Shae
There’s something cathartic about watching a woman’s face bleed.
I didn’t throw the first punch. I didn’t have to. I just whispered a few sweet nothings to Keisha two bunks down—mentioned how Trina called her a snitch over breakfast—and by 8:06 p.m., Trina’s front tooth was skittering across the linoleum like a cheap casino chip. Violence is easier to curate than a wedding registry, if you know which buttons to press.
And me? I stood in the corner, clutching my ribs, pretending to tremble. All wide eyes and innocence—close enough to the chaos to be counted as collateral.
Cue: Officer Declan Ridge.
He comes into the block like he’s been cast in a B-grade prison procedural. Square jaw tight, brows drawn like storm clouds, eyes sweeping the wreckage like it personally offends him. His name is Declan, which tells you everything about what his mother imagined for him. Clean-cut. Morally conflicted. Haunted by something that keeps him just edgy enough to be interesting. A failed engagement, maybe. An affair. A dead brother in Afghanistan. Something noble and manly and unusable.
He kneels in front of me, hand gently cupping my chin. “You okay, Halston?”
I blink. Just once. Let my lip tremble, let the corner pull down.
“I… I tried to get away.”
His nostrils flare. He cups the back of my head like I’m glass and tips my face up to the flickering fluorescents. There’s a tiny gash on my cheek I barely noticed—a souvenir from Keisha’s elbow when she went for Trina’s throat. It’s already crusting. To Declan, it might as well be a war wound.
“You need medical?”
I shake my head. “Just… need to breathe. Alone.”
He nods—slow, thoughtful—and helps me to my feet like standing might shatter me further.
God, men are predictable.
Declan leads me into the corridor, his hand light on my back. If this were a date, I’d let him pay. Instead, I let silence bloom between us, just long enough to make him wonder what I’m not saying.
“You shouldn’t be in that block,” he mutters, unlocking the observation room.
I step inside like I’m grateful. Like I’m fragile.
“Tell Warden Griggs that,” I say, voice hoarse. “She’s been so busy fielding podcast requests she barely knows what tier I’m on.”
Declan chuckles. He shuts the door and I slide into the plastic chair, crossing my legs slowly—letting the hem of my orange pants ride up just enough to show the scar on my ankle.
“It’s always the quiet ones,” he says, half-sighing, half-smiling as he crouches again.
I tilt my head. “What is?”
He shrugs. “The ones who get the media’s attention. The beautiful ones. The sad-eyed girls who end up front-page heroes.”
“I’m not a hero,” I whisper.
He studies me—hard. “No. You’re something else entirely.”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to.
Instead, I glance past him through the narrow window slit. Trina’s on a stretcher. Keisha’s being cuffed. And me? I’m exactly where I want to be—quiet, clean, and lodged in Declan’s peripheral vision. That sweet, morally bankrupt no-man’s-land.
“You need anything else?” he asks after a beat.
“Just sleep.”
He nods, stands, then hesitates at the door.
“I get off shift at seven,” he says. “I’ll stop by before I leave. Just to check in.”
