Ex-Con: Bad Boy Romance

He swung the gun in my direction. “You think I don’t know what’s going to happen? I’m a dead man already! I just plan on taking you with me!”

Dale lunged.

Mitchell swung the gun back and pulled the trigger.

The impact stopped Dale in his tracks. He went to his knees, his hands going to his chest.

Mitchell let out a sound that was part roar, part denial and then he spun around to face me. “You see what you made me do! You see!” He stormed toward me and grabbed my left arm. He half-dragged me toward Dale’s body as I struggled to keep my grip on the gun with my right hand.

I stared down at Dale, at his slack face, his closed eyes – at his moving chest.

There was no blood.

No blood.

My eyes caught the tear in his shirt and I almost choked, trying to keep quiet as I saw the dark fibers of a Kevlar vest.

But Mitchell didn’t see any of that.

He swung back to face me and I didn’t move in time to dodge the butt of his gun. Pain exploded across my face and I fell, unable to catch myself and still keep the gun hidden in my pocket.

“You stupid, stupid...”

Dully, I saw him move to kick Dale and I crawled, placing my body between them. “Don’t,” I muttered. Blood filled my mouth and I choked, gagged. I spit out a mouthful and then another.

“Your fault.” Mitchell stumbled a few feet away. “I lost it all because of you. My wife. My boys. It’s all you.”

He turned and stared at me.

I saw the gun lifting.

I dragged mine free, but I already knew I was too late.

The crashing noise mingled with white-hot pain.

The last thing I remembered was the look of surprise on his face, and then he was falling, right down on top of me.

Chapter 22

So that’s it. That’s my story.

Eighteen months ago, I was shot, point-blank, in the head.

I’ve gotten bits and pieces of what happened since there’s no memory of anything after Mitchell falling.

The cops rushed in, apparently, and started CPR, but Mitchell died en route to the hospital. Dale survived the bullet he took in the chest with only a bruise.

I found out he left the police department and took up working with troubled kids. He and his wife are expecting their first child in a couple months.

Ridley lived too. He confessed everything, from what he’d told Mitchell to how Carly had ended up in the house. There had been some questionable involvement with the letters, but since Carly had spoken to the prosecutor on his behalf, he’d been let off with probation and a shitload of community service.

Of course, Ryan fired his ass, so Ridley had to move out and find a new job.

I didn’t know any of this for quite a while after it happened because I spent the next few months in a coma.

Then I had to learn...well, pretty much everything all over again.

I had to learn how to talk, walk, feed myself, take a fucking shower and tie my shoes. I was like some giant fucking toddler.

The one thing I hadn’t needed to re-learn was her. The day I woke up, the first thing I saw was Carly, sitting at the side of my bed, reading to me.

She had a copy of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone. Harry had been sitting in Snape’s class for the first time.

I don’t remember which line she’d been reading. Those memories of the first few days are still kind of weird. I do remember sitting there and staring at her and just...waiting.

She looked up and didn’t even seem surprised to see that I was awake. It was like she’d been waiting too. Just waiting for me to wake up.

I had to spend months in rehab, and then more months yet going to outpatient rehab, and I still have a few more appointments before everybody thinks I’ll be as good as new, or at least as good as I’ll ever be.

I’ll never think I’m good enough to go back to guarding Carly. I couldn’t trust myself to be strong enough to save her. Ryan had immediately understood when I’d told him. Carly had taken a bit more convincing, but when she realized I wasn’t trying to quit us, just the job, she’d relented.

Like I’d ever give her up.

Even at my darkest moments, Carly had been the one thing that had kept me going. And there had been some pretty shitty moments.

The walking part came pretty easy.

Feeding myself? Even easier. I always liked to eat. Even if I did make a mess of myself for a while. Certain more personal things took a bit longer, and those were humiliating enough.

The worst part though was not being able to talk.

I couldn’t even say the simplest things. Hell, Dave’s daughter was talking better than I was. I’d go to say hello and the word just wouldn’t come out. It had taken weeks before I could make my mouth form words. It had been almost two months before I could even say Carly’s name.

We’d both cried when it finally happened, and I hadn’t even cared that there were people around.

The speech therapist told me all of this was normal.

Even when I could say simple things, or when I could look at a comb and say, comb – and I could remember what to do with it – I couldn’t remember other things. Like my mom’s name. I could remember the way she’d looked when my father had been beating her. I could remember how she’d held me. And I could remember how she’d looked the officer in the eye as she’d lied and said he was gone, that he’d left and she didn’t know where he went

But I couldn’t remember her name.

Except…even when I couldn’t speak, I was able to write it down. It had been pure accident that I’d discovered it, in the middle of a therapy session. It wasn’t the speech therapist, though. It had been my shrink. I wouldn’t have gone, but Carly had asked. I couldn’t tell her no, so I went. And I ended up being glad I did.

The therapist had been asking me to explain how I felt about something. I’d been talking fine that day, but then the words hadn’t wanted to come.

Frustrated, I shoved off the couch and paced. Movement still didn’t want to come easy. Sometimes it felt like some puppet master was in control of my legs while I had to deal with the rest of me, and make sure everything still moved in tandem. I’d still been falling a lot then. I’d tripped, and couldn’t right myself. I’d fallen down, ended up on the floor for what had felt like the hundredth time.

The doctor hadn’t offered to help. Some people did. Most people, really. But I’d fumbled my way up without a word from her. I’d also tried to fumble with the cuss words that filled my head. I could see them, I just couldn’t say them.

When I’d fallen, I’d knocked a pen and a notepad from her desk so, without even thinking, I’d grabbed it and started to write.

Every damn cuss word I could think of. Then I’d started writing all the words that had been trapped inside my head. The words seemed to tangle on my tongue, but if I wrote? They came out easier and once I wrote them, I was able to speak them...sometimes.

I’d been almost laughing by the time I finished, and when the doctor had come to sit beside me, she’d been smiling.

A week later, she gave me a journal.

“Write down what you remember, Bobby.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not dealing with everything like you want to think you are. You’re just hiding from it.”

It took me a while to get around to accepting the fact that she was right, but in the end, I started to play around with it. I started and stopped probably half a dozen times, and I kept having to hide the thing from Carly. She kept finding it anyway.

Finally, I just started writing it on the computer, and sometimes I left dirty stories for her in the journal. Sometimes, she wrote dirty suggestions back, but she seemed happy that I was working through things.