Free Texas Fall by RJ Scott

check if he had a job or at the
very least somewhere to go.
    The well-dressed young man
was next, although up close Jack could see that under the confidence was
another child who’d been destroyed by what had happened to him. His testimony
was the same, but when he was pushed by the defense to explain details of one
particular attack, he cried.
    Jack added another name to
his list.
    “Are you hearing all this?”
Robbie whispered. “These are kids, Jack.”
    “I wish Liam didn’t have
to go through this,” Jack answered just as quietly. He glanced behind himself
again. Still no one, no family or counselors or, hell, anyone. What happened to
the three men when they left the ranch where so much had happened to them?
    The young man in the suit
a couple sizes too small silently moved into the room with his eyes downcast.
Jack could sense the change in the room. The prosecution exchanged worried
glances that Jack could see, and the defense straightened in their seats. Even
the jury sat forward in their seats.
    “Kyle Braden,” the witness
spoke his name shakily, and the prosecution began a series of questions. After
five minutes or so, Kyle appeared to relax, and he even lifted his chin a
little. He was brutally honest about what happened, and his words went from
shaky in their delivery to crisp and matter-of-fact. He was the oldest of the
boys, twenty-five and he admitted there had even been boys before him.
    Then it was the defense’s turn.
And shit, they ripped into him, and every shred of what had been built up was
torn down. After it was all over, Kyle had to be helped from the witness stand.
    “What the fuck?” Robbie
growled.
    How could a jury not fail
to see what had happened to these kids? Jack wanted to go home, get a rifle,
and point it between Hank’s eyes, shoot the man dead there and then for the
lives he had destroyed. When Jack saw the defense team exchange smiles, Jack
wanted to let Robbie go, just to see him pummel them into the ground.
    But then it was Liam’s
turn and Jack had to stop himself from standing up and stopping this whole
fucking debacle. Next to him Robbie moved like he’d had the same idea, and Jack
quickly laid a hand on his foreman’s knee. He looked directly at Jack, and all
Jack could see in the depth of Robbie’s eyes was despair and anger.
    Liam looked different from
the other three. Yes, he was nervous and scared, but he was looking behind Jack
and when Marcus settled next to Robbie, Liam was staring right at him. Liam
smiled and nodded his head. The smile didn’t quite reach his eyes or change the
stiff way he was holding himself, but he had someone to look at through this.
    He answered prosecution
questions with soft but insightful replies, from the way his abuse started to
the lies he was told by Hank to keep him quiet. Then with a brief but visible
closing of his eyes, he faced the defense attorney.
    “You’re gay.” The attorney
opened with the same thing he had with all the others.
    “I am.”
    Then it went much as the
others. Until they came to the question that Jack dreaded.
    “I would suggest you made
yourself available, and in fact led my client into sexual situations. How would
you answer that?”
    Liam stared straight ahead
to Marcus, whose hands were twisted in his lap.
    “On no occasion did I make
myself available,” Liam began. “I will admit that I craved the attention after
the first time.”
    “You’re saying that sexual
advances were welcome?” the defense attorney offered with the silkiest tone
Jack had ever heard.
    “Never welcomed. I was
homeless, and the Castille family took me in. They were the closest thing I had
to family—”
    “Did you, in fact, lead my
client to believe you wanted a relationship?”
    The prosecution interrupted
with an objection, but the judge simply said, “Overruled.”
    Liam sat absolutely still.
    The defense pushed again,
clearly high on what they assumed would be a case-winning admission. “Mr. Frazier?
Is