Stepping Over the Line: A Stepbrother Novel (Shamed) (5 page)

“Stop it!” Constance screamed from the backseat.

“I’ll fucking kill you.” Garrett delivered a hard right and then left to Chad’s perfect chiseled chin.

“Not if I kill you first! You think I didn’t see the way you looked at your
sister
the night of her graduation?” Chad answered back with a slam of his fist to Garrett’s stomach, another punch to his jaw, and then nose.

A growl emitted from deep in Garrett’s chest, and then he pounded Chad hard enough on his nose that my fiancé reeled backward, hitting the back of his head with a sickening thud against a flower bed’s stone edge. I might not have been a fully-certified doctor, but in that freeze-framed instant, I knew this was bad.

My mind no longer saw Chad, but a textbook case of an intracranial hemorrhage brought on by trauma. I’d spent years learning to shut off my emotions in an emergency and I all but threw myself on the ground, checking his pupils, only to find them fixed and fully dilated.

There was no pulse, so despite the fact that I knew if there was even a chance of a neck injury he shouldn’t be moved, I barked at Garrett, “Help me get him flat. He needs CPR. Constance, call 9-1-1!”

I vaguely recalled a crowd gathering and then a woman’s otherworldly cries.

There were sirens.

And paramedics pulling me away, telling me there was nothing more to be done.

Police arrived and there were questions upon questions.

I needed sleep. I needed time and space to process what my addled brain refused to compute—Chad was dead.

Garrett had killed him.

I stared at my stepbrother. Complex confusion welled from a frightening place so deep I feared I might never emerge. What had he done?

Sure, my future with Chad might not have been a fairy tale scenario, but it was mine. It had been my only chance of wrenching my heart from the ridiculous fantasy I’d spun of Garrett and me sharing full lives together. Chad and his family would have given me support with this baby, and I wouldn’t have been alone while navigating being a new mom and medical resident.

If my stepbrother truly loved me, how could he have not only stolen all my security, but ever dragged me toward that limo to bear witness to that unfathomable scene? Chad and Constance? Together? No. Just, no. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Kappa Kappa Gammas were nice girls. We wear Lilly Pulitzer and sip our cokes through straws. We didn’t fuck our sisters’ fiancés, and even if we did, we’d certainly find a classier place to do it than in the back of a rental limo that probably hadn’t had a proper cleaning in years!

Rage consumed me.

I wanted to lash out. To punch something—someone.
Chad, Constance, and
Garrett.
My limbs had gone numb. My tongue had as well. The only part of me still functioning were my eyes. I couldn’t stop staring at him, hating him for what he’d done. For what my sick attraction to him had made me do. On a base level, was I any better than my cheating fiancé? I might not have physically been with my stepbrother lately, but emotionally, he was constantly in my head and heart.

I let my mother lead me away from the
ugliness.

She practically tried shoving a Xanax down my throat. Oh—don’t think for one hot second I didn’t want about three of the little gems, but it wasn’t recommended during pregnancy, so I abstained. I fell onto a downy-soft canopy bed, staring up at peonies, but only seeing Garrett.

How could I hate him, but still love him? He’d killed Chad, yet some perverse part of me needed him and only him for comfort. What was he going through? I’d seen it all, and Chad’s death had been a horrible accident—which I’d told the sheriff. But he hadn’t listened. I was viewed as the grief-stricken almost-widow far too overcome to fully comprehend the afternoon’s events. As such, my voice lacked value.

What the man didn’t understand was that without Garrett, my life lacked value.

But how did I reconcile that with the fact that the entirety of my allegiance should belong with my dead fiancé—the victim? How did I wrap my head around the fact that even though Chad had been caught cheating, I was now expected to mourn his loss?

Only I couldn’t fully.

Confusion swirled my thoughts and emotions. The rational side of me understood I needed sleep. The side of me that needed to make sense of the horror of what had happened needed Garrett. Only he was trapped behind bars and I was trapped inside the prison of my heart.

I’d just killed a man.

It didn’t matter that I’d only meant to temporarily punch the cheating little fucker’s lights out. It didn’t matter that he’d thrown the first punch—making this legally an open-and-shut case of classic self-defense—I still felt like shit. Never in a million years would I have purposely hurt the guy Savannah loved. Even worse, we were in Mississippi, and that changed everything. Down here, the law was of course, followed, but the interpretation of true justice could sometimes be different than the way it would have been in, say, San Francisco or New York.

In Julep, the sheriff didn’t see two guys fighting, he saw the fact that Chad and Savannah were engaged and she was pregnant, and I’d just killed the father of her unborn child. The reason there’d even been a fight in the first place, because we’d caught the groom screwing a bridesmaid—a trusted sorority sister—no longer seemed to matter.

Our two families that had only an hour earlier planned lifetimes of fruitful social connections had instantaneously become sworn enemies. Chad’s father and brother called me a murderer.

Sheriff Monroe, who hadn’t seen a single murder in his twenty-six years in office, presided over the scene as if directing a stage play. With much pointing and shouting, he’d parked me in our hostess’s dining room where I was apparently under house arrest.

Dad’s longtime attorney, Harvey Leigh Wilcox, had been in attendance at the party, and now sat at the opposite end of the table as me, nursing a dirty martini, snacking on a mountain of pulled pork and reading
Southern Living
as if we were waiting to see a fireworks show. The man easily weighed over four hundred pounds, yet had crammed himself into a navy and white seersucker suit.

From my vantage point, I watched as deputies took hundreds of photos of the
body.
They buzzed about Chad, wielding evidence kits and bags as if they were busy bees on a goddamned episode of
CSI.

It was self-defense!
I raged inside.

Was I sorry I hit the cheating bastard? No. Was I sorry he was dead? Of course. I wasn’t a stone-cold killer and felt horrible about what I’d done.

Most of all, I was sorry for what this was doing to Savannah who had been so overcome by the spectacle of it all that her mother and our hostess had whisked her upstairs, presumably to lie down. Was she okay? Was her baby okay?

A deputy opened the room’s french doors, then cleared his throat. “Ah, Mr. Marsden, the sheriff wants me to bring you in.”

“This is preposterous.” Harvey slapped his magazine to the table. The absurdity of the cover’s patriotic fruit tart in this moment didn’t escape me. “My client was clearly within his right to return Mr. Ridgemont’s initial threat. There were two witnesses to that very event.”

The deputy took handcuffs from his utility belt. “I’m not here to pass judgment. I just need to take Mr. Marsden to the station.”

“Are cuffs really necessary?” Harvey asked. “My client comes from one of the most well-known, respected families in the state.”

“Sorry. Sheriff’s orders. He considers Mr. Marsden a flight risk.”

“Just do it.” I rose, presenting the deputy my wrists. “Let’s get this over with, so I can get home to take a shower.”

Five days later, I found myself still at the station.

The knot in my gut had grown to the size of a fucking watermelon.

My longtime friends and business partners—Liam Stone and Owen Mitchell—had flown in from Palo Alto, and sat across from me in a mint julep–colored conference room. Luke, Jennie’s husband, was conspicuously absent. The magnolia wallpaper border worsened my indigestion. Had the sheriff’s wife stopped by to decorate?

“They want you charged with murder?” Liam said. “You told us your sister’s fiancé threw the first punch.”

“He did. But I mouthed off, and said I was going to kill him, and that’s all the two witnesses seem to remember. For the record, Chad popped right back that he’d kill me, but we all know what happened from there. He comes from a long line of attorneys and down here, who you know matters. I’ll be lucky to get off with involuntary manslaughter. And hell…I killed him. I deserve it.”

“Christ…” Liam raked his hands through his hair. “What can we do? Name it. I’ll fly in the best criminal defense team in the world.”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but all that’s going to do is piss off the locals. The judge assigned to my case won’t even grant bail—says I’m a flight risk.”

Owen snorted. “You are. But still, this is BS. Maybe what we need is to reassemble Liam’s team that he used to take down Ella’s bastard ex. They could round up all the good ol’ boys trying to take you down, and—”

“Stop.” I held up my hands. “I appreciate you two dropping in for a visit, but I’m screwed.”

Liam narrowed his gaze. “Who are you, and what have you done with the meanest SOB I’ve ever encountered? Seriously, man, you’re acting like you’ve already thrown in the towel when between us, we’ve got enough money to pay off every crooked cop and judge ten times over.”

“Yeah, only the problem is that this isn’t about money, but pride. Some things can’t be bought—like vengeance. Chad’s family doesn’t just want me charged with their son’s murder, they want me annihilated. At the very least, once I’m charged with a felony, they’ll see me disbarred, and make sure I never practice law again.”

“Fuck that.” Liam leaned across the table. “Garrett, wake up.
Fight.
”

“I can’t.” I rubbed my thumb and forefinger over my stinging eyes.

“Why the hell not? What are we missing?”

Savannah.
Liam hadn’t seen the look she’d given me before her mother—our mother—tore her away. Liam didn’t realize that the longer this mess dragged on, that if I insisted on taking it to trial, her life would be even more fucked-up than it already was—all because of me.

A hundred times, I’d stared at my cell’s ceiling, asking
why.
Why had I insisted on dragging Savannah over to that limo? Why, once I’d absorbed the gist of the unfolding events, hadn’t I quietly suggested that Savannah and I return to the party and leave the two
lovebirds
alone? I could have dealt with Chad and Constance later, making their lives living hells in a multitude of oh-so-personally-delicious ways. But, no. I’d had to have the immediate gratification of punishing Chad for hurting Savannah. I’d punched him to protect her honor, but had only succeeded in having her lovely, teary-eyed face on the cover of every newspaper from New Orleans to Atlanta. Not only had I destroyed my family’s name, I had also destroyed her.

I needed to see her, but my father said she was indisposed—a polite, southern colloquialism that could mean everything from she was literally unable to leave her bed to she hated me to such a degree she’d just as soon spit on me than look at me.

“Garrett, come on, man.” Liam waved his hands in front of my face. “Help us help you. How many times have you gotten all of us out of jams? When I was locked up for punching that cop, you rode in to the rescue and when Nathan was charged with killing that socialite, you knew just what to do. Now, when it comes to saving your own ass, you’re waving a white flag? Why do I feel like I’m missing a vital piece of this puzzle?”

“Because you are, okay?”
I hadn’t meant to snap, but my words had erupted, rather than been spoken. “Thanks for coming, but I’d rather you leave.”

“That’s all well and good,” Owen said, “but what about the company? Your arrest has already made international news. How do you want to spin this?”

“It’s spun.” I rose, waving to the deputy through the door’s window. “Effective immediately, I hereby resign. I’ve got a great team in place. Vance Knight has got a razor blade for a heart. Name him as my replacement.”

“Fuck this,” Liam said. “Garrett, we’ve been friends for how long?”

The deputy entered. “Yes?”

“I’m ready to go back to my cell.”

He led me out the door.

Liam and Owen followed until another deputy stopped them. They tried reasoning with me the entire way, but it was no good. My goose was cooked.

Eventually, Savannah came to the jail multiple times to see me, but I refused to see her. I couldn’t see her. Did she hate me for what I’d done? If so, could I blame her? I hated myself. I couldn’t stomach the thought of her even being in this place.

Two weeks later, I plea-bargained to voluntary manslaughter—quite a coup for Harvey, considering Chad’s family had been fighting for the death penalty. Regardless, it was the least I could do for taking a man’s life—accidentally, or not.

Two weeks after that, I was informed that my license to practice law had been revoked. Shortly thereafter, I was transported from Julep’s quaint town jail to the Mississippi State Penitentiary where I was to spend the next five years.

S
IX
M
ONTHS
L
ATER

Eighteen hours of excruciating labor were behind me, the morning sun had washed me clean, and I finally held my freshly scrubbed angel in my arms, peering down at him with an impossibly pure, yet not-quite-complete love. Oh—I wholly loved my son, but wished I could share this beyond special moment with his father. That man had to be Chad. Though my son had dark hair and the blue eyes I’d learned in med school that melanin may have caused as opposed to genetics, I still took that gorgeous blue as a sign that he looked like the father he would never know he had.

The pressures of my residency made me not sure if I’d fully accepted Chad’s death.

I hadn’t even kind of dealt with Garrett’s subsequent incarceration.

All I really knew was that I missed both men in different ways. I’d tried reaching out to my stepbrother, starting a hundred different letters a hundred different times, but in the end, abandoned them all for the simple fact that I didn’t know what to say.

Of course, I still loved him, but Chad’s death had scared me straight. The closer I’d come to delivering my son, the more I refused to believe he could be Garrett’s. Fate wouldn’t be so cruel. Everything between us was a mess far too sloppy for a simple cleaning, and so maybe a selfish part of me was glad he was far away? On a deeper level, I still craved his hugs, and the special brand of reassurance he’d always managed to bring.

With my mom and Suzette finally out of the room for their morning coffee—for the sake of the baby, with Garrett out of the picture, they’d insisted our families at least try being civil—and Daddy, Theo, and Canton off to tour Boston’s golf offerings, I cherished this first alone time with my son. He squirmed and scrunched his little face in preparation for what I could only guess would soon be a cry.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, fitting my pinkie into his palm, surprised by the strength in his grip. “Hungry?”

He answered by turning redder.

“Let’s see if this will help.” When it came to breast-feeding, I’d read everything I could get my hands on, but none of that data prepared me for the realities of fumbling to get my son to latch onto my nipple. After a fifteen-minute, ever-increasing struggle, I finally resorted to calling a nurse, who helped me position baby Chadwick more securely. When he took his first tentative samplings of the nourishment my body had to offer, the release was a beautiful thing. I found myself crying, stroking his hair, apologizing for bringing him into such a messed up world, but promising to make it better.

A knock sounded on the door.

I assumed it was the nurse and called, “Come in. I think I’ve got the hang of it.”

The door opened and Chad’s younger brother, Canton, stepped through. He was a shiny new law school graduate and there were only a handful of times I’d seen him out of a suit. This was one, and along with starched navy slacks he wore a chunky forest green sweater. The more casual look suited him, and softened his usually pinched features.

“Oh—hey. Thought you were off golfing?” Embarrassed by having him see my bare left breast, I covered myself and my son with the powder blue receiving blanket Mom had draped over the bed rail.

“I was—will be soon, but hoped to catch you alone.”

“Okay…” My stomach knotted. Canton hadn’t fared well after Chad’s death—not that any of us had, but he and his mom took it hardest. He’d come to see me a few times and seemed to find comfort in our mutual love for his brother. Despite catching him with Constance, I loved Chad if for no other reason than he’d unwittingly helped me through my imagined crisis with my stepbrother. I now realized all of my lusty yearning for him had been temporary insanity from which I was now cured. To honor the memory of my son’s father, I would be the best mother possible. Even after his eventual release, I sure as hell would never again initiate anything physical with Garrett. Those days were behind me, and so I forced a deep breath and smiled. “What’s up?”

He sat in the armchair alongside my bed. “Geez…” He clasped his hands. “I’m not even sure where to start.”

“The beginning is fine,” I teased.

He nodded. “It’s like this. I’ve tried bringing this up before, but it never seemed like the right time. Now…”

Oh God. He wasn’t about to play the consummate southern gentleman by offering to stand in for his brother by caring for me and his nephew, was he? “Canton, if you—”

“Let me finish.” He held up his hands. “Please know I mean no disrespect, but before he died, Chad came to me with some information I found…” He paused while my heart skipped a beat. “Well, let’s just say I told my brother he was out of his mind to believe something so foul could be true.”

My happy glow faded. What was this about?

The baby squirmed and fussed. He was probably ready to switch to my other breast, but I didn’t feel comfortable performing that tricky maneuver in front of Chad’s brother. “Would you mind stepping out? This will only take a minute.”

“Why—oh. Of course.” He reddened while glancing at the commotion going on against my chest. “I’ll be right outside.”

The whole time I got my son situated against my other breast, apprehension for what else Canton had to say ruined what should have been a special time of bonding. Ready to get this awkward visit behind me, I called him back in.

Settled in his chair, he leaned forward. His expression was so intense, his eyes so blue like his brother’s that I had to look away. “There’s no gentle way of putting this, so here it goes. Chad told me he barged in on an indelicate scene between you and your stepbrother. He didn’t want you to know, so he did the gentlemanly thing by walking away. He doubted whether this baby was his, and I advised him that as soon as the child was born to run a paternity test.”

I heard Canton’s words, but they didn’t fully compute.
Chad knew?

No. No, this wasn’t happening.

“Forgive me for taking the liberty, but I had a nurse obtain a cheek swab, and—”

“You what?” I sat up with enough force to jostle the baby from his meal. Beneath his blanket, he cried in protest, but then found his way back to my nipple. This was all surreal. Breast-feeding while getting slammed with beyond shocking news. “How dare you.”

“Relax,” he said with a grim smile. “I paid to have the results expedited and tested your son against my own sample. There were clear family markers and your baby is my brother’s son. Case closed.”

I expelled the breath I only now realized I’d been holding. Of course, I’d eventually planned to do a paternity test, but on my own schedule. What Canton had done was beyond invasive and borderline criminal. Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved to once and for all have the entire issue officially behind me.

He cupped his hand to my shoulder. “When Chad approached me with his suspicions—that you and your brother were having some sort of seedy affair—I told him he was crazy, that you were devoted to him, and he was just nervous about how soon he was becoming a husband and father. Now that I was proven right, you and your son will always be welcome in the Ridgemont kingdom.” He smiled again, then gave me a reassuring squeeze.

At that point, I should have relaxed and looked forward to my life’s new chapter. Instead, I felt thoroughly creeped out.

“Remaining in our kingdom is easy. Stay the fuck away from my brother’s killer. Are we clear?” His sanctimonious smile raised bile in the back of my throat.

“Time for you to leave.” I held my son extra close. How could the man I’d once loved have had such a vile brother?