Page 22 of Matlock
“Simon.”
I waited for him to look my way, and when he didn’t, I let out a long, frustrated sigh. “Simon, we need to talk about what happened in court.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
He turned his head to look at me, fear and pain etched on his face. “Did you sleep with her? Is that why she’s coming after me? A scorned lover who’s pissed the man she wants is into guys instead?”
“I have never slept with Rosalind Winthrop. We went to law school together.”
Simon turned away; his disbelief was a neon sign. I grabbed his chin and forced him to look at me. “I have never slept with her, or any woman.”
His eyes flared and blinked at me. “Never?”
I moved my hand from his chin to the back of his neck. “Never,” I confirmed and pulled him forward, connecting his lips with mine. I pulled him further onto my lap, letting him feel how hard I was.
“I have never been interested in a woman. Rosalind wanted Fury, not me,” I said between kisses.
“Why is she doing this?”
“I don’t know, Simon, but I will find out. I won’t let you go to prison.”
“Sadie can’t go either.”
I cupped his face in my hands. “I need the truth, Simon. I can’t defend you if I don’t know everything.”
“It was self-defense.”
“Yours or hers?”
Simon crawled off my lap and stood up. “Why does it matter? He was beating her.”
I leaned my head against the back of the couch. “There is no record of the abuse, Simon. Sadie wouldn’t make a report, so in the law’s eyes, everything she told you is hearsay.”
“She never told me.”
“What?” I asked, my head shooting up.
“She would never admit he had hit her.” My eyes tracked Simon as he paced the room. “It was always, ‘I fell.’ Or ‘I walked into the door.’ She never came out and said he hit her.”
I closed my eyes and ran my hands through my hair. “Simon, this makes things so much harder. Why didn’t you call the club? We could have cleaned it up. Zero would have made it all disappear.”
“You don’t have siblings, Tony. You don’t understand.”
I did have a sibling. I’d never told Simon about my sister. About how she died. That she was the reason I could never go back to New York.
Suddenly, I understood why Simon was protecting Sadie. I did everything I could to protect Julia, and I still lost her. And almost lost my life in the process.
Now the man I was in love with was about to lose his. If Simon was found guilty, he would go to prison, probably for the rest of his life. He would die there. And it wouldn’t be due to old age.
“I had a sister.”
Simon spun around and scowled at me. “What?”
“I had a sister. Her name was Julia, and she was three years older than me.”
Simon sat down in the chair across the room, and I wanted to ask him to sit on my lap. I wanted him within arm’s reach when I talked about Julia. When I told him my deepest, darkest secret.
