Doubt: a five-letter word that meant a feeling of uncertainty or a lack of conviction.
I mean, Jesus, I’d spent years practicing criminal law. Yearswatching patterns emerge. Years learning to recognize the recipe that created defendants who committed unspeakable acts.
Childhood trauma. Check.
Exposure to brutality at a formative age. Check.
Severed attachment bonds, ripped from the only family she had left. Check.
No stable support network. No one to teach her healthy ways to process rage, grief, fear. Check.
Faith’s past? It checked every single box. Now Jace’s words echoed through my head.
“We don’t know what she’s capable of.”
I entered the prison visiting room, which smelled like industrial cleaner and desperation. We had twenty minutes today. Twenty minutes to work his parole prep, and I needed my head in the game. Knox sat at the far table, tattooed arms crossed, looking like he could kill me with his pinkie finger and still have time to finish his lunch. The fabric of his orange prison outfit strained across his shoulders, pulled tight where his biceps pressed against the sleeves.
I remembered the Knox from his college days. Leaner then and quick to laugh. Prison had carved away the softness, replaced it with something harder. His hair, buzzed short on the sides with just enough length on top to run a hand through, made him look military. Dangerous.
The new inmate two tables over kept sneaking glances at Knox, then quickly looking away. Smart kid.
“You look like shit,” Knox said by way of greeting.
“Charming, as always.” I dropped into the chair across from him, the metal legs scraping against concrete. I opened the folder I’d brought with me. “Your parole hearing?—”
“How’s Faith?”
The question landed like a sucker punch. “You heard about that?”
“Sure did.” Knox leaned back, and I swear every inmate in the room tracked the movement.
My jaw clenched. “I’m doing my best to defend her.”
“Your best.” Knox cocked his head, studying me with eyes that had learned to read people like court documents. Prison did that. Taught you to see the cracks.
“Yes, my best.” I tapped the folder. “Which is what I’m trying to do for you right now. Question four is about your remorse. We’ve practiced this, but the board’s going to push harder this time.”
“But something’s wrong with her case?” Knox leaned forward, his forearms on the table.
“Never said that,” I replied.
“Cut the shit. Something’s eating you, so why don’t you just spit it out already?”
“Why are you so interested? You’re living in a concrete dungeon with a toilet that doubles as a conversation piece. I’d say that’s the more pressing issue. We have eighteen minutes left to prep for the most important hearing of your life, and you want to play therapist?”
“Seventeen minutes,” he corrected, that ghost of his old smile flickering at the corner of his mouth. “But who’s counting?”
“I am. Your lawyer is counting. Because unlike you, apparently, I’d like to see you walk out of here in this decade.”
Knox’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted in his posture. “Let me guess.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re fucked up about Faith, and you can’t talk to Blake because he’d rearrange your face just for thinking about his sister in whatever way has you twisted up right now.”
I slammed the folder closed. “Almost every time I’ve come to do parole prep lately, you change the subject. Have you given up on making parole?”
The question hung between us like a loaded gun. Knox’s cheek twitched, a muscle jumping beneath stubbled skin. For a moment, I thought he might actually answer. Tell me why he kept sabotaging these sessions. Why he seemed more interested in everyone else’s problems than his own freedom.
“Friendship is a two-way road.” That was all he said. Did he think of himself as a burden? Was that why he wanted to “be there” for us so badly?
I sighed, deflating. “If I needed relationship advice, I’d go to Jace.” Axel was out of the question. Asking him about emotional complexity was like asking a goldfish about quantum physics.
