“Done yet?” The CO stuck his head through the door, oblivious to the tension suffocating the room.
Knox’s expression had smoothed out, gone carefully blank, but I could still see it burning beneath the surface.
“Yeah,” I managed. “We’re done. Keep it clean. If it gets red or a suture breaks, you’ll need to come back.”
Was it just me, or did he look particularly intense at that comment?
Knox stood slowly, the chains clinking as he rose, but somehow, he made even restraints look like a choice.
“Well”—he just looked at me with something almost like … softness—“see you tomorrow.”
“IF you have complications,” I clarified quickly.
That almost-smile returned. “Right.”
Then he was gone, leaving me alone with the antiseptic and the silence and the echo of his voice in my head.
“Takes a coward to hit a woman.”
My hands shook as I cleaned up the medical supplies.
What the hell just happened?
I’d sat across from a convicted killer, and somewhere between the stitches and the small talk, the fear had leaked out of me. I’d almost smiled. I’d asked about his family. I’d let myself sink into easy conversation like the chains on his wrists were jewelry and the blood on his knuckles was ketchup.
I couldn’t let that happen again.
I’d felt that subtle shift where the conversation turned easy, almost natural, and I’d started to forget where I was. Who I was talking to. Knox wasn’t just another patient. He was an inmate who’d just walked in, covered in another man’s blood. And the effortless way he’d almost made me forget? That was exactly what made him dangerous.
When I was done cleaning and disinfecting, I sat at the computer and opened his file. My fingers hovered over the keyboard for just a moment before I started typing. Every detail. Every wound. The split knuckles, the swelling, the lacerations—all from a fight so violent, I wondered if the other guy was even okay. I documented it in precise, clinical language. Black and white. Inarguable. Because charm didn’t leave bruises, but fists did, and anyone investigating that confrontation deserved a record that told the truth. Even if Knox’s smile made you want to look the other way.
And it’d be here for me, too, in case I needed to reread it. Should I find myself across from those silver eyes again and felt my guard slipping, I wanted the record to remind me of what I already knew.
Men like him didn’t deserve my empathy. They deserved consequences.
I had a feeling I’d need to reread those words sooner rather than later. Because the way Knox looked at me when he left, it didn’t seem like a goodbye.
It was more like a promise to come back.
4
KNOX
Eleven years left in this concrete coffin, and my lawyer wanted me to apologize for saving my daughter’s life.
Fuck that.
I leaned forward across the metal table in the visiting room. “How many times do I have to say this? I. Won’t. Do. It.”
Unlike most people who visited this hellhole, Ryker didn’t flinch when I invaded his space. He leaned right back, his finger jabbing the scarred table between us. “And how many times do I have to tell you that if you don’t show remorse, you’ll serve every last day of your sentence? That’s eleven more years, Knox. Longer if you get caught doing stupid shit like?—”
He stopped. His eyes dropped to my hands.
Shit.
I’d been keeping them under the table since he sat down. But I’d gotten careless when I leaned forward, and now my bandaged knuckles were on full display. And they didn’t exactly screammodel prisoner.
Seriously, I couldn’t believe they were allowing me visiting privileges today. With my lawyer, but still.
