being an abused kid, Sam thinks sadly.

Brian sighs. “Then why do I feel so f**king guilty?”

She moves closer to him and puts her arm around his shoulders. He’s gone thinner. Much thinner. Too much stress and worry.

Now it’s her turn to take some of that away. Or maybe add to it, depending on how he would react.

She says, “Brian, I haven’t been totally honest with you either.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Is this about Thor?”

She hisses exasperatedly. “Are you kidding? Snap out of it already about Thor. He’s nothing to me, OK? Nothing! No, this is much more important. You see, I followed you that night. And . . . ”

She tells him what she has done. His eyes go round.

“No shit!” he yells when her story is finally over. “Damn it, Sammie, what you’re doing is f**king dangerous!”

“I’ve done it anyway,” she says. Her shoulders steel themselves determinedly. “What’s done is done. Now what the hell are we going to do with it?”

9

In the Court of General Sessions, Brian and Karen Sandler, his attorney, stand as the Honorable Rufus B. Cowan takes his seat at the bench. The courtroom is full today. Brian grimaces. A good portion of the general public as well as a sprinkling of the city’s press have turned out in full force to watch him get hammered.

His mother, a beautiful dark-haired woman with startling green eyes – his eyes – sits silently on one of the pews behind him. He’s extremely aware of her presence and that of Sam’s. He’s glad his father and uncle decided to stay away. His father would probably be glad to see him in the slammer.

“That’s where you belong, you little f**ker,” his father had told him once when he was hauled out of school again for smoking dope.

Delilah Faulkner and the ball-busting Assistant District Attorney, Norma Hennessey, occupy the prosecutor’s table, right next to the jury box. Brian steals a look at the jurors. Six men, six women – their ages running the gamut of twenty-something to sixty-something. He supposes that’s how the lawyers chose them – to eliminate favoritism.

Not that he’s going to be a favorite of anyone here.

Unless . . .

He met up with his mother before the proceedings.

“Brian,” she says coolly. “You look well.”

As well as he can under the circumstances. His mother is dressed in a well-cut Chanel suit. Her hair is impeccable, as always, but her hands betray a slight tremor and her eyes are slightly glazed. Brian knows what that means – his mother has indulged in her morning libations, as usual. The two sharp shots of alcohol would have rendered her into a pleasant stupor till mid-morning, so that she would be oblivious to whatever was happening around her, even if her eyes were fully open.

Some things never changed. He supposes he should be glad for her actually turning up at all.

“So do you, Mother,” he says, kissing her cheek. She smells of dry twigs and pressed powder.

Sam is waiting behind him, and so he steps aside.

“Mother, this is my friend, Samantha. Samantha, this is my mother, Angelique.”

Sam offers his mother a hand. Angelique shakes it with a weak grasp. Brian notices the liver spots on his mother’s skin.

“I’m so glad to have finally met you,” Sam gushes.

Brian knows Sam is trying to be nice because this is the first time she has ever met any member of his family. Well, don’t hope for too much, Sammie.