He knelt beside me, his hands gentle as they checked my neck, where the knife had pressed. “You okay, Warrior?”
The gravity of the moment settled over us, and my throat swelled, but I didn’t cry. Not tears of fear anyway. Maybe tears of something else. Of finally being free. Of being protected instead of abandoned. Of being worth saving.
“Yeah,” I whispered, my voice stronger than I expected. “I’m okay.”
And for the first time in my life, I actually meant it.
60
RYKER
“I killed a man.”
Knox laughed, a deep, rumbling sound that bounced off the concrete walls and made the guard two tables over glance our way. He leaned back in his metal chair, the thing groaning under two hundred forty pounds of tattooed muscle, then caught himself and leaned forward again.
The smile died on his face.
“Shit.” His eyes locked on to mine. “You’re serious.”
I nodded, keeping my movements casual as I scanned the visiting room. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and a few tables down, someone’s kid was crying.
“He broke into Faith’s place. Was about to kill her.”
“Jesus.” Knox’s hands flexed on the table, his tattooed knuckles going white. A sleeve of intricate ink disappeared under his orange prison uniform. Dragons and flames and symbols I’d never asked him about because Knox didn’t do explanations. The skull on his right hand seemed to grin at me. “Is she okay?”
Typical Knox. Sitting in prison for over a decade, and his first thought was still everyone else’s safety.
“She’s fine.”
The tension bled out of his shoulders. He sat back, and Icaught three women at the table behind him tracking the movement. One of them, a blonde who looked like she’d taken a wrong turn on her way to a yoga class, literally bit her lip.
Okay, I got it. Knox looked like an action hero who’d walked off a movie set and accidentally ended up in prison oranges. The stubble he’d grown since my last visit made him look like he could either build you a cabin or burn one down, depending on his mood. But the female attention was ridiculous.
I knew Knox was a good guy. They didn’t.
“Look at the bright side,” he said, a smirk playing at his lips. “If he’d attacked one of us and wound up in here instead of a morgue, I’d have taken care of him for you.” He paused. “Course, that’d be problematic for my parole hearing.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Who says I’m joking?”
The scary part was that I genuinely couldn’t tell. Knox was the wild card in our group. The one with edges so sharp, you could cut yourself just by looking at him wrong. Yet here he was, more concerned about Faith’s well-being than the fact that I’d just confessed to manslaughter.
“Knox, you’re not a killer.”
His eyebrows shot up. He gestured to his orange jumpsuit. “He says to a convicted murderer.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I?” But his expression softened, just slightly. “Look, you did what you had to do. End of story. Anyone who says different can fuck off.”
I glanced at the guards. “As your lawyer, I should probably advise you to watch your language in a monitored prison visiting room.”
“As my friend, you should probably tell me if you’re okay.” His eyes went hard, protective. The same look I’d seen a thousand times before he’d ended up in here. “Because you guys are my family. If anyone fucks with you, they fuck with me. Even from in here.”
“I’m fine.” I leaned forward, needing him to understand. “All these years, if I’m being honest with you … I judged you to some degree.”
“Only some?” He scratched his stubble. “I’m disappointed. I was going for full judgment. Really wanted to nail that murderous-convict aesthetic.”
