And every answer I refused to give him was an answer all on its own.
Chapter four
Dinner was a tray slid through a slot in my door. Protein bar, apple, water. Another bowl, this time with something that might have been chili. I ate all of it because I learned a long time ago that you eat what's in front of you.
The bolt turns. Sven fills the doorway.
"Common room. Evening programming."
"What's evening programming?"
"Supervised communal time."
"You could just say hanging out."
"I could. I won't. Hands where I can see them. Walk."
I walk.
The hallway is quieter at this hour. The fluorescent buzz feels louder without the background noise of doors opening and voices carrying. My boots squeak on the floor. Sven's don't.
We pass through a set of double doors — different ones than the cafeteria route — and into a large room.
Couches. Old, arranged in a loose semicircle. An air hockey table in the corner. A TV mounted to the wall, off. No lamps. No sharp edges. Nothing heavier than a cushion. I clocked that in two seconds. Old habit. Every room is an inventory of what can be thrown, or swung.
There are maybe ten guys in here. Red, all of them. Some on the couches. One leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed, staring at nothing. Two standing near the air hockey table.
Leo is on the far couch. He sees me and his mouth does that thing — the smirk. He doesn't wave. He lifts his chin. I see you.
I see him too. But my attention is torn.
The guy in the corner was already restrained before I walked in.
I know because his cuffs are different from anything I've seen in this building — thick steel, bolted to the wall at hip height. The kind they use when someone isn't just a flight risk but an event risk. He's the only one chained. Everyone else is loose.
He's standing because the bolt doesn't give him enough slack to sit.
This is RJ. Up close.
The yard didn't prepare me for this. From fifty feet away, through a window, he was a silhouette. Long stride. Broad shoulders.
Up close he's —
I lose the sentence.
He's tall. Taller than he looked from the window, and lean in a way that isn't thin — stripped down, nothing wasted, every line of him deliberate.
Dark hair falling across his face. He doesn't push it back. No tattoos. No piercings. Nothing decorative. Just him. Raw.
He isn't looking at me when I sit down.
Then he is.
His head turns. Not fast — slow, like he's tracking something he caught on the air. His chin comes up. His nostrils flare.
And those eyes. Pale. Too bright. They find me through his hair and they lock on and everything about his body changes.
His shoulders roll forward. His weight shifts toward me. The chain between his cuffs and the bolt pulls taut — a soft metallic sound that shouldn't be loud but somehow is, because the room just went quiet.
