Just Remember to Breathe (Thompson Sisters)

just stay quiet; I’m familiar with the details of the case. We’re going to get you out of here as quickly as possible.”
    “Who hired you?”
    He jerked a thumb toward the back of the room. “They did. Your friends. Joel’s my brother-in-law.”
    Oh, no. They were mixed up in this even worse than I realized.
    “I didn’t ask for that.”
    “Be glad you don’t have a public defender.”
    “I don’t want you here.”
    He shook his head. “Do you want to go to prison? Look, we can settle the details after the arraignment. For now, can we do it my way?”
    “Whatever.”
    I turned and looked away. I didn’t mean to be ungrateful. But what the hell? They went out and hired a lawyer for me? Who the hell could afford that? And why? Jesus Christ.
    So Ben Cross went to work for me. Before I knew it, bail had been set, and I was back in the holding cell, waiting. An hour later, the cops came for me again, and led me out to the lobby of the jail.
    I was dreading what was coming next.

    Let him smell your socks (Alex)
    I knew Dylan was going to look rough when he came in to the hearing room. He’d been in a holding cell all weekend. But it hit me, hard, when I saw just how rough he looked. He was obviously exhausted. Dark circles framed his eyes, and after three days without a shave, dark stubble covered his chin. The black T-shirt I had and drooled over looked torn, and a stain ran down the front.
    His hand. The cast was off, and he held his right hand in his left, as if protecting it. It was washed out, pale, and the fingers were curled up and unmoving. His face had a similar pallor. It was obvious he was in a lot of pain.
    But the worst part was his eyes. They looked… faded. Dull. Dead. I grabbed Kelly’s hand when he looked over at me, met my eyes for a moment, the looked away, almost as if he didn’t recognize me. I had to stifle tears. Again.
    No . I was not going to sit here and cry. I was going to be strong, because right now, he needed me.
    Even if he didn’t know it.
    The hearing was over quickly. Joel’s brother-in-law was obviously experienced and knew what he was doing, and quickly ran through what had happened the night of the party. He argued persuasively that Dylan was exactly what he was… a wounded soldier who had been protecting someone he loved from a sexual assault. That he should be given a medal, not a trail. The judge told him to get on with it, and the lawyer made a motion that the case be dismissed.
    At that point the prosecutor stood up and said, “Your honor, the defendant put a twenty-one-year-old Columbia student in the hospital with multiple skull fractures and possible permanent brain damage. He’s dangerous, and we request that he be denied bail.”
    I held my breath.
    The judge set his bail at twenty thousand dollars. When the words came out, Sherman grinned, then turned to me. “We’ve got enough,” he whispered.
    “He looks awful,” I said, as I watched the bailiffs lead him away.
    Ben, Joel’s brother-in-law and now Dylan’s lawyer, approached us. He already had the money in his briefcase.
    “Okay, I’m gonna go bail him out. You guys can wait in the lobby; it might be an hour or two before we finally get him loose.”
    “Thank you,” I said, and hugged him impulsively.
    “I got to tell you,” he said, looking mostly at me. “Dylan is … not exactly cooperative. He as much as told me to go to hell.”
    I sighed.
    “I had a bad feeling,” Sherman said. “We’ll talk him around. He’s pretty screwed up right now.”
    Would we be able to talk him around? What was he going to say when he came out of that holding cell? What was he going to say to me? About us?
    I was terrified. I walked out of the courtroom feeling numb, and found myself pacing in the lobby of the courthouse. I thought of all the things we could have done differently, to arrive at a different place. If we hadn’t gone to the party. If we hadn’t met again in September. If I hadn’t called him, drunk, from my room last February. If he hadn’t freaked out, and been sent out on that patrol. If we hadn’t met and fallen in love in the first place.
    It was too much. There were too many paths that could have been taken, and no way to know what would have led here and now. What I knew was, I loved Dylan Paris. And I was going to fight for him.
    I sighed. Pacing around wasn’t doing any good. And I was probably driving the others crazy. I walked over to the bench where they sat, between