Page 80 of Malaise

“Because you don’t have half as much pressure on you, being a girl,” Carver snaps.

Tanya turns the car over and sits for the longest fucking minute of my life, her hands tight on the steering wheel, her gaze fixed firmly out the window. “I might not have to worry about being ‘enough’ for Dad, because there’s no expectations on me to succeed since I’m a woman, but fuck, Brett. I worry just as much as you do that one day I’ll wake up and realise I’m just like them.” She jabs her hand toward the house before slotting the car in gear. “You think I want to be some alcoholic wench who gets her jollies off down at the pub because her boyfriend is too disgusted with her to be able to get it up?”

“Too much information, Tanya.”

I slide down into my seat, my nose barely above the door panel. Trees and streetlights flash by as Tanya lead foots it towards town. The silence that accompanies the journey is welcome.

A flash of red around the headliner of the car is quickly followed by blue, the short, sharp, blip of a siren cementing my suspicions. Tanya glances in the rear-view mirror and curses as Carver spins in his seat to look out the back window.

“What the fuck?”

My heart rate spikes as I straighten in my seat, the deafening whoosh of my breaths as I struggle to pull them in and out all I can hear. This night has turned to shit in the blink of an eye. Carver’s mad at me, his dad is such a jerk that I doubt I’ll ever know if he was why Den was in town that day—not that I really care anymore, and now this.

Tanya pulls the Falcon over to the side of the road and cranks the driver’s window the rest of the way down while I watch the lazy swing of the cop’s flashlight as they check the car over.

“This better be fucking routine,” Carver mutters, hand to his forehead as he rests an elbow on the windowsill.

“Evening,” the cop greets as he reaches Tanya’s window. “I’ll need all the occupants to please step out of the vehicle with their hands held out in front of them.”

I spin in my seat to see another cop approach from the passenger side, and then back to Carver. “No.”

He twists to look me in the eye. “It’s okay, Meg. Just do as they ask, all right?”

No, it’s not all right! What the hell? Why now? They can’t be.

I open my door at the same time as the others, and following Carver’s lead, sticking my raised hands out first and then step out. I’m spun around, shoved against the back of the car, and warned not to move as my hands are brought behind my back. Are those zip ties? The thin plastic bites into my healing skin, and I cry out.

“Hey, don’t you fucking hurt her,” I hear Carver bellow before the distinct sound of a body hitting the ground.

I twist my head around to see what’s happening as Tanya shouts across the car, and spot Carver sitting on the back of the cop who restrained me. The officer holding Tanya gives her the same warning as I got, and then dashes around the car to wrestle Carver off the guy who cuffed me.

Carver relaxes when the second cop reaches him, calling out that he’ll cooperate as he’s jostled over the hood of the car. The first cop, wiping blood from his nose, pats Carver down and removes his wallet. He flicks it open, and exchanges a look with his partner.

The real handcuffs come out.

I look over at Tanya, but she’s fixated on what they’re doing to her brother, a look of sheer disappointment in her eyes.

“Brett Carver,” the second cop says. “You’re under arrest for breaking and entering, theft, and assault on a police officer. You have the right to remain silent….”

White noise. My ears begin to ring, the whining tone growing louder the more I screw my eyes shut. No. It can’t be happening. Don’t they know it wasn’t him? It couldn’t have been. Could it? How did he pay for the motel, Meg? No, he wouldn’t have….

How could I doubt him? After everything he’s done for me?

Time passes at an excruciatingly slow pace as Carver’s straightened up and marched to the back of the cop car. He looks over the door at me, fighting against the cop who tries to push him down. I shake my head, refusing to believe that this is it: he’s being taken from me too. His gaze drops for a fraction of a second before I catch him swallow and raise his chin defiantly. The cop gives him another shove, and Carver braces a shoulder against the roof of the cop car to buy a few extra seconds.

I watch in equal parts horror and adoration as he mouths three little words to me before he’s violently bent into the back seat: Love you, Meg.

I can’t. Fucking. Breathe.

No. It’s not fair.

My name comes through as though it’s spoken underwater, my ears taking their sweet time to attune to what’s around me once again.

“Meg,” Tanya repeats.

I look over the Falcon at her as the door on the cop car is slammed shut.

“Meg, honey. It’ll be all right. We’ll sort this out.”

I simply shake my head again, refusing to believe that a guy with a prior record has any hope in hell of getting off a charge that now includes assault on a police officer. What was he thinking?

“Don’t let them get to you,” Tanya says, glaring over at the cops who walk back toward us. “They’ll do their job, and we’ll do ours.”

I don’t even know what that is.