Page 72 of Badd Love
The LAPD gestured. "Please, be my guest. We can figure out custody for our charges later." He glanced at me. "Your boyfriend is not a nice guy, ma'am. I'm not trying to meddle in your life, but you're better off without him."
"Oh, he's not my boyfriend," I said. "He sexually abused me for four years, starting when I was twelve. I heard he was here and decided to…say hello."
The FBI agent who'd listed the charges gave me a speculative appraisal. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about what happened to him, would you? How he got here? The nurses said someone pushed him out of a moving car near the ER entrance."
"Me?" I put a hand to my chest. "No, sir, officer. Or…special agent, is it?" I gave him my best deer-in-the-headlights look. “Violence is never the answer, sir. That's what my mama always told me, at least."
The agent fought valiantly to suppress a smirk. "I see. Well, ma'am, once the hospital gives us the go-ahead, we're taking him into custody."
I patted the agent's dense, burly arm. "Thank you for what you do. And please, feel free to lose the key once you've locked him up."
"Ma'am, when the other inmates find out he's a pedophile…" he shrugged. "Well, let's just say that sometimes, with guys like that, justice comesafterthe law has had its say."
"That information has a way of coming out, does it?" I asked.
"Yes, ma'am, it does."
"Good." I did a finger wave at Daniel. "Too-doo-loo, Danny-boy. Enjoy prison…again."
He had sagged back against his pillows, face drawn, exhausted, and resigned. "Fuck off, Lindsey. You called 'em, I bet."
I laughed. "I wish I had. Honestly, though, no, I didn't. I didn't know you were wanted. I didn't know you were even out of prison. But this is the best possible outcome I could have hoped for. Goodbye forever, Danny. May your socks always be wet and your pillow always warm."
I heard a stifled snicker from one of the officers.
I breezed out of the room, feeling a lightness within myself so potent that when I reached the bright sunlight of the street, I felt like I could bound over the buildings like a Brobdingnagian astronaut.
I had to readGulliver's Travelsfor a college lit class, okay? Just look it up, okay? Don’t judge me; I don't typically use $10 words, but that's just a fun one: Brobdingnagian. Say that five times fast.
I didn't even mind that my car was a hundred and forty degrees inside and the AC was on the fritz again. I knew I hadmore work to do to heal from what had happened to me, but maybe, just maybe, this was a meaningful start.
CHAPTER 10
Dane
Icleared my throat, but no one looked at me, so I tried again, louder and more dramatically. “A-hem.”
It was Sunday afternoon, a beautiful late fall day, and my family—Mom, Dad, Delia and Hunter, Sunni and Hayden, and Duncan and Rune, who was a billion weeks pregnant, or "overcooked” as she called it—were all sitting around our outdoor dining table.
"Somethin' to say, son?" Dad said, drawing everyone's attention.
"Um, yeah." I let out a breath. "So, I, uhhhh…I'm in a choir at the college, and our first concert is a week from tomorrow night. If, um…if anyone wanted to come."
Silence greeted this.
"Wow, don't everyone all get excited at once," I muttered.
Mom was the first to come up with a response, unsurprisingly. "Choir? I didn't think you were interested in music."
"I needed to fill an elective, and that's what worked," I admitted. "But I'm finding I actually like it a lot. Our teacher or director or whatever, Mrs. Roslin, says I have one of the most beautiful baritones she's ever heard. Sheisroughly fourthousand years old, though, so she could be senile. She's a funny old bat, though, and I'm fond of her."
Delia smiled at me. "That's really great, Dane. I'm glad to see you broadening your horizons. We'll be there."
"Broadening my horizons?" I echoed, muttering. "What'sthatsupposed to mean?"
Sunni, on my right, patted my shoulder. "It's a good thing, Dane."
"But, what? I'm narrow-minded?" I said.
