Redeemed Complete: A Military Stepbrother Romance (24 page)

No. I had to focus. This wasn’t a pesky neighbor coming by to welcome us home for the holidays. This wasn’t a package delivery. This wasn’t even an old ex-girlfriend of Harrison’s; I shook my head, because he never ever called them girlfriends before. They were always girls he knew, girls he had fun with. Never anything so serious as a girlfriend.

This wasn’t one of those, come by to welcome Harrison back to town, to see if they could rekindle anything in the brief time he was here. No, this was the law. Harrison had enough experience with the law that they would not give him the benefit of the doubt.

Even after all his service to this country. When he wasn’t in uniform, the local police had him pegged as a malcontent, a ne’er-do-well.

A criminal.

I made my way down the stairs, step groaning as I passed by. First I saw Harrison’s feet, and as I got lower, the view moved up his legs to his amazing ass, to his wide back. From around the edges of his body, clad in his loose shirt and pants, I could see the shapes of two police officers standing side-by-side.

One was older, and looked vaguely familiar. The other was younger, maybe three or four years older than me, and his eyes shifted around nervously, flicking back and forth between watching Harrison and watching me come down stairs. The other, older, police officer gave me a quick glance then focused all his attention back on his conversation with Harrison.

The words started to make sense as I got down the steps and closer. “You’ll have to come with us, Harrison.”

“I just got into town, what’s this about?”

“You know what this is about. It’s about what happened last night at the Crown. We’ve had some reports.”

“Reports?”

“That you assaulted someone in the parking lot.”

I stood off to the side, not saying a word, but seeing Harrison’s hands balled together in fists. I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell from the back of his body at he was reliving those moments from the Crown parking lot last night when he taught Steve a lesson about trying to force himself on girls.

“More than that,” the older officer continued, “we spoken to the guy you assaulted. He wants to press charges, and he named you specifically as the man who assaulted him.” The officer stopped and stared at Harrison, gauging his reaction.

Harrison looked down, away from the police, in my direction behind him. “That’s not the whole story,” he whispered just loud enough for me to hear.

I stepped forward, and cleared my throat. “Harrison was…”

Harrison whipped his head around to face me, just as the older police officer put his hand on Harrison’s arm. Harrison shook him off before focusing on me again. “Don’t say a word, Laurel. I’ll take care of this.” The anger in his face and his voice was clear. Harrison was trying to keep it together, and not being as successful as he would like to be.

I clamped my mouth shut, not wanting to complicate things anymore. I had never dealt with the police, beyond getting a traffic ticket, so I was a little out of my element. Harrison, he was another story. The way the older police officer addressed him, and interacted with him, suggested that they knew each other. I wondered if this police officer had arrested Harrison in the past.

Harrison turned again to face the officers. “You’re making a mistake.”

The older officer sighed. “You may be correct. It will be the first time we’ve ever made a mistake if that’s the case. But we have to run this down, and treated with the proper respect. You’ll have to come with us.”

The younger officer chose that moment to step forward and grasp Harrison’s left arm. That turned out to be a mistake. With a flash Harrison had gripped the younger officers wrist and begun to twist.The younger officer yelped in pain, shaking before dropping to his knees, his face a mask of hurt. With his other hand the officer began to unclip holster.

“Stow that, patrolman,” The older officer said, before looking back at Harrison, Who continued to twist the younger officer’s wrist. ”Let him go. You don’t want to make things worse for yourself.”

Harrison paused, then I saw his grip slacken and the younger officer, still on his knees, was able to get wrist free, cradling it in his other hand, His eyes filled with tears. Harrison looked down. “I’m sorry about that,” he whispered.

“Yeah, well, we’ll see if the patrolman here can see it in his heart to forgive you. You’re still didn’t have to come with us.”

“But Harrison didn’t do anything wrong!” I shouted.

The older detective stayed calm. “We’ll figure that out down the station.”

The younger officer stood up, shaky at first, still running his fingers over his twisted wrist. Focusing again on Harrison, He snarled, “put your hands behind your back.”

Harrison’s eyes widened, and mine must have also. “What?”

“You heard the man,” the older officer said, “we wanted to do this nicely, but you had other ideas. Put your hands behind your back.” The force behind his words was clear; Harrison would be leaving in handcuffs.

My head was reeling from all of this. I couldn’t believe in the space of 10 minutes, Harrison and I had gone from almost having sex in my bedroom to me watching as the police arrested him for saving me from a date rapist the night before. I just couldn’t put all the pieces together, and I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. I had to steady myself on the banister of the staircase.

Harrison seem to accept his fate, and turned around, facing away from the officers, and our eyes met as I blinked through the tears. “It’ll be okay, Laurel,” Harrison whispered in my direction. “This isn’t anything that hasn’t happened before. I’m used to it by now.”

I shook my head at him. Even if he was used to this, I wasn’t. Sure I had seen him deal with the police in the past, but that was when we hated each other. Now, in such a short amount of time, we had begun building something so much more, so much more loving, so much more connected.

And all of a sudden, he was being dragged away. I couldn’t take it.

“You have the right to remain silent,” the older police officer began, as the younger reached into his belt and unclipped his handcuffs. “Anything you say may be used against you…” The older man droned on, repeating the Miranda rights he must have said thousands of times by now.

Harrison winced as handcuffs closed around his wrists behind him, and I saw a look of glee, over the younger police officer’s face. Clearly he was enjoying this, small and petty revenge for the embarrassment Harrison had caused him just a couple minutes earlier.

Harrison’s eyes never left mine. He tried to tell me and would be okay, but I was in no shape to listen I couldn’t believe all this was happening. Why us? Why now?

Why couldn’t things just be easy for a change?

Instead of things just happening the way they should, there were always pitfalls to avoid. Always obstacles getting in the way. Nothing, it seemed, was ever as easy as it sounds.

Harrison was still speaking, still whispering to me. “Don’t worry about it, Laurel. Just take care of yourself. I’ll be fine, I’ll be home soon.”

“Is there anything you need me to do?” I asked, wiping away the tears. “Is there anyone I can call?” He knew I wasn’t a lawyer. And I knew he wasn’t a lawyer.

“No, don’t call anyone. I’ll be home soon as I can. Don’t worry about it. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

I broke, and rushed towards him. The younger officer tensed up, like he was getting ready to stop me, but quickly the older officer shook his head, and the younger officer relented I threw my arms around Harrison’s neck after closing the distance between us, and hugged him as tightly as I could. Just a few minutes ago this closeness between us, meant something so much more passionate and sexy did now.

Now I was just scared for him. I wanted this to go away, I wanted the police to go away, so we could be left, so we could explore each other without the world getting in the way.

We hugged as close as we could with Harrison’s arms tied behind his back by the handcuffs. I had to resist kissing him all over his face and neck, but soon Harrison shook his head, pushing me away. I stepped back, and for the first time got look at him so helpless. This tall and powerful and newly loving lion of a man, in chains and unable to do what he wanted.

And me unable to hold him like I wanted to.

The older police officer cleared his throat. “We’ve got to be going, so we can clear this up as soon as possible.” He put his hand on Harrison’s shoulder and pressed gently to one side. Harrison took the direction and bowed his head, turning away from me, toward the door.

Only then did I realize that the front door was still open, and the cold air was pouring into the house. Outside in the dark, by the light of the porch, I could see that the snow was coming down more heavily than when we had come home.

I shivered, realizing just how cold I was for the first time. “When will he come home?” I asked the older officer as they stepped out the door.

He looked back over his shoulder at me. “I’m not sure. It could be a while. I’m sorry to ruin your holidays.”

They walked down the steps as I stood in the doorway, my arms around my chest, trying to stay warm, but also trying to put on a brave face, even though Harrison couldn’t see me. It was more for my own benefit, though it really didn’t help at all.

Inside I was falling apart.

The younger police officer opened the back seat of their patrol car, parked next to Harrison’s car, and put his hand on Harrison’s head pushing him down into the car. Just before his head disappeared, Harrison took one more look at me, and nodded, smiling that winning smile at me.

I used to hate that smile, now, though, I wasn’t so sure it was all that bad.

The car drove off into the night, and I stood in the doorway, still cold, but barely feeling it, for a few more minutes before I closed the door and fell to the floor, crying my eyes out.

Chapter 16 - The Night

I couldn’t remember a night as bad as that one.

I was just happy our parents weren’t around. I don’t know what they would’ve done if they were, or if they’d heard about Harrison being arrested. Our stepmother would’ve cried, clearly, just like I had, but my father, well, I’m not sure what my father would’ve done. Back in high school he would’ve stormed around the house, shaking his head and muttering, yelling to no one in particular, wondering aloud how he could reach Harrison, how he could make him see that he was throwing away his life.

But now that Harrison had been through four years of military, and seemed to be on a better path for himself, I don’t know how my father would react.

I do know how to react myself. All of these thoughts rushing through my head, pushing against me without stopping. Just wanted this to go away, I wanted Harrison to come back in the door, tell me) that it had all been a mistake, that the police understood what Harrison had done and why he had done it, and that he was free, and that we were free to get back to doing…exactly whatever it was we been doing when they arrived in the first place.

But, as I lay in a heap on the floor in the foyer of our house, the door stayed closed. I didn’t hear the police car coming back up our street to park again and let Harrison out. I didn’t hear anything at all. The house made its customary creeks and groans as the air, and other things, shifted around, but other than that there were no signs of life other than my own heavy breathing.

I don’t remember how long I lay there, feeling myself warm up, as the heater kicked into overdrive, grumbling all the way that someone had left the door open for far too long. I just wanted to lay there until someone came to help me up, someone came to tell me what to do next.

I just didn’t know.

Finally, eventually, I picked myself up off the floor and looked around. The house which had seemed so bright only a few minutes ago, bright with the potential of love and romance and lost all under the same roof, now looked drab and dark in the cold winter of Summitville. Like someone had turned the brightness knob almost all the way down.

I moved around the house like a zombie, like a ghost, as if I hadn’t been there before, but yet I knew the layout perfectly. So many thoughts ran through my head, wondering what Harrison was going through, what he was thinking, what he wanted me to do, what our parents would think. So many thoughts that I couldn’t make sense of any of them, couldn’t slow my mind down long enough to pick one and run with it. So, instead, all these thoughts ran Inside me, ran with me.

The house didn’t provide any respite, though. There was nothing here to make me feel any better. My room, long my haven against the rest of the world, seems too much like Harrison to make me feel any better. Despite the fact that he would take in all his clothing out in his hurry to meet with the police downstairs, the room still smelled like him, still smelled like his manly scent of sandalwood. I closed my eyes and let the scent wafted over my nose, breathing in as deeply as I could, wanting to hold a piece of him as long as I could.

I stepped to the window in my room, peering out into the night, trying to see what Harrison had saw just a few minutes earlier when he noticed the police car parking, noticed the officers getting out and walking toward our door. I wonder what must’ve run through his mind.

He was no stranger to the police, but I’ll bet he must’ve thought he’d left that life behind him, for years in the military, four years fighting for his country, serving when so few volunteered to do so. If that were me, I’d have walked around with a little bit of an ego, a little bit of knowledge that I had fought for, I have defended all that I saw around me.

Harrison didn’t seem to walk around with that kind of complex, that feeling that the people around him owed him something. I was impressed, the old Harrison lorded every small thing over everyone else within earshot. It was impossible to forget any time he had ever done something good for a change.

I smiled, thinking maybe that was because the good things he did were so few and so far between at the time.

I didn’t want to spend any more time in my room, hiding away, so I stepped out and found myself standing in front of the door to Harrison’s room. I had seen inside it on many occasions, but it had been years since I’ve stepped inside. Back in high school Harrison has installed a lock on his door. Our parents had not been happy with that, but as transgressions went, that was one of the small ones, and by then our parents had learned to pick their battles with him.