She paused. “I don’t know. But remember what I said? Two things can be true. He’s a convicted killer. And he’s also the reason Doyle never got the chance to lay a hand on you.”
I guess that was another difference between me and Mercer. She could accept contradictions and move on. I needed to understand them. Pick them apart until I found the seam where one truth ended and another began.
Occupational hazard of loving a man who’d been two different people depending on whether the front door was open or closed.
But if what she was saying was true, if Knox had violently beaten that man …
“Then why isn’t Knox in solitary? Why wasn’t he charged with assault?” I shook my head, trying to make the pieces fit. “I don’t understand how this works.”
“When the Dilaudid wore off, Doyle recanted everything. Claimed he fell from standing on the cafeteria table, if you can believe that. Without his statement, without any other inmates willing to file a formal statement against Knox, it was just a suspected prison fight. Knox won. Doyle lost. They both got three days of restricted yard privileges, and that was the end of it.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. No witnesses. No statement. No charges.” She stood, brushing off her scrubs.
“Didn’t the guards see it?”
“Not until the very end,” she explained. “But they’re so short-staffed that fights barely register as a blip worthy of all the paperwork and time of an investigation.”
Well, that was seriously disturbing. I wanted to express judgment, criticism, and point out how reckless this was. But that was easy for me to say from behind my little desk with my little pen and my neat little patient files. I hadn’t been an overtaxed, overstressed CO pulling double shifts in a place like this, doing the best I could on fumes and a prayer.
I sat there, staring at the patient file still open on my screen. Knox Blackwood. Inmate #47291. Serving twenty-five years for second-degree murder.
He’d risked criminal charges for me. Risked his parole hearing. Risked his freedom—the thing he’d been workingtoward for years—for a woman he’d never spoken to. Never touched. Never even looked in the eye.
And he hadn’t said a word about it.
Not once, in all the hours we’d spent in this infirmary together, had he mentioned it. Not when I’d treated his wounds. Not when I’d asked why he’d beaten Doyle. Not when he’d had every opportunity to play the hero card and make me feel indebted to him.
He’d just … let me believe what I wanted to believe.
That was the part I couldn’t reconcile.
Silas had never missed an opportunity to remind me of his generosity.Yes, I hit you, but I took you out to dinner, Harper. I bought you flowers. We had a wonderful night. Don’t fixate on one small moment.
And my father, slurring from the couch while my mother nodded off beside him.I fell asleep. Sue me. I work my ass off to pay the bills, and if I need a few drinks to take the edge off, so be it. It’s not like I planned to miss your graduation. All you did was walk across a stage and grab a fake diploma. Besides, didn’t I give you a graduation present?
Men in my life had always inflated their smallest kindnesses while minimizing their worst sins.
But Knox had done the opposite.
He’d committed an act of violence, real violence, the kind that landed men in solitary or piled on extra charges, and instead of bragging about it, instead of holding it over my head, he’d buried it. Let me judge him for it. Let me think he was nothing but a monster with bloody knuckles and a bad temper.
He’d protected me and then accepted my contempt as payment.
What kind of man did that?
He could’ve told me he’d protected me. Could’ve taken credit. Hell, he could’ve leveraged it into a glowing character referencefor his parole. What nurse wouldn’t appreciate an inmate defending her honor?
Instead, he’d let me believe he was nothing more than a violent criminal.
Why? How could someone convicted of murder, someone the entire prison whispered about in fear, be so selfless? So quiet about it?
Feeling like his actions were honorable was ridiculous.
Right?
I closed the patient file and stared at the blank screen.
