The One Shot Chapters (18+)

Andy Barber - Back To The Beginning PT 2

Andy relays everything part of what's happened over the last ten months bit by bit to me.

He remembers every minute.

Every second.

And it kills me because I know that he's not telling the full truth.

He's hiding the moments where he fucked me against his office desk, the meetings at my apartment, a hotel room, or even in his car we had without anyones knowledge. Looking back. It was a wonder just how he managed to get away with it.

My eyes flicker across to my mom once or twice as she listens alongside the grand jury. They meet with mine and she continues to nod her encouragement to me.

I'm glad in some respects that she made me do this and not Neal. He'd have only ripped his former mentor and colleague to shit.

All the while he continues to defend the woman who he is technically here representing, because she is unfit to herself.

She is the one who put herself and her son in the hospital. The one who was all but prepared to end their lives selfishly and purposely because the events drove her to the brink of insanity.

And yet he insists that this was an accident.

He visits her everyday.

Tends to her every need.

And she does not deserve any of it.

He is the one who deserves all the love and affection in the world, and had things have been different? Perhaps it could have been me who was the one to give him just that. For a short time it was anyway.

I make eye contact with Andy once more as I know I have to be brutal. Drive the final nail into the coffin so to speak.

"Andy...come on..."

He looks at me, and it's one of betrayal, anger and sorrow. "Don't..."

"Andy...Jacob's been in a coma for months, the investigators at the scene found nothing to implicate that the car had any fault to it. No failures, no engine issues, breaks intact. And yet the doors that your wife was was doing at the time of impact? Doesn't it makes you question  everything now that you've recounted for us what she was like in the days leading up to the "accident" if that's what we're gonna call it..."  I look at him honestly, now talking to him as his lover, not a witness. "Don't you want justice for your son?"

He stares at me, trying to hold back from breaking apart in the inside, but I can tell that he is. Then he looks back down to the table top.

"Andy...I need you to answer the question. Do you think Laurie intended to harm herself and Jacob?"

My mind begs him to think of his son. Chances he'll wake up are slim, and if he does? Who knows the extend of his injuries as well as whether he'll remember those last moments.

Poor kid must've been terrified.

Andy looks to the jury and then at me again. His eyes dark and voice low. The next word is filled with pain and bitterness, but the way he looks at me tells me enough to know that he agrees with my words, and he forgives my harsh manner.

"Yes".