Chapter 290 Aslan

Chapter 290 Aslan
Aslan

Three days after Graves was convicted, three celebratory dinners at the Valsecchis’, and countless thank-you notes later, Garrett announced we were going back to class. 

I thought he'd lost his fucking mind. “You don't have to do this yet.”

“Yes, I do.” He stared into the mirror while fixing his hair for approximately the fifteenth time. “Everyone knows now, lion. If I hide in here for another week, I'll just spend another week imagining what they're all saying. I'd rather rip the Band-Aid off and get it the hell over with.”

And as much as I had enjoyed having my baby to myself, kissing and cuddling every free moment I could manage, I understood that.
Still, by the time we left our dorm, his hand was freezing. I took it anyway.

That alone felt insane. We had done it before the hearing, but we were still careful because, technically, no one was supposed to know about us, and we didn't wanna have to answer a lot of questions.
Now we walked straight across Crownwell holding hands while half the goddamned country knew exactly who we were.

Garrett slowed when the first group of students approached.
“Hey, Garr.” One of the guys smiled. “Good to have you back.”

That was it.

Another girl stopped us outside the academic building. “We've been following everything. You guys were amazing.” She hesitated before adding, “We're with you, okay?”

Garrett swallowed. “Thanks.”

It continued like that all morning.
No pity looks, no court questions. Thank God. Garrett would've probably climbed into a sewer and lived there.

Just people.
A hand on his shoulder. A smile. A welcome back. One professor quietly telling him he was glad to see him before continuing class as if Garrett wasn't suddenly the most famous student at Crownwell.

The wrestling team was even better.
“Look who finally decided to show up,” James, this year's team mascot, announced when we walked into the training room. “Some of us have been carrying this team while your lazy ass has been playing celebrity.”

Garrett stared at him for two seconds before flipping him off.

Coach Halt grinned and kept walking.

And that was it.

Nobody treated him like he was broken. Nobody whispered when he passed or stared at him like they knew every terrible thing he'd told that courtroom.
They knew. That was the crazy part. They knew, and they still saw Garrett.

By the end of the week, his shoulders weren't quite as tense when we crossed campus. By the second, sometimes he was the one reaching for my hand first.

Life didn't exactly return to normal after that.
We had a lot to deal with that we were trying to work through little by little. Including our sex life. 
We were obviously intimate, don't get me wrong, and it was always incredible, but just as he had once waited for me, I wanted to do the same for him now before taking things too far. There was no rush to get back to normal.

Honestly, I wasn't sure either of us remembered what normal was supposed to look like, but we started building something that felt pretty damn close.

My museum internship finally began, three evenings a week, and apparently Garrett found my excitement about it hilarious.
“You spent four hours cataloguing things people dug out of dirt.”

“They're artifacts, asshole.”

“Old shit.”

“Historically significant old shit.”

He laughed and pulled me between his legs, where he sat on the edge of our bed. “You're such a nerd, cub.”

“You're dating the nerd.”

“Best decision I ever made.”

That usually shut me up pretty effectively.

We had a good routine down. We kissed like crazy. We studied. We trained. We ordered way too much food. We fell asleep watching movies. We kissed even more… Garrett started talking about wrestling again without every conversation somehow circling back to court. I told him about every ridiculous detail of the internship, whether he wanted to hear it or not. We even started talking about Thanksgiving.

“Mom's going to lose her mind if I tell her you're coming to Maine,” I warned him one night.

Garrett shrugged. “Your mom loves me.”

“She tolerates you.”

“She loves me more than you.”

“Keep dreaming, wolf.”

He kissed me, laughing against my mouth, and for a few minutes there would be just us... Plus the sound of reporters outside, of course, because news never slept.

There was also the voice of our brilliant lawyer more often than not.
Olivia met us for lunch a couple of weeks after the verdict with enough paperwork to destroy whatever appetite I'd had.

Garrett eyed the folders. “Please tell me those are menus.”

“Nope.”

“Then I'm leaving.”

“Sit down, drama queen.” Olivia smiled before pushing one of the folders aside. “Actually, most of this is good news.”

That got our attention.

Spring Creek's license had been suspended. No new admissions. The patients who had still been there were being transferred, released to their families, or independently evaluated, and investigators had taken possession of medical and administrative records.

It wasn't permanently closed yet, but nobody was being treated there.
More former patients had come forward too. So many that separate investigations were already forming around cases that had nothing to do with Garrett. Lance's case was being examined independently, along with the actions of staff members who had worked under Graves.

“So this isn't over,” I said.

“Not even close,” Olivia answered. “Graves was one man. What happened there required an entire system of people who participated, enabled it, or looked the other way. Prosecutors are figuring out which ones did which.”

Garrett went quiet. Olivia reached across and squeezed his hand. “You started something, Garr.”

He looked down at their hands. “Good.”

Then came the civil case.
“We've formally begun pursuing damages against Spring Creek and the entities responsible for its operation.”

Garrett blinked. “Meaning?”

Olivia smiled sweetly. “Meaning we're suing the living shit out of them.”

I nearly choked on my drink. “Finally!”

She explained that it wouldn't happen overnight. There were insurers, corporate lawyers, medical expenses, years of treatment, psychological injury, and about a thousand other things I'd stopped understanding after the first thirty seconds. But bottom line, Garrett, along with others like Lance and his family, was likely gonna get a lot of money.

The important part, however, was that Spring Creek wasn't walking away from what it had done simply because Graves was going to prison.

Neither, apparently, was Helena Williams.

Her return to normal life had gone considerably worse than ours.
The clips from her testimony had spread everywhere. Her comments about Garrett's sexuality, sin, and saving him had reached millions of people, including LGBT organizations, survivors, parents, and religious groups.
Even her own church had publicly distanced itself from her statements and condemned the abuse she'd attempted to justify with their beliefs.

Then the protests reached the Williams hotel group.
Bookings dropped. Corporate partners started pulling away. Demonstrators appeared outside several properties. Investors demanded answers, and the company's shares took enough of a hit that its board placed Helena on leave.
Three weeks later, she resigned as CEO.

Garrett stared at Olivia. “Mom resigned?”

“She was given remarkably few attractive alternatives.”

“Holy shit.”

“And Dad filed for divorce.”

That wiped the amusement straight off his face.

Olivia explained that the divorce could take months, possibly much longer with that much money and property involved. Gerald couldn't simply erase Helena from everything they'd built together, but his attorneys were already working to separate his financial and professional interests from hers and remove her from every shared position he legally could.

Helena hadn't lost everything, but she'd lost the thing she'd valued almost as much as control.
Her reputation.

Garrett's guardianship was taking longer than any of us wanted. The emergency orders meant Helena couldn't make decisions for him and Graves obviously couldn't go anywhere near him, but the old legal arrangement still had to be formally terminated through the proper court.

Independent evaluations had already been completed. Every one of them supported Garrett.
So now, all we could do was wait. 

And somehow, while lawyers fought and investigators investigated and the internet continued trying to set itself on fire, October happened.

Then Halloween.

Garrett

Halloween had a bit of a history with us.

Exactly one year ago, the weight of my secrets, my fears, and every fucking monster living inside my head had destroyed whatever Aslan and I were becoming or couldn't become. That was the night I'd looked at the only man I'd ever loved and told him I hated him.

It had rained a goddamn river since that night. And somehow, through every horrible fucking second of it, my lion had never given up on me.

I couldn't take those words back. I couldn't erase that moment or give either of us a different past....
But maybe I could give us a different Halloween.

And this year, I planned to make damn sure it was one worth remembering.