I pushed the paper off the bed and it fluttered to the floor. He didn’t reach for it, but his soft-looking lips thinned. My heart jerked. I didn’t like that change in his expression. So far he’d been nice to me, and I’d… enjoyed it. As much as I didn’t deserve his kindness, I wanted it to keep happening. The longing for some understanding shocked me, especially since he blinked in my direction with what felt like consideration. My breath hitched.
“Who are they to you?”
“Ghosts. No one.”
Greene rubbed a finger alongside his slightly rounded nose, and on him it was almost out of place, too cute for someone with a broad chest and thick muscles that filled out his shirt to perfection. He could have been in a middleweight fighting circuit.
He leaned closer and rested his hands on the side of the bed. “I don’t know you, but you will be a massive inconvenience to me dead. You’re going into the block I supervise, and I don’t like to get the body bags out of the closet they keep in here.” He jerked a thumb out toward the wider space of the medical wing where they had a small clinic set up. I’d been in there before they’d tossed me in here. As much as I didn’t want to be alone, it was safer in this room than out in the rest of the prison.
“Goody.”
The corner of his mouth curled up into something resembling a smile. “Is there anything I need to know? Strictly between us.”
Anger had me trying to sit up and regretting it. I sucked in a deep breath as he lightly rested a hand on my shoulder to ease me onto my back again. “There’s no way anything I would say would stay between us. How stupid do you think I am?” I stared him down, and a slow smile spread across his face.
“Do you have anything at all to live for?”
I grimaced as I thought about my son. Anger and grief hit me. Angel was an adult now. Any good I could have been to him had long passed, and I’d dropped that ball. Hell, I’d punctured it and kicked it into the gutter. I’d always had something to prove from the moment my eyes snapped open in this world, and I should have tried more with my own family.
“This makes my work harder,” Greene muttered. He shifted and ran a hand over his short brown hair, then tilted his head as if he couldn’t figure me out.
A laugh socked its way free of me. “I’m not a man who makes anything easy.”
“Talk to me about these pricks who jumped you.”
He picked up the paper from the floor, and I snatched the photo from him to turn it on its front. The image was a still of me being beaten down. I didn’t want to see myself getting pummeled. The attack happened so quickly it barely registered they’d been behind it. “They’re ugly. That’s about all I got.”
Greene glanced around, then back at me. “What’s happening with your chair?”
“What the fuck do you care?” I snapped, then sighed at myself. I’d been attacking for so long, I didn’t know how to stop, even when someone seemed nice enough.
“Again, you’re my problem.” He took the paper back from me and our fingers brushed. My stomach leaped and my cheeks felt too hot. I cleared my throat and looked anywhere but at him, feeling stupid. Things like enjoying the touch of a good-looking man in passing were long behind me. It wasn’t safe and wouldn’t lead to anything good.
Tears pricked at my eyelids and I shrugged.
“Is medical ordering you a new one? Yours was busted.” Concern laced his tone.
Worry ate at me. I would be worse than fucked if I couldn’t have some help getting around. Already my belly clawed with hunger because I hadn’t made it to the meal earlier, and I knew no one was going to deliver a tray to me in my cell. “The doc didn’t mention it.”
Greene folded the picture in half, then tapped it on the bed. “I’ll run that down, then. Get some sleep.”
Rather than go, he opened the picture and stared at it some more.
“I’m not worth this.”
“What?” He glanced up, and his eyes were sharp and curious, unlike the other guards I’d met already. He didn’t seem like he belonged here.
“Whatever you’re putting in this effort for, you’re wasting your time. I’m a busted-up man who never did a fucking thing with his life.” I waved a hand at myself.
Greene leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. I could have stared forever at the way the move made his thick biceps pop as they stretched the fabric on his shirt. “I can’t have these two dangerous men on my block, and anything I have that can be used to convince the warden to transfer them out, I’ll use it. My guys don’t deserve to live with men like this.” His jaw ticked, and my stomach curdled.Iwas a man like those two, he just had no idea.
“This is about respect?”
“I guess you could say that.” He stared at me in a steady, nonconfrontational way, but I didn’t think I understood quite what he was getting at, and he didn’t explain.
Something about the way he looked at me, as if I was a real person and not someone to be hated, made me want to talk. I ran my tongue along my dry lips, and his gaze dropped to my mouth. My stomach warmed even though the leap of excitement in my chest was idiotic. “Uh, they were the friends I was given. I mean, they used to be my friends.”
He nodded. A long few seconds dragged by. “Okay, so why did they try to pound your face in? Did you do something to them?”
