Page 69 of First Chance

“Don’t ever speak her name, you vile son of a bitch!”

What? I knew he didn’t approve of us dating, but what did I do to deserve this type of hate?

“Please, someone tell me what’s going on! Call my grandfather! Please, someone help me!” I beg as they shove me into the back of a cop car. They ignore my pleas, pulling away from the house without explanation.

I strain my neck to get a glimpse of her window when I notice a silhouette.

She watches as the car I’m in gets further from her house.

* * *

“The next time I saw her was in the courtroom. She sat behindthe District Attorney and accused me of rape.

“I couldn’t believe it was happening. I thought I would marry this girl, and she was letting them destroy me. I was so angry, but at the same time, I had convinced myself it was all a mistake. Her father had to have put her up to it. She was still 17, but we had been dating on and off for two years, and it wasn’t illegal.

“It wasn’t until she was called to testify that my world fucking shattered. She swore under oath that I had forced myself on her after she told me that she wasn’t allowed to date me.”

I keep my focus on the moon because I’m not brave enough to look Jo in the face as I tell this story.

“She gave them details about my anatomy and how rough I handled her. She told them how afraid she was of my size. I’ll never forget the betrayal I felt when she sat there in front of everyone and described a sexual encounter that we had, but twisted it into a non-consensual nightmare.” I hang my head in my hands, recalling how sick it made me.

“They all took one look at me and assumed my guilt, but I didn’t, Jo. I never…” I can’t even finish my thought. Saying this out loud to her is painful.

“I believe you, Lochlan.”

“I don’t know why. No one has ever given me the benefit of the doubt.” I shake my head.

“After I got sent to prison, and she was no longer a minor, it came out that she was pregnant. That’s what started it all.” Jo gasps beside me.

“Even after everything that happened, I still convinced myself that she was confused and scared. Her father was a mean man, but I made my grandfather promise to take careof her and the baby, despite what she had accused me of. If I had a child out there, I wanted it taken care of…

“He told me when it was born, but she wouldn’t speak to my grandparents, and she eventually ran off with the baby.”

“Oh my God. I didn’t know.”

“Pops spent his life savings to hire a private investigator to track her down. I spent 68 months in prison, not knowing if it was a boy or girl, what it looked like, what she named it.”

“That must’ve been torture.” She gazes at me in disbelief, but she hasn’t heard the worst of it yet.

“Almost six years in, I finally found out it was a girl… But she wasn’t mine.”

Jo covers her shock with a hand over her mouth. There is nothing to be said when hearing a horror story like this anyway.

“It took years to get the paternity testing done, though. Bethany would refuse; her lawyers made our lawyer jump through every hoop, and she lived in a different state by that time. But even after the DNA test results were presented to the court, they wouldn’t reevaluate my conviction. They were bogged down, no one wanted to reopen such a heinous case. I think the heartbreak of that is what killed my grandmother. They said it was a heart attack, but I know it was my fault.

“She never got to see me as a free man. I missed her funeral…”

“You shouldn’t have had to go through that,” she murmurs, settling some of the rage boiling back up inside of me.

“My grandfather didn’t visit me for almost a year after she died. I didn’t blame him for it. The stress of my situation and losing the love of his life was too much for him… But when hedid come back, he had a letter.

“I guess Bethany sent it here, assuming my grandfather could get it to me.”

“What did it say?”

“She admitted that she lied about everything. When she found out she was pregnant, she was terrified to admit the truth to her father, especially since she wasn’t supposed to be dating at all. She was sleeping with a bunch of people, cheating on me. That broke my heart all over again because I really had loved her at the time.” I shake my head at the memory.

“She admitted that blaming me for rape was an impulse decision because she felt trapped. She regretted it immediately, but she was too afraid of her father to tell the truth. She only wrote the letter to me because she had finally gone no contact with him after years in therapy.”

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