For me, it was the first day of the rest of my life. Or whatever bullshit greeting card phrase fit the moment.
I lifted my arms while he conducted the final pat-down. Standard procedure. One last indignity before they shoved meback into a world that had moved on without me. He checked my armpits, ran his hands down my sides, made me lift my feet. I’d done this dance a thousand times for yard checks, for visits, for transfers. But this time, when he stepped back and grunted his approval, something loosened in my chest. Something that had been clenched tight for fourteen years.
“Sign here. And here. Initial there.”
I scratched my name across a stack of papers I barely read. Conditions of parole. Mandatory check-ins. The usual leash they’d keep around my neck for the next few years. A corrections officer droned through the rules while I tuned him out, my eyes fixed on the brown paper bag sitting on the counter.
Civilian clothes.
Ryker had dropped them off earlier this week. Said he’d handle the paperwork, make sure everything went smoothly. The man had skills I’d never understand and loyalty I sure as hell didn’t deserve.
I reached into the bag and pulled out a pair of dark jeans. They felt foreign in my hands. Soft. Not the stiff, industrial fabric I’d worn for over a decade. There was a gray henley underneath, tags still attached, boxer briefs that probably cost more than my monthly commissary budget, and boots that looked like they belonged on someone who hadn’t spent the last fourteen years behind bars.
The guard pointed to a corner. “Change there.”
I peeled off the orange outfit and kicked it aside. Good riddance. The boxer briefs were next. Replaced with soft cotton instead of prison-issue sandpaper. When I pulled the henley over my head, the fabric brushed against my skin like something I’d forgotten existed. Comfort. Actual comfort.
This is real. This is actually happening.
After putting on the jeans, I shoved my feet into the boots and stood there for a moment, staring at my reflection in thewindow. Same tattoos crawling up my neck, disappearing into my hairline. Same silver-blue eyes that had seen too much. But different somehow. Dressed like a person instead of a number.
“Blackwood.” The guard nodded toward a door I’d never walked through. “You’re free to go.”
Free.
The word sat strange in my head. Like trying to remember the lyrics to a song I used to know by heart.
I picked up the plastic bag containing my meager possessions: forty-seven dollars in commissary funds converted to cash and a photograph of Gwen so worn, the edges had turned soft as fabric.
The corridor stretched before me. My boots echoed against linoleum, each step carrying me closer to a threshold I’d dreamed about for years.
A guard swiped his badge at the final checkpoint. The door buzzed. Clicked.
Opened.
And then I was outside.
The sun hit me like a fist. I stopped dead, squeezed my eyes shut, and tilted my face toward the sky. For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
This was sunlight. Not the rationed version from the yard, filtered through chain-link and razor wire. This was pure, uncut gold pouring down from a cloudless sky, soaking into my skin like it was trying to fill all the empty spaces fourteen years had carved out of me.
I inhaled.
The air smelled different out here. No lingering trace of industrial cleaner and body odor and institutional food. Just … air. Clean air. With hints of someone’s distant bonfire and something sweet I couldn’t name. Maybe hope smelled like that. Maybe I’d just forgotten.
The sounds were different too. No clanging metal doors. No guards shouting count. No constant white noise of hundreds of men trapped in too-small spaces. Just the distant hum of traffic. A bird somewhere. Wind rustling through trees that had started to bloom in early spring. A beautiful dichotomy to the two inches of fresh snow that had fallen over night. Rare for May, but not impossible. Winter making one last desperate attempt to hold on.
I stood there with my eyes closed, letting it wash over me. Letting it sink in.
I’m out. I’m actually out.
And then I opened my eyes.
She was standing slightly to my left, like she’d positioned herself to give me this moment first. This breath of freedom before she stepped into it.
As if Harper could ever be anything but the best part of any moment.
The first person I saw in my new life was the woman who held my heart in her small, steady hands. She stood about twenty feet away, dark hair shining in the sunlight, those green eyes locked on mine. Grass on a sunny day. Light. Hopeful. The kind of eyes that looked at the world and still found reasons to believe in it.
