“I didn’t say you were.”
“Did you think about them in your cell too? Am I one of many on a stupid list?”
I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do when I saw her or if she would even like me. Regret sits between us like a wall being built brick by brick. Anything I say will just add another brick, but all I can manage is a vague answer.
“No.”
She gets up, and for the first time, I feel the cruel wave of fear. She’s pulling away. I can feel it. She thinks I used her and I’m playing a game.
“I gotta go.”
The worst part is, I don’t blame her.
I sit on the roof for hours, not knowing how to fix her perception of me.
I’ve never been close to someone. All I’ve ever had is sex—meaningless interactions with faceless women to appease my biological need as a man.
But with her, it’s different.
She awakens something inside my chest I can’t name but need to feel. I try to distract myself like Azriel wanted. College girls who don’t care where I came from or how unhinged I am. Prey. All they see is a mysterious guy with a muscular body and slick words.
And all I can think about is her.
Before them and after them, it’s always her.
Amy
The door swings open, and I’m not surprised to see Valen walking in. He’s been blowing up my phone since last night after I finally headed to my room to think.
“Why aren’t you answering?” he asks, closing the door.
I place the joint I just rolled on the nightstand. I’m not in the mood for him to tell me I can’t smoke in my room.
“It must be important if you left your wife and made it all this way. What do you want?”
He looks at my room with mild, unhurried distaste of a man whose standards were formed early and never had to personally experience dorm room furniture. The desk with a closed book on the surface. The single bed.
For me, this is a step up. Like a room upgrade at a hotel with club access.
He drops a black key fob, a manila envelope filled with cash on the mattress, and what looks like two keys.
I look at him.
I look at it.
I lean slightly forward in my chair. “What the fuck is that?”
He points at the envelope. “Your inheritance.”
I laugh. “I’ve been locked in a cell because of my existence since my stepfather killed our mother. I don’t have an inheritance.”
I hate to acknowledge that it’s the same man who fathered my brothers. The discipline I learned while being housed in Unit 9, where the management of response was the only form of sovereignty available to me. When you cannot control what happens to your body for hours.
As soon as I finish two hours of daily exercise, my schedule is someone else’s, my sleep is interrupted by someone else’s idea, my medication is someone else’s decision. My idea of monitoring means I learn to control what goes on inside my head. I learned to be slower than the feeling of rage building inside. I learned the feeling would still be there when I was ready for it. Even when the nurse’s assistant with the perky ass walked in late at night and begged me to fuck her hard in the ass.
The rage was still festering beneath my release, and arriving at it on my own terms was the only form of dignity the room allowed.
“Our mother left it for you, and since you’re out, her attorney thought it was best I give it to you.”
