“You got it,” I said lightly, turning my foot to spin me away from them. Coffee was easy, and I made the best brew around, or so I'd been told.
“Hey, wait. Didn’t I see you down at Roller Freeze the other night?” the youngest of the group asked.
There was something about him that reminded me so much of Tate, I found myself genuinely smiling as I responded. “Yeah, I work lunch through dinner and close sometimes.”
I turned to go get the coffees, but their laughter threw me off, forcing me to look over my shoulder at them. The word ‘what?’sat on the very tip of my tongue, but was swallowed back down as the young one raised his strange zigzag eyebrow at me. I honestly didn’t want to get into a conversation with these guys about my personal life, so I took off and got them coffees, before I took care of everyone else, falling easily into my routine.
Chapter Two
Drew
“Fucker, you’re up.”
My head swung lazily from side to side, my arms hanging over my knees and my hands clasped together in front of me while I sat on the hard bench and waited for my release. By some miracle, I’d slept pretty well. I’d never been a religious man. Not even in here where I’d taken up Bible readings just to get out of kitchen duties on a Sunday, when all the bastards inside seemed hungrier than ever. God, to me, was nothing more than a state of mind, not a being. If ever I’d worshipped anyone, it had been Pete, not some creation with thorns around his head. But for some reason, I was starting to think that there might be someone up there who was looking out for me and preparing me for what I was about to do and the world I was about to re-enter.
Whoever that guy was, I owed him.
“You gone deaf now, fucker? Or does the thought of leaving me make your pansy ass want to cry?”
It’s hard not to hurt people when all your brain is telling you to do is smash your fist across their jaw. I found it hard not to hurt people in general. It’s what came naturally to me, especially since losing Pete. But patience was a virtue, or sothey said, and it seemed I was feeling pretty fucking virtuous, which served this prison guard well.
For now, anyway.
Lifting my head as slowly as I could, I glanced at the man that had tried to make my life a misery since I got pushed through those iron bars, all that time ago: Prison Officer Jon Taylor. Ex semi-professional boxing champion of Texas, and all around badass wannabe who thought that because he once took a hit to the jaw with a crowbar and somehow remained standing, he was eligible to claim indestructibility.
Curling my lip, I raised both brows in his direction, practically whispering to save myself wasting energy on this asshole.
“You should know one thing, Taylor: I never forget a face.”
“Is that a threat?” he asked, drawing out his accent to try and make himself sound like Clint fucking Eastwood before taking a step closer to me.
“Cowards make threats.”
“And this is where you tell me you only make guarantees, right, fucker?”
I huffed out a small laugh, shaking my head in amusement as I rose to stand. “Tucker.”
“You haven't been released yet. While you're still inside this building, you're under my watch and my rule. I can call you whatever the hell I want. Think of yourself as my bitch boy.”
“Why you gotta be like this, Taylor? You got daddy issues?” I spoke quietly, my lips twitching as I sauntered closer.
“I've got Drew Fucker issues.”
“Tucker,” I reminded him quietly.
“Fucker.”
“Your wife? I already did.”
It took a few seconds for the insult to filter through the walls of his thick head, but when it hit, his eyes popped and he clenched his teeth together in anger. It amused me more than I wanted to admit. I enjoyed nothing more than watching him turn from white to pink to red, then to fucking purple. A big man he might have been, but everyone inside knew about his family. We all knew about his ex-playboy wife and his two daughters. We all knew that one word against them and it usually resulted in a metal pole being smashed across the back of our knees—but he couldn’t do that inside the release room, and we both knew it. There were too many cameras and not enough dark corners. I was at an advantage for the first time in years. That feeling of power returned to me like an old friend I hadn't acknowledged in far too long. I'd missed it.
Lifting the waist of my jeans up, I ran a hand through the side of my overgrown brown hair and stepped up to him, my smirk growing bigger as I lowered my voice and ducked my head to look up into his big, old, beady eyes.
“Or was that your daughter? I can’t remember. They look alike, don't they? I should look them up once I’m outta here… maybe hit up the missing piece with baby girl number tw—”
I heard his fist flying through the air before I felt it across my jaw. The metallic taste of blood immediately filled my mouth, and that blessed white noise rang in my ears as my head whipped to the side. I had to hand it to the guy, he knew how to make his shot count. Every part of my face froze as the pain spread out through my senses like some junkie had injected the best drug on the planet into my eyeballs. It was abeautiful state of numbness that I had craved since I was old enough to remember. The injuries were never what I struggled with. Not one little bit.
Not retaliating was where I faltered the most.
