The hallway filled with chaos. More officers arriving. Questions being asked. Someone calling for medical attention for Knox’s injuries.
“Bring him back in so I can treat him.” I motioned to the exam room.
“No,” Knox said. He wouldn’t even look at me. “I’m fine. I decline all medical treatment. I need to get back for head count.”
“Knox …”
“Now.”
The CO looked like he didn’t know what to make of Knox’s behavior, but after a few seconds, he took his position and started to guide Knox away.
I wanted to run to him. To tell him that I shouldn’t have judged him, that I was sorry. That he was the best man I’d ever known and that I took it all back.
But the hallway was crowded. Eyes everywhere. And Knox …
Knox wouldn’t make eye contact with me. He moved like a man operating on autopilot. Like someone who had accomplished what he needed to accomplish and had nothing left to stay present for.
“Knox”—I grabbed his arm as he passed—“I’m sorry?—”
He finally looked at me. And the emptiness in his silver-blue eyes was worse than any anger could have been. Worse than hatred. Worse than anything.
For one heartbeat, I saw something flicker beneath the ice. Something raw and wounded.
“Take care of yourself, Nurse Harper.” His voice was ice. Like I was a stranger. Like the last hour hadn’t happened at all.
He didn’t say Princess.
He didn’t forgive me for the horrible thing I’d said.
He just walked away, shoulders curved inward, blood dripping from his split lip, and didn’t look back.
I stood frozen in the hallway, watching him go. Watching the distance between us grow with every step until he rounded the corner and disappeared.
And then my knees buckled.
I caught myself against the wall, gasping for air that wouldn’t come. My chest was too tight. My throat was closing. My vision was starting to blur at the edges.
I’d looked into the face of the only man who’d ever made me feel safe, and I’d put him in a lineup with the men who destroyed me.
“Did you ever stop to wonder if you’d let the police handle it, maybe you’d actually be there for her right now?”
I’d taken the thing Knox was most afraid of—the possibility that his violence made him no different from the monsters—and I’d confirmed it. Not as an insult. As a diagnosis. And that was so much worse.
I’d taken my real fears, my real wounds, my real history, and I’d aimed them with surgical precision at the one man who would have walked through fire to make sure I never felt them again.
I hadn’t meant to destroy him.
But I could still see the exact moment his expression went blank. The exact moment he stopped being the man who called me Princess and became the man who survived this place by feeling nothing at all.
A sob tore out of my throat. Then another.
What had I done?
39
KNOX
The walk back to my cell felt like a death march.
