Chapter 293 Garrett

Chapter 293 Garrett
Garrett

The next two weeks passed in a peaceful routine. Well, as peaceful as life could ever be when it involved a bunch of busy, hormonal college students with too much homework and almost no adult supervision.

But I fucking loved it.

I loved waking up every morning with my lion in my arms and rushing to breakfast in half-buttoned uniforms because we had kissed a few too many times before leaving the dorm. We held hands on our way to class, ate lunch together whenever our schedules allowed it, wrestled, studied and planned increasingly stupid events with the gang. At night, we cooked while dancing to our favorite playlists, had candlelight dinners whenever one of us remembered to buy candles and generally spent far more time together than could possibly be considered healthy.

On the evenings Aslan had his museum program, I became embarrassingly excited about surprising him. I made him something special, left ridiculous little notes around the dorm and arranged the perfect welcome-home atmosphere as if he’d been gone for six months instead of three hours. I liked spoiling him. I loved making him laugh even more.

He spoiled me right back. He tickled my back while we watched television—which he knew I loved—told me stories in bed and sometimes sang quietly until I fell asleep. More often than not, he found increasingly creative ways to seduce me and destroy any chance either of us had of getting enough sleep. We studied together, worked on our projects together, trained together and somehow still missed each other whenever one of us left the room.

It was disgustingly romantic.
It was probably the honeymoon phase. I hoped it lasted for the next seventy years.

Then November fifteenth arrived.
I had known it was coming, but the moment I entered the courtroom, I wanted time to stop.

Graves was already seated with his attorneys. He wore the same dark suit, his hair neatly combed, his posture straight. If I hadn’t known better, I might’ve thought he was there to give a lecture or accept some respectable award.

Then he turned and looked at me.

No smile. No panic. None of the wild desperation I’d seen on the day of his verdict. He only watched me with that terrifying calm I knew so well, as if the six weeks he had spent in custody had given him time to forgive the things I'd said, regain his confidence and put himself back together.

I looked away and found my lion instead.
Aslan sat in the first row with everyone else.
I’m here.
That was all I needed.

The judge entered, and everyone stood. 

When the prosecutor finished his final speech before sentencing, one of Graves’s attorneys stood and asked the judge to consider his client’s previously clean criminal record, his education, his professional career and his years of service to troubled young people.

I nearly laughed at the bunch of bullshit he came up with, requesting a lesser sentence upon a respected doctor who had believed he was helping his patient.

Maybe I would’ve if I hadn’t been so close to throwing up.

Then the judge looked at me. “Mr. Williams, you have the right to address the court before a sentence is imposed. You are not required to do so. Do you wish to make a statement?”

Every word I had prepared disappeared. “Yes, Your Honor.”

The courtroom waited as I stood up on shaky legs.

I swallowed. “Dr Julian Graves took things that were mine—my body, my mind, my journals, even the people I loved—and turned all of them into weapons against me. I stopped knowing which thoughts were really mine. Sometimes I still don’t know.”

Graves moved slightly in his chair. I saw it from the corner of my eye, but I kept my gaze on my lion.

“I know sentencing him won’t erase any of that. It won’t give Lance his life back, and it won’t give me back the years I spent terrified of him. But maybe it will mean that when I wake up afraid, I can remind myself that he can’t come through my door and take me away.”

My breath broke. “I don’t want revenge. I just want the chance to find out who I am when nobody is hurting me for it.”

Aslan covered his mouth. His eyes filled, and for one dangerous second, mine did too.

When I sat down, I couldn’t feel my legs anymore.

Graves’s attorney whispered something to him. Graves shook his head.
The judge noticed. “Dr. Graves, you also have the right to address the court. Have you discussed that decision with counsel?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

His attorney closed his eyes.

Graves stood slowly. For the first time that morning, the perfect control in his face cracked—not into anger, but grief.
“I never wanted Garrett to suffer,” he said. “Every decision I made was intended to guide him toward the life he deserved. I accept that he is hurt and confused, but I cannot confess to intentions I never had.”

My fingers curled beneath the table.

“He was a remarkable child and became an extraordinary young man. He required more attention than others because there was more inside him worth protecting. Perhaps my methods were severe. Perhaps I allowed my concern for him to cross boundaries that should have remained in place. But I did not act out of cruelty.”

The judge’s expression hardened. “The jury determined otherwise.”

“The jury never knew him as I did.”
His attorney tugged discreetly at his sleeve, but Graves remained standing.
“He believes he wants freedom. He believes the people surrounding him now understand what he needs. With respect, Your Honor, they do not. They encourage every impulse that has caused him pain. I was trying to protect him from that.”

I looked at him then.
Not because I wanted to. Because I finally understood that no verdict, no prison and no amount of time would ever make him admit what he had done. In his head, he would always be the hero of my story.

The judge ordered him to sit, and for several seconds, the only sound in the courtroom was the blood pounding inside my ears.
Then he began by summarizing Graves' crimes before he started with the numbers.

On the multiple convictions for aggravated rape and abuse of a child, the court imposed a sentence of twenty-five years to life. The sentences on those convictions would run concurrently with one another.

My heart struck my ribs.
Twenty-five years.

The judge continued.
On the convictions involving the final assault after I had reached adulthood, Graves was sentenced to an additional fifteen to twenty years, to be served consecutively.

I stopped breathing.

The remaining sentences—for the assaults involving the shock devices and the reckless endangerment of a child—would run concurrently with the principal sentences. He would receive credit for the time he had already spent in custody, but he would remain incarcerated while any appeal proceeded.

The judge’s voice lowered. “The aggregate sentence of this court makes the defendant ineligible for parole consideration until he has served forty years.”

Forty years.
Graves would be an old man.
I might be sixty before anyone even considered opening that door for him.

A sob escaped somewhere behind me. I couldn’t move.
I’d wanted this. I’d prayed for this. Yet the frightened part of me still expected Graves to stand, look at me and somehow make it my fault.
He didn’t.
He remained completely still, staring at the judge as if he hadn’t understood the words. His face had gone gray.

The judge advised him of his appellate rights and ordered him committed to the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Correction. 

Only then did Graves look at me.

They fastened the restraints around his wrists. He didn’t resist. He didn’t shout or fight the officers. He only watched me with shock slowly spreading through his features, as if he had finally realized that he wasn’t returning to his office after this.
That he would not be calling me tomorrow.
That I would grow older somewhere he couldn’t follow.

One of the officers took his arm and turned him toward the side door. Graves walked several steps before stopping. He looked back at me.

“I’ll be back,” he said softly. His voice carried through the silent courtroom without needing to rise. “Don’t worry, my boy. We’ll appeal. We’ll fight this, and one way or another, I swear I’ll come back for you.”
It wasn’t shouted like a threat. It was spoken like a promise.

Every trace of relief inside me turned cold, but before the old fear could drag me under, I looked past him.
At my sister beside me. At my friends behind us. At my lion, already standing, waiting for the second he was allowed to reach me.

The officers moved Graves through the door, and it closed behind him.
It was his turn to be locked up, and I was the one who got to finally go home.