Denying Dylan | ✔️

(25) "Well that's good to know."

When I thought about it, I'd never seen a photo of mom and I together, when I was a newborn. I'd seen photos of myself quite fresh and pink. But there were  none of her holding me until I was about five months old. I'd never given it much thought before, never had a reason to. But now it made a whole lot of sense.

Of course, being in this cell, which was off white brick with with a faint scent of vomit, but no vomit to be seen, gave me a lot of time to think. Right at this moment in life, too much thinking was going to have me throwing my head at a brick wall. Plenty of that around.

As much as I wanted to switch off the what if's, they wouldn't let up. Cursed with over thinking, my mind had been asking the same questions over and over again. What if this Emory woman hadn't died? What if one of her family members had stepped in and raised me? What if mom had been honest from the beginning? What if mom had left Kevin, taken me and raised me alone?

That was the one that I dwelled on the most. Which surprised me, I thought that I would have been stuck on the fact that the woman who gave birth to me, had died. Shouldn't I have wanted to know more about her. But for the most part, I couldn't help but feel distaste over the fact that she'd been sleeping with Kevin while he was in a relationship, she tried to ruin their marriage. And that made me defensive of mom.

The one thing that did upset me about the entire situation was that mom didn't leave Kevin. We would have been so much happier without him. But perhaps she felt like she didn't have the right to do that, considering I was his 'real' daughter. Ugh. I wished and hoped that she hadn't had that mindset because she was my real mom and no amount of DNA could change that.

The cot mattress that I was sitting on, made me feel gross. How many other detainees had sat on this mattress? Perhaps soiled it with piss and vomit. There might have been some drunk hooligan in here before me, drunk people are the worst— I would know — he might have rubbed his balls on this mattress. Might have thrown up on it. Perhaps he'd passed out and pissed himself.

I stood up and leaned against the wall, the back of my head resting on the cold painted brick. The only form of entertainment that I had was my own colourful imagination and the occasional heads that wandered past the little window at the top of the cell door. I'd counted eighty three so far. There was a definite possibility that some of those people had walked past more than once, but after a while, features blurred and I didn't pay attention to more than their passing.

Time was the other thing that I'd lost the hang of. But it had been hours, that much I knew.

I was humming to the tune of Jailhouse Rock when another two heads wandered past the cell window. Eighty five. I exhaled a long breath, disappointment coursing through me for the eighty fifth time. Yep, whenever someone walked past, I was desperately hoping that it was time for me to go home. But, I mean, I was in here for assault. It could be a while before I was released.

But then, the sound of a beep and a whir echoed in the cell as the electronic locks opened and the door slid to the left. The odds of Phoenix working in this precinct shouldn't have surprised me, but I still stared with shock when he folded his arms, leaned on the door jamb and watched me with an amused grin.

"I thought that was you," he pursed his lips and I took the chance to stare at his unreal biceps stretching the seams of his shirt sleeves. We're never going to be together, I might as well have a peep. "I'm going to guess that this is real? Unless you're on a date and this is another pretend arrest?"

I sighed. "Real. I threw some douchebag off a bridge."

He stared.

"He's fine. Just a broken leg."