“Look at this! She’s fuckin’ writing love notes in a shitty arts and crafts diary,” a different guard says, barking out a laugh.
I look over and see him and two others looking at the mock-up journal I made for myself. I have to keep myself occupied in my cell, so I’ve taken to writing in a journal about my days. Since I don’t have a notebook, I take extra napkins from the cafeteria and use those to write on. I even bind them together with a piece of pink thread. I thought it looked fun, and I liked adding a napkin every day, but to see them flipping through my personal words and laughing...my jaw clenches and my face burns.
“That’s mine!” I snap.
Everyone ignores me.
“Ooh, she talks about fuckin’ some guard in here!” he says as he continues to flip through it, his eyes lighting up in leering excitement. “You think she calls him Glow Worm because he has a worm for a dick?” he asks, and the guards all laugh.
“If you’re happy to fuck a worm, just wait until you see my snake,” another guard calls out, and acid crawls up the back of my throat.
Humiliated tears burn the skin of my cheeks, and I can feel Rook’s eyes on me, but I don’t look at him.
“Whore,” Sandbag says, nudging me with his boot and laughing when I wince. “I think we’re done here. Let’s go.”
I listen as the guards move out, bringing my destroyed paraphernalia with them. I stay on the floor, not daring to move until I hear my cell door slam shut.
Peeking past wet lashes, I see Rook looking at me from the other side of the bars. A turquoise gaze filled with agonized guilt meets me, but I look away and bury my head in the crook of my elbow.
He...didn’t help me.
He just stood there and watched as the Warden threatened me. As the guards wrecked my entire room. As Sandbag kicked me. Spat on me. As they mocked my words that I’d written abouthim, then left me on the floor like a beaten dog.
And Rook didn’t do a damn thing.
A sob wrenches out of me, smothered into the skin of my arm.
I don’t move until I hear his footsteps turning and fading down the hall, following the rest of the guards.
Gingerly sitting up, I nearly start retching again as the pain in my stomach and side rears up. With a grimace, I manage to pull myself to my feet and look around my disaster of a cell.
There’s broken glass and plastic, the last remains of my TV and fridge that are now gone. My mattress, beanbag, and pillows are gone too, leaving only one shredded blanket behind. Even my bedazzled underwear are in ruins.
Hiccupping another sob, I yank the blanket and wrap it around me, before burrowing into the corner of the cell where I bury myself beneath the cover and close my eyes, wishing that I could wake up and this would have all been a shitty dream.
Because all of this—the humiliation, the punishment, the physical blows—it doesn’t hurt anywhere near as much as it did to have the male I care about just stand by and watch it all happen.
* * *
A tear drips unhindered down my cheek as I lie and stare at nothing.
My thoughts are chaos, and instead of focusing on any of them, I float in the white noise of my mind. I’ve spent hours playing judge, jury, and executioner over what happened. It’s all Alpha Bowen’s fault. If he hadn’t put a price on my freedom or sent me all the shit I didn’t ask for, I wouldn’t be in this mess.
The problem with that line of thinking is that it doesn’t change the fact that Iamin this mess and that Rook just stood there.
He couldn’t help,part of me argues again.If they knew what we were doing, he’d be fired. Probably punished. Better for him to stand there and for us to be able to see each other again than for him to be gone.I’ve defended and prosecuted him over and over again in my mind, but it all makes no difference to my heart.
I hurt.
And not just because my knight in shining armor didn’t get the memo that that’s what he’s supposed to be. But because it wasn’t just my TV, fridge, and ribs that got shattered, it was also my belief that all of this would work out.
I came here thinking that this would be the safest place for me, but I’ll spend the next eight months here...and for what? I’m not out of reach the way I thought I was. Alpha Bowen hasn’t given up. My situation in Nightmare Penitentiary just got a fuck ton worse. Zen is no longer here to help keep the wolves at bay. The guards are officially out for blood, and the Warden is ready to make my life a living hell.
I finally get the wholenightmarepart of Nightmare Penitentiary. And doing something to extend my sentence here like I originally planned means figuring out how to survive all of the bullshit even longer.
No matter how I look at it, the future I wished I could have with Rook is impossible. We can’t be together in here, and Alpha Bowen will make sure that we can’t be together out there either. So maybe it’s a good thing that Rook just stood there, because I clearly needed a wakeup call. Like the Warden said, this is prison, not a vaycay spot.
Another tear spills down my cheek. It free falls to the ground, just to be slowly replaced by another. I’ve accepted my reality, but again, it makes no difference to my heart.
