Ugly girl

Chapter 21

I slam my good hand down on the counter. “Let him go. He didn’t do anything.”

“Ma’am, he assaulted an officer,” the cop behind the desk says. “I can assure you, Slade Cruz won’t be coming out of there for a while. Now, I’ve asked you three times already to please take a seat, otherwise, you will be asked to leave.”

A frustrated growl tears out of me. “That’s bullshit. The cop deserved what was coming for him.”

“How so?”

I hold my hand up and wave it his face. “Because he assaulted me first.”

His eyes are narrowed into slits as he looks over my hand. Disbelief radiates out of him and it’s clear he thinks I’m just some ridiculous teenager spouting shit to get a friend out of a bad situation. “And do you have any proof of said assault?”

“Apart from my legs being all cut up and my hand possibly needing stitches, yeah, I have a whole park full of kids, Slade and that dickhead back there,” I say, pointing behind me to where Damian sits, slouched back in the stiff chairs as though he’s about to request room service.

The cop glances up and meets Damian’s eyes and he’s quick to nod. “It’s true. The fucker got what he deserved. If Slade didn’t get to him first, it would have been me.”

I give Damian a warm smile of thanks for being so ready to defend my honor, though he should know that had I not been down on the ground with blood saturating my hand, I would have been the one throwing punches.

I look back to the cop who presses his lips into a tight line. “This is a serious allegation,” he warns.

“Damn straight it is and if you guys intend on charging Slade with assault, then I’ll be slapping assault charges on your officer.” I tilt my head, pretending to be deep in thought. “Did I mention I’m only seventeen? A minor,” I question, glancing back at Damian. “Doesn’t that kind of make things worse?”

“Mmm, yeah, you know what?” he says, leaning forward onto his knees. “I think it does.”

I suck a breath in through my teeth while cringing at that cop. “That doesn’t sound good for you guys. I wonder how that would look in the press. ‘Aston Creek officer assaults minor.’

A voice is called from way down the hallway. “Hell yeah, babe. Show them why you’re the fucking boss bitch around here.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I yell back at Slade. “I’m not your babe.”

“Has someone looked at your hand yet?” Slade demands.

Ignoring his questioning, I watch as the cop scowls at my language before continuing. “Look, you’re going to need a little something more than the word of your friend, a friend who happens to have seen the inside of my jail cell more times than I can count. Find a reliable source and then we’ll talk. For now, Slade Cruz is being charged with assault of an officer.”

Damian speaks up from his chair. “We got the whole thing recorded.”

I turn to gape at him. “Bullshit. We do?”

“Damn straight, we do,” he mutters, pulling out his phone. “You didn’t recognize the voice of the guy that yelled ‘fight?’”

“No, was I meant to?”

“Tyler Samuels.”

“Movie-maker guy?” I ask, wide-eyed.

“The one and only. You didn’t think he’d miss out on that action.”

A grin lifts the corner of my mouth as I look back to the cop. “Your guy is fucked.”

He scowls at me and clenches his jaw but this time I’m not sure if it’s aimed at me or because he knows we’re right and he’s got a dirty cop on his hands.

Damian pulls out his phone and calls Tyler, putting it on loudspeaker for us all to hear. The phone rings three times before Tyler’s panicked tones comes through the line. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean to. It’s just, you guys were fighting and the word just sort of slipped out. I swear, I’ll delete the footage just please don’t hurt me.”

Damian laughs. “You got the whole fight?”

“Umm…yeah,” he says hesitantly.

“Even that dirty cop?”

Tyler seems to liven up. “Yeah, can you believe that? Is Skylah alright? He fucked her up pretty good.”

The cop before me cringes, realizing they really are fucked. Damian’s gaze flicks to mine. “She’ll be fine. Bring the footage down to the police station and be sure to make a copy,” he says, his eyes zoning in on the cop suspiciously. “We don’t want our only copy to mysteriously go missing.”

“Yeah, alright. I’ll be there in twenty.”

Damian ends the call and grins proudly, looking at the cop with the cheesiest ‘I told you so’ smirk. “I think it’s about time you release Slade.”

“Footage first and then we’ll talk.”

“Fair call.”

I go and plonk down beside Damian and I’m not surprised when a chick cop comes out with a first aid kit a few minutes later. After all, they wouldn’t want it to sound so much worse by not offering the assaulted minor any medical assistance. She cleans up my hand and even cringes with how bad it is, but luckily, I’m able to narrowly escape stitches.

Tyler shows up exactly when he said he would and comes tearing through the door with a USB stick already in his outstretched hand. He practically throws the footage at Damian in his desperation to please him. The second the footage is out of his hand; he scrams back out the doors as though someone lit a match under his ass.

Damian strides toward the cop and hesitantly hands it over before demanding he check the footage in front of us. The cop rolls his eyes and reluctantly turns the computer screen on an angle so we can all see.

Footage of the fight instantly shows up on the screen. It’s shaky at first from where Tyler was ru

Damian grins proudly at Tyler’s ego-boosting comments and I hear Slade’s amused chuckles coming from the back of the station.

The fight goes on and I once again find myself getting lost in Slade, watching the way he moves and being awed by his strength and sheer dominance. The cops shortly arrive and start pulling me off Roman’s back. It’s only seconds until they go after Slade and I’m seen pushing in front of him. We have our confrontation and every word is heard perfectly clear and then the moment we’ve been waiting for.

The cop pushes me and I go down hard. I cringe as I watch it over. Tyler got a great angle that made it look so much worse than it felt and even managed to capture the grunt that came out of the cop’s mouth as he pushed me with everything he had.

“Shit,” the officer at the computer says, glancing up at one of his co-workers. “Go and release Cruz. We’ve got bigger issues here.” He looks down at me. “Have we got a deal? Slade is released and you keep this out of the media.”

“Sounds good to me, but I can’t guarantee that I won’t be pressing charges. Once my aunt gets a look at this, she’s going to be pissed.”

“You do what you have to do,” he says with a nod.

Damian and I take our seats and after the longest five-minute wait, Slade comes strutting out with a mischievous grin on his face. He walks right to me and sweeps me up out of my seat. “That was so fucking sexy,” he tells me.

I push out of his arms and he laughs before tossing his arm over my shoulder and leading me out the door with Damian on his other side. We start making our way over to Slade’s Dodge RAM and Damian hands over the keys, but as we start climbing in, Damian hangs back.

Slade looks over at him with furrowed brows. “You coming, man?”