Before We Fall by Courtney Cole Read Free Book Online Page B

How I’m floundering a bit, but I’m definitely trying to pull my life together.
    But it doesn’t matter. I can see that in the judge’s steely eyes as I try to plead my case. Nothing I say is gonna matter.
    I’m screwed.

Chapter Five
Dominic
    Well, this is new. I’ve never been in a courtroom before.
    That’s not exactly true. I did sit in a seat like this when I was in the movie
Annihilated.
I played a sadistic serial killer/rapist, so I’ve seen the inside of a courtroom. Just never in real life. I’ve never sat and waited to be judged, waited for my fate to be decided by someone else.
    Not for real.
    It turns out, real life is fucking frustrating.
    I sigh heavily and turn to the lawyer closest to me. Like the three sitting around him, he’s buttoned up in a white shirt and dark suit, wearing a shrewd, businesslike expression. My manager hired them, a whole team of legal sharks. If these guys can’t get me out of this, no one can.
    “How long is this going to take?” I ask the head lawyer. Tom, I think his name is. He glances at me.
    “However long the judge wants it to take,” he answers wryly. “Just sit back and relax. You’re going to be fine. You’re lucky that Mr. Evans is refusing to press charges against you, or you’d be here for assault as well as drug charges.”
    I slump into my chair, impatient, and kill time by watching the blond chick standing in front of me. Jacey.
    The girl who may or may not have gotten me arrested for drugs.
    I watch her tear-streaked face and the way she so sincerely pleads her case with the judge. I almost think that the drugs really weren’t hers. But if they weren’t hers, I don’t know whose they were. They sure as fuck weren’t mine.
    She turns away from me once again, and my eyes sweep over her from top to bottom.
    She’s got a tight ass, I’ll give her that, barely concealed in a short skirt. My brother would say that she’s got an ass like an onion, hot enough to make him cry. As for me, I can just imagine burying my dick in it, pressing my face to her shoulder blades, reaching around her and…
    I stop myself, shaking the random fantasy out of my head.
    This isn’t the time or the place. I turn back to my lawyer. “Did you get those assault charges dropped for her?”
    He stares at me. “Yeah. I pulled a couple of strings. She’s only being charged with possession of marijuana now, like you. I don’t know why you care though. It’s probably her pot to begin with.”
    I don’t know why I care, either. Other than the fact that she didn’t even know me, but she jumped in the middle of a brawl and tried to stop it. And afterward, she had stood with her little body in front of mine, almost as if she was shielding me from Cris… even though I’d accidentally clocked her in the face.
    Why had she done that?
    I don’t fucking know. But I feel a little responsible that she was even there. Even if it
was
her pot, she wouldn’t have been there in the first place if it hadn’t been for me. And I can’t help but think back to the look on her face when I walked past her in her jail cell as she sat there covered in my blood.
    She looked utterly vulnerable in a jail cell full of hookers. That’s when I called my attorney and had him get her assault charges dropped. If I hadn’t done that, she’d have been there all night.
    Oblivious to my musings about her, she stands in front of the judge now, giving him a sob story about how she’s trying to pull her life together or some shit. But the judge doesn’t even blink, he just stares down at her sternly from his perch above.
    “Young lady, you do need to grow up. And I know that some judges like to give pretty little things like you a break. But I’m not in the business of being an enabler. So, you should learn right here and now that this kind of thing isn’t a trivial matter.” The judge pauses to stare down at her sternly.
    “I’m finding you guilty of possession of marijuana. I’m sentencing