Sugar Free (16 page)

Jesus fuck, this is it.

“Almost five years ago here in San Francisco,” Carbone adds, and my entire world spins so hard I have to slap my hands hard on the table to keep my balance. Doug goes stiff beside me and I hear a small pained moan that I know is from Sela.

“And who was the victim in that case?” Hammond prods.

“Caroline North,” Carbone says as his eyes shift slightly to mine and then back to Hammond, as if he had to take a peek at my reaction.

“N-o-o-o-o-o,” I hear Caroline whimper behind me, and then rustling and something knocking against wood. “Get out of my way.”

I spin in my chair to see Caroline trying to push her way past Sela, who's trying to hold on to her.

“Caroline, wait,” Sela says pleadingly as Caroline jerks her arm away, manages to get to the end of the row, and runs for the exit doors.

Sela turns to look at me and I want to break down like a baby and cry at the anguished confusion on her face. I know what's in her head right now:

Remmers just confirmed to me that my attacker's DNA was in the system properly.

JT's DNA is now in the system.

It didn't match with mine.

JT didn't rape me.

He didn't rape me and so now I don't even have that to alleviate some of my guilt for killing him.

I don't care at all what the judge says, or if I'm damning my case. I push up out of my seat, bend over the gallery wall, and put my hands on Sela's shoulders. I can hear the deputy coming toward me so I whisper to her urgently. “He
did
rape you, Sela. He admitted it to you. I don't know what the fuck's going on, but don't you even be thinking you got it wrong, you hear me?”

Hands at my arms start to pull me away and the deputy says, “Mr. North, you need to sit back down before I have to cuff you.”

The judge taps his gavel slightly on the wooden bench and says firmly, “Okay…let's have some order, please. Mr. North, kindly take your seat.”

The deputy pulls me back to my chair but I don't break eye contact with Sela. “Go after her,” I beg her, and let my eyes cut to the doors where Caroline just went. “Please help her.”

Sela nods once and then she's sliding out of the pew and running toward the doors herself. I have no clue what's going to happen to me and I don't give a fuck. I just want Caroline and Sela to be taken care of, and I think my time on this earth where I can do that may now be over.

I can't process what was just laid out in open court for all the spectators and reporters to hear. That Caroline was raped by her half brother, Jonathon Townsend, which is the perfect motive to pin his murder on Beck. Just yesterday, Beck and I had been convinced otherwise.

The minute Remmers told me that my rape case DNA was properly in the database, and knowing that it did not match up with the DNA from Caroline's rape, had both of us assured that JT was lying to me.

But now it appears the opposite is true, and that is what I cannot process. Whatever DNA they pulled off of me was clearly not JT's, and that means I was very much mistaken about his involvement that night.

What if all of my memories, no matter how pitiful or chopped up they may be, are completely false? What if I manufactured much of what happened to me?

No…can't process that, nor do I have time.

Beck asked me to help his sister and that is what I'm going to do. My own mind may be all kinds of fucked up now not knowing shit about my attackers, but I've been in that position before. I went years without knowing and it's not going to kill me to go back to not knowing.

The minute I burst out of the courtroom doors, I look left down the hall to the elevator and see Caroline standing inside, tears pouring down her face. A few reporters come out the door behind me and pause, unsure of what to do. Caroline looks at me with anger and misery as the doors slide closed, and that spurs the reporters into action. They run to the elevator and jab at the down button, but I've been in that thing a few times. There's only one that services this part of the courthouse and it chugs at the speed of a snail.

I don't hesitate. I sprint the opposite way and hit the stairwell exit. We're on the fifth floor, and providing I don't bust an ankle in my high heels while hurtling down them, I should be able to catch her.

Down one flight, heels clacking and hand gripped hard on the handrail. Around the landing. Down another flight.

When I get to the bottom floor, I slam open the door and come skidding out into the lobby of the Marin County Courthouse, and immediately spy Caroline heading for the exit door with one hand clasped tightly to hold her purse over her shoulder and her face angled downward so no one can see her tearstained face.

“Caroline,” I call out as I start running after her.

She hunches her shoulders and quickens her pace, and beats me to the exit doors by several strides. I rush right out after her and call out again as she starts to cross the one-way street to the parking deck on the other side, being fortuitously lucky there is no traffic to mow her down. With a brief glance over my shoulder, I see the lobby is still reporterless so I kick my run into overdrive, hoping against a twisted ankle, and by the time she's entering the parking deck, I've caught up with her.

If we're lucky, the reporters will chase after nothing down the sidewalk.

“Caroline, please wait,” I say as I reach out and grab her by the elbow.

She spins on me in a swirl of spitting anger, jerking her arm away. “You knew, didn't you?” she accuses.

“Yes,” I say with a wince, then immediately amend my answer. “Actually, no. It's a long story and we were going to tell you, but—”

“You should have fucking told me,” she screeches at the top of her lungs as she takes a step toward me in a menacing fashion. Tears still pour out of her eyes but they are filled with pure malice and not an ounce of pain right now. I expect that will come back later, and I'll take her anger. She deserves to lay it on someone.

“We were going to,” I say desperately. “But we wanted to be absolutely certain first, and we learned something yesterday that led us to believe he hadn't done it.”

She scoffs and turns her back on me, walking across the concrete deck toward the internal stairwell rather than the elevator. I follow along. “I swear it, Caroline. If you just stop and listen to me, I'll tell you everything.”

“As if I could ever believe you,” she huffs as she drags a hand across her cheek to wipe away the wetness.

“Well just stop, take a moment, and listen to my story and then make your judgment,” I snap at her as I jog to keep up with her long-legged pace.

She stops as I request, so suddenly I almost barrel into her, but I pull myself up quickly. “You see, the thing is—”

“You know,” she interrupts me. “I don't know who to be more pissed at…Beck for not telling me something I had a right to know, or you for even coming into his life and bringing all this shit with you.”

“Me,” I say solemnly as I reach out and touch her forearm. “You be mad at me. Beck has always been your champion, so you take every bit of your pain out on me. Okay?”

Tears well up again in Caroline's eyes and her shoulders sag, and I can see the fight completely drain out of her. She looks up to the concrete ceiling above us and says on a disbelieving moan, “Oh God…JT is my brother?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“And he raped me?”

“Beck and I honestly didn't think so, but let's go get in your car for some privacy and before the reporters find us. Let me tell you every bit of it, okay?”

Caroline's gaze drops to mine and she nods, spinning back on her heel and climbing up the stairwell to the second level. I follow behind her, trying to calm my racing heart. Too much fucking drama for me to handle. Beck sitting there while evidence mounted against him, a scandalous bomb dropped in open court that will have every news media channel about ready to cream themselves, and Beck's sister destroyed by something she should have been told a long time ago.

When we both get situated in Caroline's car, I angle my body to the left to look at her directly. She sits facing completely forward, almost as if she's afraid to look at me. In fact, her gaze seems superglued to the steering wheel.

“When I was at JT's house and he was on top of me—choking me—he told me he wanted me to know something before I died.”

Caroline swallows hard but doesn't look away from the steering wheel.

“He told me that he was the one who raped you,” I tell her softly. “I made a bad judgment call not to tell you and Beck about it that night. But I did tell Beck the next morning, and at first, we thought it best not to tell you.”

“You should have told me that night,” she whispers, gaze still forward.

“I know,” I tell her with full acceptance of that fuckup on my part. “And we pretty quickly realized you should know…that we shouldn't keep it from you. Once we thought about it, we knew that you needed that closure and resolution, no matter how painful it may be. As someone who probably will never get that closure, I knew it was just so obvious that you should know.”

“But you said you didn't think it was true,” Caroline says as she turns to look at me for the first time since we got in the car. “Something must have made you think JT was lying.”

I nod. “What we couldn't get our heads around was the fact that if JT raped me and you, the DNA should have matched up. It should have hit when the DNA from your case was put into the system. So that meant either JT was lying or perhaps the DNA from my case wasn't in the system. Last month, the investigator that Beck hired to help us with all this had pulled my criminal file so he could get up to speed. He noticed that a document was missing regarding submittal of the DNA in my case into the national DNA database, so Beck and I wanted to check that out. We had intended to tell you after we verified it.”

“And let me guess,” she says softly with full awareness of this fucked-up, complicated mess. “The DNA from your case was in the system.”

“Yes. Yesterday I talked to the cop who investigated my rape and he verified it was all there. Because I believed JT raped me and that was his DNA, it only stood to reason he lied to me about raping you. There was no reason to tell you at that point.”

“You're wrong,” she says, a little anger touching her voice. “You should have at the very least told me JT was my half brother. Well…Beck should have. How long has he known?”

“A while,” I admit. “But that's something you need to discuss with him.”

Caroline gives a tiny, bitter laugh. “For all Beck's bitching and moaning about the secrets this family keeps…about him acting all high and mighty about the truth…he sure does lie a lot.”

“I'm sorry,” I tell her simply. Because I am. Sorry she just heard this terrible news and on top of that, has every reason to be pissed at her brother for keeping her in the dark. But it's not my place to fight Beck's battles for him when it comes to Caroline. He's going to have to take one on the chin and resolve this himself.

That is, if he doesn't go to prison for the rest of his life.

Silence hangs heavy in the air as I let Caroline process everything she's just learned. Her eyes slide back to the steering wheel. While I know she's going to be troubled by these events for a long time to come, I also know this woman is strong and resilient and that she will get past this eventually.

“Do you think—” she starts to say, and then abruptly stops, as if she really doesn't want to know the answer to the question she was getting ready to ask.

I hold still, wait for her to determine the level of bravery she needs.

She clears her throat and starts again. “Do you think JT knew I was his half sister when he raped me?”

I internally wince, because this is what makes this story ten times more horrible. But I tell her the truth. “Yes, he knew.”

Caroline jerks in the seat and her face pales, her lower lip trembling.

“Beck asked your father that after the graveside service and your dad said JT's mom told him when he turned eighteen,” I tell her with brutal honesty. No way I'm holding anything back from her.

“Ally's perfect, isn't she?” Caroline asks in a small voice, and I know what she's wanting me to affirm. That she wasn't touched by the nastiness of rape and incest.

“She's absolutely perfect and she is everything that you are,” I tell her truthfully as I put a hand on her shoulder and squeeze. “Out of all of the bad that has happened to you, and even knowing this horrific truth, I know you'll accept every bit of it with the knowledge that you have Ally, and nothing better will ever happen to you in your lifetime.”

A tiny sob pops out of Caroline's mouth and she squeezes her eyes shut while she nods effusively in agreement. “I'll take every bit of this nastiness,” she says in a quavering voice, then opening her eyes to look at me. “Every bit of it in exchange for the wonderful gift I got out of it.”

“No other way to look at it,” I agree, dropping my hand to grab hers, which sits limply on her lap. I lace my fingers with hers and squeeze.

Caroline tilts her head and her eyes widen as she realizes something. “The DNA…if the DNA in your case doesn't match JT…then…?”

I shrug nonchalantly even as a stab of pain lances straight through my heart. Caroline doesn't need to know how bad this feels to me, so I say, “I must have been mistaken.”

She shakes her head, and squeezes my hand so hard the tips of my fingers go numb. “I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation.”

“Perhaps,” I say as I pull my hand away from hers. “But it's a worry for another time. If you're okay with it, I want to get back to the courtroom for Beck. Want to come?”

She nods her head. “Yeah…let's swing by the bathroom so I can repair this wreck of a face. I don't want to upset Beck, but maybe it will scare the reporters off if we run into them.”

I laugh. “You two…your bond is amazing. I know you have a lot of reasons to be pissed at him, but you also have this love that's untouchable. I'm a little envious of it actually.”

Caroline smiles at me. “You have the same thing with him. Don't ever doubt that.”

And I don't…doubt it. But I do worry that might not be a good thing as we try to hold this puzzle of lies together because we're fueled by this love we have for each other.