“That’s what people say when they want a fresh chapter.”
“Okay, but nobody moves hundreds of miles away from everyone they know for no reason. That’s not a fresh chapter. That’s witness protection,” Knox reasoned.
I leveled him with a lighthearted glare. “Are you always this pushy with medical staff?”
“Only when they’re bad liars.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You’re just not telling the whole truth. There’s a difference,” he said.
“You’d know all about that, I imagine.”
Knox conceded this with a slight nod. “Touché.”
I tied off a stitch. “So, how long have you been here?”
“Fourteen years.”
Fourteen years. I tried to imagine it. Fourteen years of this fluorescent lighting, these walls, this air that tasted like recycled misery.
“That’s a long time,” I said because what else do you say to that?
“Gets shorter if you stop counting.” He paused. “Gets longer if you don’t.”
I almost smiled at that. Almost. “Any family that visits?”
His free hand moved to the pendant at his throat. Just a brush of his fingers against the fabric hiding it. Barely noticeable, unless you were watching.
I was watching.
“My sister and parents visit me. So do my friends. I’m lucky. Lot of guys here don’t have anyone come see them.” This man who’d beaten someone into the medical ward an hour ago had family who visited him. Who turned his face into something almost gentle when he mentioned them.
I didn’t know what to do with that information, so I filed it away and kept stitching.
“They must miss you,” I said. It came out softer than I intended.
Knox’s eyes found mine. Held. “Yeah,” he said. Just that. But the weight of it filled the room. “You miss your family? Back in Indiana?”
“Sometimes. The good parts anyway.”
We fell back into silence, but it was different now. Warmer. The kind of quiet that settles between two people who’ve accidentally said something real. The kind of silence I should not be comfortable with.
But I was. The knot in my chest had loosened without permission. Not gone—it would never be fully gone around someone like him—but the sharp edges had dulled. My shoulders had dropped half an inch. My breathing had evened out.
When the hell had that happened?
I caught myself almost smiling as I tied off the last stitch, and the realization hit me like cold water.
This was dangerous. Not him—this. This ease. This forgetting.
This man was a convicted murderer. He’d killed someone. Taken a life. And I was sitting here, chatting about his family like we were at an HOA meeting.
Get it together, Harper. You know better. You literally know better.
“What happened to your cheek?” His question came out of nowhere.
My hand stilled. “Excuse me?”
