Glass Wings: Criminally Yours by Taylor Jade

Author:Taylor Jade [Jade, Taylor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2025-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

HARLEY

Four Weeks Later

Time feels like it’s moving everywhere and nowhere all at once. The baby is growing. My hunger is finally catching up to me, the scale inching higher every week, and my OB seems pleased with the progress. Though, that doesn’t mean I love every part of it. I did love that the morning sickness was over and that I was learning quite quickly how to adjust to this new exhaustion plaguing me. It means I’m doing what I can to keep this baby healthy.

Letters between Easton and I have become weekly now, instead of monthly like before. We write about everything and nothing—baby names, old memories, even silly what-ifs—because we’ve both learned the hard way that there is no use drowning in things we can’t change.

Just last week he brought up the time we got matching tattoos. I’d been terrified of the needle, with incredibly sweaty palms, while he’d been nothing but excited, grinning like a kid at Christmas. I didn’t think much about it back then, but funnily enough, the ink means more to me now than any wedding band. It’s a promise we carry on our skin, a mark that can’t be stripped away by courts or chains. A reminder that no matter how hard the world tries to separate us, we’ve chosen each other. Permanently.

I still carry hurt, of course. Some days it presses harder than others. But therapy is teaching me to hold it differently, to see it for what it really is. It’s not Easton I’m angry at anymore. It’s the system; the endless waiting, the way it steals moments that should belong to us. Together. Alone. Every day I practice forgiving him, reminding myself that loving someone means separating the man from the mess he’s been thrown into.

Rick called yesterday to let me know about another pre-trial hearing. He sounded more optimistic than I felt, talking about motions and new witness statements … like that might finally tip the scales. I told him I’d be there, of course I wouldn’t miss it, and then called my boss to ask for the morning off again. By now it’s becoming routine, juggling work around court dates. I hope and pray it will be over soon.

The next morning, I arrive at the courthouse with Kennedy at my side, both of us wrapped in the kind of silence that means we’re bracing for whatever is coming. I expect to sit with her, the two of us against the world like always. But when I walk into the gallery, I freeze.

Easton’s parents are here.

Layla stands when she sees me, smoothing her blouse nervously, and Andy gives me a small, steady smile that almost undoes me right then and there. I didn’t realize how much I needed to see them until that moment. Without hesitation, his mom reaches for my hand.

“Sit with us, Harley,” she whispers, her eyes glassy. “You don’t have to go through this alone.”

Kennedy slips into the row behind without protest, and I find myself settling between them, Layla on my left and Andy on my right.

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