“You’ve served fourteen years of a twenty-five-year sentence. Lost parole twice.” I met his gaze and dabbed at the split again. My fingers brushed the corner of his mouth, and I watched his breath catch. His lip was soft beneath my touch. Softer than I expected from a man this hard. I had the sudden, insane urge to trace the curve of it. To see if the rest of his mouth was that soft.
What was wrong with me?
Another swipe. Another moment of his eyes locked on mine, unreadable and intense.
“You must really piss off the parole board.”
Humor flickered in his expression. “I have that effect on people.”
“From what I read, you confessed. But refused to show remorse.” Or give details about why he’d done it. While motive wasn’t always something you could find on crimes, you also didn’t tend to sit here across from a confessed murderer who seemed, well … not villainous. The contradiction was impossible to reconcile.
His ghost of a smile vanished.
And turned to ice as the substitute doctor entered the room. As the doctor asked a couple questions, I hadn’t meant for my shoulders to creep up half an inch.
But they did. And Knox noticed. Those laser eyes tracked the movement like a predator noting a change in the wind. His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, and something dangerous flickered across his face before he shuttered it.
Once the doctor was gone, Knox’s hand moved. Slow. And for one heart-stopping moment, I thought he was going to touch me. Thought those fingers were going to reach up and?—
But he just adjusted his position on the table. Creating a barrier between me and whatever had made me flinch.
Shielding me. With his body.
Like it was instinct.
“Who’s the new doctor?” His voice had dropped.
I glanced over my shoulder. “You’ve been here longer than I have. Figured you’d know.”
“I don’t come to the infirmary often.”
“Says the man who’s here for the third time this week.”
His cheeks twitched upward. I turned back to his lip, grateful for something to focus on that wasn’t the way he was looking at me. Like he was solving a puzzle. The puzzle of the nurse who flinched at the substitute doctor.
“He giving you a hard time?”
“No.” I knew I said it too fast. “He’s fine. Just here to cover for Dr. Mercer.”
Knox said nothing. But his gaze drifted in the direction of the substitute doctor again, and when it came back to me, it was different. Sharper. Like he’d filed something away for later.
Great. Now a convicted murderer was reading me better than my own therapist.
“So …” I said, steering us back to something that had been eating at me. Because how did I reconcile the man in front of me with what he’d done on my first day? “Are you going to tell me why you got in that fight on Monday?”
No answer.
“Why not just tell me?” I pressed.
He was quiet for a moment. Then: “Because I don’t want to scare you.”
Something in my stomach flipped. “Scare me how? Make me afraid of you?”
Why was I waiting for his answer so anxiously that I almost forgot to breathe? And why was I noticing how he once again seemed to shrink a bit, trying to make himself less intimidating?
“I’m six foot four, two hundred forty pounds, and a convicted murderer.” He said it flatly. “I’m sure you’re already afraid of me.”
The thing was, my fear was fading. Eroding a little more each time I saw him. Which was probably a sign I needed a better therapist.
