Chapter 2
CHAPTER
TWO
CONRAD
“Better get going, O’Byrne. Good luck with your new mother-in-law,” the guard says with a cackle.
I click my tongue, slide our paperwork off the counter, and unhurriedly follow after my young wife, Mirabeth, out the double doors and down the sidewalk through the twenty-foot-tall metal fence that leads to my freedom.
Ahead, she trips over a concrete bumper in the parking lot and falls to her knees with a pained cry.
I jog to catch up, but she takes off like a shot without looking back, limping since her right heel has slipped from her foot like Cinderella, dangling by a strap still wrapped around her delicate ankle.
Well, I knew it wouldn’t be a love match.
How could it be? But at least it’s not as bad as I feared, her running away from me as if her life depends on it.
I knew there was a chance of being randomly matched with a swamp creature who has smoked three packs a day for the last five decades, so desperate for a shot at love that they’d willingly go through with marrying a prisoner, sight unseen.
Yet I still agreed to this insane program—a bizarre answer to the overcrowding issue and a last-ditch attempt to reverse the nationwide plummeting birth rate—so I could be released a few years early.
No matter who I ended up with, I’d have bitten my tongue and bided my time until the requisite three years were up, which is how long I have left on my sentence, before I ultimately filed for divorce.
I pass one of my fellow former inmates making out with his new bride, bending her backward over the hood of a gold sedan.
His jeans are pooled at his skinny ankles, already pumping furiously between her long legs.
I’d intervene if it weren’t for her clawing at his back, screaming, “Don’t stop… what’s your name again?”
“Burt,” he answers with a grunt. “You?”
“Ashley. Don’t stop, Burt!”
I look away and follow Mirabeth to a tiny white Beetle, finding her sitting in the driver’s seat, the key already turned in the ignition.
She screams and drops her phone when I knock on her window.
Thumbing through the stack of papers, I locate the one I want and press it against the glass, pointing to her initials next to the agreement she made to take full, legal responsibility for housing and feeding me.
“Open the door, princess,” I grit out, dropping my voice lower.
Mirabeth brings her phone back up to her ear, biting her bottom lip as she shakes her head fast enough to likely make her dizzy, her blonde ponytail whipping her face.
My eyes dart to the manual lock at the bottom of the window, and she’s a half-second too late in realizing she’d forgotten to push it down before I wrench the door open.
It’s easy enough to pluck her up and sling her over my shoulder like a bag of rice, since she goes limp and doesn’t fight me, as I round the hood to deposit her on the passenger seat.
Immediately, she jumps back into action and tries to scramble over the console, but I drop down into the driver’s seat right before she lands on my lap.
I grunt with her squirming on my dick, my cock lengthening.
I hit the jackpot with how drop-dead gorgeous she is, even if she is a terribly uncoordinated, screechy little creature.
As expected, she screams loud enough to burst my eardrums before she lurches back over the console onto her seat.
I toss the papers behind me, put the gear in drive, then speed out of the parking lot before Mirabeth has a chance to throw herself out of the car.
Lucky me, her Beetle has a manual transmission, so even though the car is likely as old as she is, I can really let loose as I switch between gears, opening the girl up on the interstate that directly neighbors the prison.
Mirabeth curls in on herself, facing her window.
At first, I’m just happy to have a moment’s peace, but then flashing red and blue lights atop a large SUV appear in the rearview mirror.
I pull over onto the shoulder as traffic whizzes by, my heart beating out of control.
Don’t tell me I’m getting sent back to the can within minutes of being released because I was stupid enough to speed five miles over the limit.
I can hear my brother laughing all the way from heaven.
A young male deputy raps the back of his knuckles along my window, motioning for me to roll it down.
“Oh, thank god,” my wife says with enormous relief, slumping lower in her seat. “Yes, he just pulled us over,” she says into her phone, which she’d had hidden beneath her hair at her right ear. “Thank you.”
I take my ball cap off, drop my head back, and drag my hands down my face. “You called the cops on me?”
Mirabeth’s flushed face goes stark white with terror when our eyes meet, and she tugs on her door handle to step out.
The deputy flicks his finger against the brim of his cowboy hat to push it farther up his forehead, over his short, tightly coiled black hair.
He peers past me, his brows bunched together when he tells Mirabeth sternly, “Stay in the car, miss.” Ignoring me, he asks her, “Do you know why I pulled you over?”
The rock that had dropped low in my gut lifts. This is about her? Not me?
“Y-yeah,” she says, waving her phone with the call log pulled up on the screen. There are dozens of unanswered calls to her mother and one placed to 9-1-1. “He kidnapped me.” She tips her head twice my way as if the deputy doesn’t know who she’s referring to. “You’re here to rescue me.”
The officer’s stone-cold demeanor breaks when he laughs.
“You should see the look on your face.” He goes so far as to pull his phone from his pocket, snap a quick photo of my wife gaping at him, then tap around on his screen.
“I just sent it to your mom,” he says, putting his phone away.
“She’s gonna die laughing when she sees it. ”
Panicked, Mirabeth asks, “Is everyone in on the joke? How do you even know my mom?”
“My aunt works at the prison,” he says, pointing down the highway.
“The guard with the bright white hair? She called me the moment you two left. Told me you ran screaming.” He slaps his knee and blows out a whistle, wiping tears from his dark brown eyes as he laughs.
“Reminds me of my wife, Cookie.” Then he taps the car’s roof twice.
“Y’all have a good day, now,” he says, tugging up his duty belt before sauntering back to his SUV while Mirabeth looks back helplessly.
I wait until the deputy pulls away from the shoulder, throwing his hand out his window to wave as he passes by. I wave back, and as soon as we’re out of his view, I lunge at Mirabeth.
She twists and screams, kicking her feet, the Beetle rocking side to side like a carriage traveling a rocky path, as I fight for her phone.
As soon as I have it, I shove it under my butt, my jeans so tight that they’re liable to split right down my crack.
I had nothing but time to work out, work out, and work out some more while I counted down the days until my release, and my old clothes no longer fit.
I grab the lever beneath the seat, sliding as far back as I can so I’m not sitting with my knees practically jammed into my chest, giving me a little breathing room with the button on my waistband barely holding on.
This car wasn’t made for a man my size, but it’s better than what I have now, which is diddly squat after I sold everything I own to pay for my expensive attorney, trying my best to stay out of prison so I could be by my brother’s side when he left this earth.
“No more cops,” I say, carefully rejoining traffic, keeping strictly under the speed limit. “I’m not going back to prison. Once was enough, you hear me?”
Mirabeth swallows and crosses her arms.
Grinding my teeth, I grip the steering wheel tighter. “I said, did. You. Hear. Me?”
“I heard you,” she says in a tiny, hitched voice as she shrinks.
I clear my throat and soften my tone. She’s scared enough as it is. “I know you didn’t sign up for this, metaphorically speaking, but you did, in fact, sign up for this,” I stress, “when you signed those forms.”
“They didn’t give me time to read them,” she says with a little pout, lifting her feet onto the seat to sit cross-legged, her sexy, baby blue dress riding up her sweet, sweet thighs with a curious amount of claw marks running the lengths of her shins. “My mom tricked me.”
“Then lesson learned—if someone is rushing you, it’s better to walk away than to blindly sign your life away.”
“No kidding,” she says, dropping her arms, toying with the hem of her dress.
“So, no more running or screaming in my face. The deal is three years, and we’ll make the best of it. You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll stay out of your way, and then we’ll call it quits. You’ll never have to hear from or see me again, got it?”
She drops her head forward, shielding her face with her hair, and nods. “Ok,” she squeaks.
Well. That was easier than I expected, and I tap my fingers on the steering wheel cover, relaxing back in my seat, enjoying the fresh air that isn’t laced with chemical disinfectant and a thousand men’s body odor.
Mirabeth doesn’t speak for the remainder of the short drive until I pull into the narrow parking lot of the Castaway Paradise apartment complex.
“How did you know I live here?”
I ruffle my hair, then slip my ball cap back on. “Saw your address on the paperwork.” I make sure to grab it, since it’s my ticket to freedom, and I plan to hide it somewhere safe. “My brother used to live here.” It’s still hard talking about him, and I’m grateful she doesn’t ask me any questions.
Mirabeth is hesitant to step out of the Beetle when I open her door, but she does at least give me a tiny, “Thank you.”