The Things We Couldn't Forget

Chapter 27.

I am so completely and utterly fucked.

After I asked for a lawyer, Detective Mayfield had gathered his things with a bright smile on his face and left the room.

I don't even know how to get a lawyer.

Isn't one supposed to be appointed to me or something if I don't already have one? Or is that only for people who have been arrested?

Have I been arrested?

The chills running through my body now have nothing to do with the withdrawals.

They are entirely fear now.

How had this happened?

I didn't do any of this, but God, if I didn't already know that and I was an outsider looking in, I'd be willing to throw my life down with the firm belief that I was guilty.

And Aries.

Aries.

My Aries.

I'd trusted him. I trusted him wholly and without any doubts whatsoever since the day I met him. He was good. Damaged and complicated and frustrating, but good. He had hurt me more times than I could even count. He had let me down, disappointed me, broken my heart, and still I was sure if one thing.

Aries is a good person.

Someone I will always love without conditions, because I saw him. I saw the person behind those walls, while maybe only in short tiny minuscule moments, I still saw them. I still believed in him and the person I knew him to be behind all of the fake bravado he had learned to hide behind.

He's been through so much. More than someone so young should have to see. He's lived a hard life and he picked himself up from the circumstances he was born into and he made himself into the man he is now.

He was worth my trust.

And now...

I can't deny the evidence that was laid in front of me. No matter how many ways I try to turn it in my mind to make it fit to where he is innocent, I can't make the pieces go together.

I could explain away the prints in the alley if I really tried hard enough. If I shielded my eyes just so, I could make myself believe there was a mistake there.

I can't do that for the second photo.

There is no logical reason for his boot prints to be on that road. Not a single one. To further the doubts sinking into my skin and taking root, he'd never said anything. If there was even a chance they would find his boot prints there, he would have said something.

But he hadn't.

Can Aries really be the monster after all?

I'd let him back into my life. Just last night I'd forgiven him for the way he left me. I'd already begun to sweep all of those years of bad blood I held for him away. I'd been making excuses for him still, after all of these years, I still tried to see the best in him.

I'd wanted to believe it so badly, I'd closed my eyes to all of the signs.

My mind flashes back to the other night and how quickly and easily he had jumped up to make that fire for me.

Then I think of all of the times I'd come home or woken up to find the fire burning.

Had he been doing that all along?

And the missing keys from Mrs. Statham's house? Dallas had said it would have been someone she trusted enough to let inside of her home. She trusted him so much, she is the one who got him his lawyer. She had his picture hanging proudly on her living room wall.