Page 114 of Claim

“Yet.” He drew a measured breath. “You risked your life and your liberty for my son.”

I looked up.

“And given everything I know about you, I find that… difficult to reconcile. The man in the dock. And the man who dragged my son out of a warehouse bleeding. Instead of running away from consequence, you ran into it to save him.” He fixed his gaze on me, unblinking. “So I would like to know…why.”

I fell back into the chair. The cuffs bit into my wrists. My heart kicked hard enough to make me dizzy. I took a second. Not to think, because there was nothing to think about, but to accept what I was about to say.

“Cause I’m in love with him.”

He looked at me as if I’d spoken in a language he’d never heard before. I wondered if he’d even registered it. Maybe he was choosing not to. If I were Tristan, if I had his words, I’d fill the silence. Object. Clarify. Redirect.

But I didn’t and his Dad spoke again, anyway, “How long?”

I glanced down at the cuffs. “’Bout a year.”

He flinched. “He’s been defending you for a year?”

I snorted before I could stop myself and shifted in the chair. “No. That part’s new. I met him over a year ago.”

His brow creased. “How does my son come to meet someone like you?”

Yeah. Fair question. I imagine it’d be hard for him to picture how we came to be in the same orbit.

I shrugged. “Paths crossed. And once they did… I didn’t want them to uncross.”

He chewed on that. So did I for bit. Probably not the same parts.

“And these feelings?” He pulled down his shirt cuffs, refusing to look at me. “Are they mutual?”

“You’d have to ask him.” The words caught halfway out of me. My chest tightened as the realisation hit. “If you can. I don’t know. No one’s telling me nothin’.” I had to look up at him with a vulnerability I’d never shown anyone before. “How is he? What’s happening? I’m cuffed to a fucking chair and losing my fucking mind not knowing.”

He looked away then. As if weighing what he could say against what he felt he should. When he looked back, there was no sympathy there, but at least he answered.

“He’s stable.”

Relief hit me so hard my legs went weak. It was fucking good job I was sat and cuffed to a chair, or I’d be in a heap on the floor. But a tear slipped loose, anyway and I couldn’t even fucking wipe it away; ironically those cuffs wouldn’t let me. So I dragged my shoulder across my face, clumsy and humiliating.

“The doctors say it came down to timing,” Tristan’s dad continued. “Had you waited for the authorities, he likely wouldn’t have made it. Getting him here when you did, and how you did, likely saved his life.”

I nodded, throat burning, doing everything in my power not to break apart right there.

“He’s in ICU. Unconscious. Which is why I haven’t been able to hear his version of events. Instead, I’ve been briefed by the police and read the witness statements.”

My stomach dropped.

“One of whom states you held a gun to his head and forced him to drive through an active police pursuit.”

I clenched my jaw, bracing for another charge to slide neatly onto the pile.

“Had you not done that,” he glanced down at the ground, “I would not be standing here. I would be telling my wife—his mother—and his siblings that we lost him.” He then peered up at me, stern and unwavering. “That is the position you’ve put me in.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “With respect, given my defence counsel is currently unconscious, I’ll have to speak for myself if that’s alright with you. It weren’t me who put you in that position. It was the men who dragged Tristan out of the court that did. Higher than them, the ones who issued it. And higher still, the one who thought he could steer him a different way. And if I’d tried to explain all that to a pair of custody officers in a corridor, I’d still be waiting for a spare interview room while your son bled out somewhere.”

“So you took matters into your own hands.”

“Yeah.” I met his gaze. “I did what I know how to do.”

“Which is what?”