She loosens her arms, but I set one hand on the small of her back, holding her close. “No. It is.”
“Okay,” she whispers.
She waits while I try to find the words.
This isn’t a mistake. Trying to help Loreena, having faith in her, bringing her here, I might have gone about it wrong, but maybe it was what she needed. I’m not questioning that. It’s just me, worried that I’ll fuck up again, wreck her life this time, right along with mine. That those ten years carved unseen scars into me that I can’t unmake. I’m always going to be the man who spent ten years in prison. Who lost ten years of his life while his family and the rest of the world moved on without him.
How do I explain that to her? How do I find the words, especially with my throat closing up tighter with every passing second? My eyes get hot so fast that there’s nothing I can do to stop them. I can’t remember the last time I actually allowed myself to cry.
I thrust my hand up to my eyes just in time. The wetness seeps into my fingertips. I can’t press it back in. I can’t help the way my shoulders curl in on themselves, my natural instinct to immediately protect the weakest parts of my body, to hide my unraveling, but I’m not curling in on me. Loreena is in my lap.
Her arms tighten around me, but then one loosens and slips to my shoulder and then up, to cup my cheek. She waits a moment before she strokes my cheek then up to my hair along my temple. Everything in me screams to pull back. Instead, I find the courage to lean into her.
“You’ve been so worried about me, but has anyone stopped and asked how you’re doing? How you’re really doing?” Her words sound ripped from the depths of her, heavy and throaty.
I don’t need more than the pale, water glow of the streetlight at the end of the block trickling in here to see that the pain etched into her face is all for me.
“Yes. Lots of people. That’s why I’ve been so lucky. I got out and Scythe was there. He had everything ready for me. A house, a job, a vehicle. They have shit in prison that they provide you with in preparation for your release, at least they did in the classes I was taking. They want people to go out there and be a success. So I got some learning. So what? Most will get out and find they can’t handle it in the real world anymore. It’s so changed and they’re so changed that they’re no longer compatible.”
She makes a sound in her throat but doesn’t say anything when I pause.
“They can’t hold a job if they can even find one. Housing is dubious. No one wants to take a chance on an ex-con. That’s why so many just end up back in prison. It’s what theyknow. They don’t have to worry about paying the bills or finding housing or where their next meal is coming from. They even have something of a schedule and a family in there.”
She knows that’s true, I don’t doubt. You don’t have to be involved with the law or the justice system in any way to understand how society operates.
“I didn’t want that to be my life. It’s not going to be.” I want that to sound bold and certain, but it just comes out as broken and jagged around the edges as my insides are.
She grasps my hand and raises my palm to her lips. Even though she kisses it to comfort me, I feel her stiffening. Not out of disgust, but out of anguish. I didn’t want to hurt her. That’s why I got out of that bed, but here I am, spreading my poison to her anyway. She absorbs it into her body. She doesn’t pull away, and I can’t make myself do it or shut up.
“At the club, even though everyone has tried so damn hard to make this a good fit for me, it’s still hard seeing guys who have been through this. Now, they’ve got their lives together. They have brotherhood, jobs, purpose. They have women who love them, and some of them even have kids, or they want that family. And fuck me, it’s a lot, you know? Trying to pick up everything that was lost and make up for it because that’s a decade gone that you’re never going to get back.”
I should push her away and explain to her that I’m no good right now and maybe not ever, but she banishes thatthought right from my mind when she curls around me. My arms cage her in on instinct, squeezing her tightly against me.
Thing is, I don’t want to push her away. She’s always been my hope. My light. The one thing that’s kept me going, kept me strong, kept me hoping.
“The injustice of it makes me sick to my stomach,” I wheeze, my insides roiling and clenching. I speak the words to her hair, holding onto her so damn tight. They’d be better locked inside, but I can’t keep them there to fester. “The world is an even shittier place than when I left it. I have no idea why people are in such a hurry to get back out to it. The amount of people being hurt, how easy it is to just walk around uncaring, hurting others, how little accountability there is… it’s just…sickening. My mom asked me to a be a good person, but I don’t know how to fucking do that anymore. I’m just tired. I’m so tired.”
“When’s the last time you properly slept?” Her hand traces little circles on my shoulder. There’s no judgment. She just wants to know because she wants to help.
“It’s not that kind of tired.”
“I know, but I also know that you really haven’t slept since I’ve been here.”
“You get used to not doing it the way others do. I have ten years of practice. Ten years watching my back. Lockwood told you that you’re in survival mode, and so the fuck am I. I don’t know how to get out of it.” Fuck, it’s all spilling out. I’m soweak. I can’t evenpretendto be strong anymore. How am I supposed to help her when I’m so broken? “I don’t know how to stop thinking that this is all going to vanish. I don’t know how to stop feeling like I’m not doing enough and that I’ll never be enough,then wondering what the fuck the point of any of it is to begin with.”
“Was your first week in prison easy?”
I’m already tense, but my muscles turn to stone. “Fuck, no.”
“It took a long time to get used to being in there.”
“I don’t think anyone ever gets properly used to it.”
“I suppose if you did, that would be a sad state to be in. I hate even asking you that, but my point is, it takes a long time to get used to something, even if that something is being given back what you once had.” Her hand moves to the back of my shoulder, and she rubs it like she can impart goodness back into me, light to reinforce the one that’s fading. “You’re right about the system failing people, but it happens long before the justice system ever has anything to do with it. You tried to do somethinggood. You put your faith in the law and it betrayed you, but it in a way, it didn’t, do you understand?”
I don’t want to say that I do, but she’s a lawyer. She’s made it her life to study the law, to interpret it, to understand it, and to uphold it. What’s more, I love that for her. I love her passion, her focus, and all the energy she pours into it. She’s a lawyer because she wants to help and protect people. It doesn’t have anything to do with the salary. This is her way of putting good into the world, and I would never take that away from her.
“Yes,” I admit, but really, I’m trying to tell her all the things I can’t say.
