Broken Silence (Silence, #2)(52)

“Oakley?” Cole’s voice made me cry harder. Go away! I curled into a tighter ball and tensed. The bed dipped, and the covers shifted. His smell filled my lungs, and I needed him more than ever.

I rolled over and snuggled into him, clinging to his body as if it were my lifeline. He wrapped himself around me, protecting me.

“Don’t cry,” he pleaded.

“Do you want to ask me questions?” I whispered.

“Shh, not now. You’re not ready to talk about it.” I had a feeling he mentally added, ‘And I’m not ready to hear it.’ “I love you so much, Oakley.”

“I love you too.” I snuggled even closer and let the quiet thumping of his heart sing me to sleep.





Chapter Seventeen


Cole




“Are you ready for this?” I asked Jasper as we stood outside the courtroom waiting to be let inside.

“Not really,” he replied. “This is a bad idea.”

Yeah, probably. Thinking about Max made me want to go postal, so fuck knows what I was going to be like hearing him lie.

“Cole, do you think she’s really okay with us being here?”

“I think so. She would’ve said if she wasn’t.”

She wouldn’t because she’d never tell anyone what to do, especially not Jasper when it came to their dad, but I didn’t want to tell him that. This seemed like something he had to do. I still wasn’t sure why I was here. To hear his side and see how he was going to try swinging it or to support Jasper since Oakley and Sarah were dead against going.

We’d only decided late last night that we were going to attend. A spur of the moment decision. Probably a stupid one too.

The door to the courtroom opened and people started filtering in.

“Well,” I said, “we should go in, I suppose.”

“Yeah.” He nodded but neither of us moved.

I slapped his back and took a step towards the door. “Come on.”

Jasper followed. Tension radiated from him. He was about to hear what lies his dad was going to spout out to make his sister look like a liar.

There were too many charges against him, some already proven, but his lawyer seemed determined to knock the ones relating to Oakley off the list so who knows what bullshit was about to come out of his mouth.

We sat side by side, and I wondered if I could leave. I didn’t want to be here but I wanted to be able to prepare Oakley if Max’s version of events changed anything. If the jury seemed like they were believing him.

Max looked like he’d aged more than just four years but he still appeared every bit the respectable man. He wore a smart black expensive looking suit, crisp white shirt and pale blue tie. His hair was nearly combed and he was clean-shaven.

He stood confidently, back straight and chin up. My hatred grew. How dare he stand there and pretend he’s not a monster after everything he’d done?

Jasper’s fists were clenched on his knees and he glared at his dad as if a look could murder him.

Max spoke fluently and calmly, the way he’d done when he was running the town committee to raise money for the new park and the church roof. I remembered watching him when I was young, hero-worshiping him because he was the reason our village was getting a skate ramp.

“Mr Farrell, how did you feel when you first heard the claims your daughter had made against you?” Linda asked. She carried herself as if she’d already won the case. I wasn’t sure if that confidence would bite us in the arse or if it was good and would show the jury she was certain Max was guilty.

“Devastated. Shocked. Confused. One minute we’re setting up for a weekend camping and the next she’s taken off and I’m arrested. It still feels like a nightmare.”

“Why did you only take Oakley camping? You have two children, it seems rather strange that you’d only take your daughter.”

Max nodded and very swiftly replied, “I would have taken both but Jasper didn’t want to come in the end.”

“What do you mean ‘in the end’?”

“To begin with Oakley didn’t want him to come. She wanted me to herself, the way she only wanted Sarah – her mother – to take her to gymnastics. Camping became my time with Oakley and my son’s time was football on a Sunday morning.”

“Liar,” Jasper growled under his teeth.

The football part was true, the rest was Max’s fantasy.

“You allowed your five-year-old daughter to dictate who was going on these trips?”

Max smiled his award-winning smile. “She needed one-on-one time and so did Jasper, every child does. We had plenty times together as a family too but they both needed occasions where they had my undivided attention.”

I ground my teeth.

“Mr Farrell, why did you not tell your wife an old friend, Mr Frank Glosser, was joining you on your trip?”

“It was last-minute. Frank called me to say he’d just arrived in town and was about to check in to a hotel. Within an hour he was with us. Sarah knew Frank and knew he’d visited us at the camp site before, I knew she wouldn’t have an issue with it and Frank always stayed in a separate tent.”

“You took a spare tent?”

“He hired one from the campsite. They have a record of the booking.”