Chapter 19
MEET MY brOTHER: FORMER FROG RESCUER, CURRENT CONVICTED MURDERER. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT TOOK A DARK TURN. #FAMILYSECRETS
DAKOTA
“Thank you for taking me.” I stared out the window, watching asphalt blur beneath our tires.
“I’m heading there anyway. Next parole hearing prep.” Ryker’s knuckles went white against the steering wheel, his lean, tattooed muscles in his forearms flexing beneath his fitted black shirt. “You can talk to him first though.”
That was nice of him.
“Saw some of your posts from lunch yesterday,” Ryker said. “For what it’s worth, you guys are doing a good job of selling your story.”
Ugh. That lunch that we’d muddled through, despite learning about a possible threat the day before.
Like the dinner facade, we’d looked happy.
Naturally, it was before his stupid prank this morning, but still.
We’d touched hands. (I pretended it did not affect me.
Couldn’t. Wouldn’t.) He pulled my chair out, and we laughed and smiled like a couple in love.
Puke.
It seemed to work though. Public speculation was taking off. Comments rolling into my feed that had nothing to do with products and all about this secret relationship that was being posted by others.
Operation Play Coy About It would end soon, Rebecca had warned. Then it was on to the next phase.
“It seems to be heading in the right direction,” I agreed.
Ryker turned off the main road, steering us toward the penitentiary that loomed in the distance.
“I’m glad they finally opened that new parking lot,” I said, watching the familiar route unfold.
“When I used to visit Knox, I had to do street parking and got, like, three parking tickets.” I nibbled my lip, remembering the frustration.
“Weirdest thing though. When I went online to pay them, they were all dismissed due to clerical error.” I glanced at Ryker.
“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? ”
“No,” he said, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I studied his profile. Ryker was a criminal lawyer. He probably had tabs on the days I visited. Maybe he’d made those tickets go away?
“And one time, my car even broke down right outside the prison,” I continued. “When the tow truck guy showed up, he said it was free of charge.” I waited for his reaction. “You wouldn’t know anything about that either, would you?”
Again, no eye contact. No response.
“Hmm.” I turned back to the window, then remembered something else.
“Oh, and every year on my birthday, I get this gorgeous bouquet of gardenias delivered to my place. Anonymous. I always suspected it was Knox organizing it somehow since he can’t be here for the big events.
” I looked at Ryker again. “Pretty sure the only person he could organize that through would be you. Do you arrange that too?”
This time, Ryker did meet my eyes, his response matter-of-fact. “No. The flowers are not from Knox. At least, not that I’m aware of.”
“Really?” That surprised me.
“Have you asked Knox about it?” Ryker questioned.
Typical nonanswer.
“He denies doing it,” I said.
And, really, I didn’t want Knox to be doing those things for me. The guy had to worry about surviving, and it’s not like he made money in the penitentiary. So, how he was doing that, I had no idea, but if it wasn’t Knox, then who?
“You know,” I started, “I don’t think I’ve ever properly thanked you.” I studied his profile. He had a sharp jaw, the kind of focused intensity that probably served him well in courtrooms. “For everything you’re doing for Knox. For … staying.”
Knox’s college friend. A guy who became a criminal defense attorney. I wondered if that career decision was rooted in the trauma of seeing his friend hauled off to prison. You go to college to study and maybe play beer pong, not watch one of your closest friends get hauled off in cuffs.
“The day Knox was arrested …” Ryker’s voice caught. “It’s like watching innocence die. You’re young, think the world’s your oyster, that life just keeps getting better and better.”
The prison loomed ahead, all concrete and razor wire. A monument to broken dreams.
“I know plenty of people go through hell,” he continued. “Blake and Faith survived a dark side of the foster system. But watching Knox get convicted of murder?” He shook his head. “Nothing compares to that.”
He pulled into a parking space between a rusted Honda and a pickup truck held together by duct tape. The visitors lot told its own story of families scraping together gas money to see their locked-up loved ones.
I twisted my fingers until they ached. “I hate talking about it.”
“Hard to face what someone’s done.” His voice gentled. “But your brother’s still a good man, Dakota.”
Right. A good man who happened to have killed someone.
Before the arrest, Knox had been the golden boy. All-American kid from an all-American family, clawing our way toward upper-middle-class respectability. We weren’t the Cleavers, but we weren’t the cautionary tale either.
Normal families don’t breed killers.
Or so I’d thought.
“It’s hard for you to see him,” Ryker realized, walking beside me toward the first checkpoint.
The prison stretched before us. Gray walls topped with coils of razor wire that caught the sun like broken glass. Beyond those walls, the yard sprawled with inmates and guards, whose rifles glinted from watchtowers. The air smelled like industrial disinfectant and something else. Fear maybe.
“Every time I see him …” I swallowed hard. “Something breaks inside me.”
Because I still saw him at seven, thunder-crashing through the hallway in his Hot Wheels pajamas, hair sticking up in twelve directions as he dove for the Christmas tree. His small hands would tear through wrapping paper.
Then there was the summer he turned nine and declared himself the official Frog Relocation Specialist. Every Saturday, he’d spend an extra hour and a half moving every single frog out of the mower’s path before starting his lawn duty.
Dad would find him crouched in the grass, cupping some tiny creature in his palms, whispering reassurances as he carried it to safety by the pond.
“They’re just trying to live their lives, Dakota,” Knox had said. “They don’t deserve to die because I need to cut grass.”
Now that same compassionate boy sat behind bars, shoulders broad with muscle he’d built to survive, ink crawling up his arms, telling stories I didn’t want to know. The shell he’d grown was thick enough to stop bullets.
“At least it’s not maximum security,” Ryker reminded me, pulling me back to the present. “If he’d been sent to one of those places …”
He didn’t finish. Didn’t need to.
The first metal detector beeped as we passed through. A guard with dead eyes and coffee breath waved us forward. Next came the pat-down, the surrender of our IDs, the slow shuffle through corridors that echoed with the slam of distant doors.
“How much longer will he be in here?” I asked as we waited for the final clearance.
Ryker’s lips thinned. “I’m working on it.”
“He hasn’t seen his daughter in years.”
She’d been born when he was still in high school.
Unplanned, but never unwanted. In fact, after she arrived, she became his everything.
He’d matured overnight, stepping up immediately and building his whole future around her.
College wasn’t about finding himself or partying; it was about creating a life stable enough to support a family.
Because that was Knox. Every decision filtered through how it would affect the people he loved.
When he got arrested, his ex had been understanding. Theoretically committed to maintaining Knox’s relationship with their daughter.
Until she wasn’t.
“It scares me,” I admitted, voice dropping to a whisper as we approached the visiting room. “He’s getting harder. More hopeless. What if he does something stupid because he thinks he has nothing left to lose?”
“I know.”
Ryker didn’t sugarcoat it, and I was grateful. We both saw Knox slipping away, the boy who’d saved frogs disappearing beneath layers of survival instinct and prison politics.
“He spent a week in solitary not that long ago for fighting.”
“Word is, he’s not someone you want to cross,” Ryker agreed.
The visiting room doors opened with a mechanical groan. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting sickly shadows across plastic chairs and metal tables bolted to the floor. The smell hit me: Fear. Sweat. And desperation.
“If he doesn’t make parole …” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Have you talked to him about this?”
“He shuts me down every time.” My voice cracked. “I think he’s in pure survival mode. So, now I try to just … bring some light. I can’t imagine living every day, wondering if someone’s going to shank you in the shower or jump you in the yard.”
Ryker looked at me thoughtfully. “You’re a good sister.”
“No.” The word came out sharp. “I’m hiding him from my followers like he’s some shameful secret.”
“Is he?”
The question hung between us like a blade.
No. But … “I wish I understood what happened,” I whispered.
“It’s like this dark crater in our family history.
We dance around it, never speak of it, but it poisons everything.
Mom and Dad are drowning financially from legal fees.
” Fees that added up when they couldn’t let this go, when they paid for lawyer after lawyer in a bathtub of denial.
From what I understood, Ryker was working on Knox’s case pro bono. He’d started his own independent law firm, which enabled him to take on Knox’s case without charging him, but that came after all the debt.
“Their health is shot from stress,” I continued. “It’s like Knox dropped a nuclear bomb, and we’re all still living in the fallout.”
“You’re angry with him.” Not a question. Ryker could read the tension radiating from every muscle in my body.
“Of course I’m angry!” The words exploded out of me.
“I’m furious that he killed someone, that some family lost their son because of him.
I’m angry about what it did to us. The sleepless nights, the reporters camping on our lawn, watching Mom age ten years in ten months.
And Mom’s accident never would have happened if he hadn’t gotten convicted. ”
“Knox is still a good man.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to say about a convicted murderer.”
“But you know it’s true.”
I did. God help me, I did.
“He never told me why he did it,” I said quietly.
“Do you need that? For closure?”
“I need to understand how the boy who wouldn’t hurt a frog could …” I shook my head. “There’s something he’s not saying. I see it in his eyes. This weight he’s carrying. Like the real story is eating him alive.”
Ryker met my eyes and gave me an almost-imperceptible nod, a silent acknowledgment that my suspicions were right.
And it freaking gutted me.
We entered the visiting room, and there he was.
Knox rose from his chair when he spotted me, his protective gaze sweeping the room, cataloging threats and potential problems. Even here, even with me, he couldn’t let his guard down.
“Dakota.” His voice was different now. Rougher. But when he wrapped his arms around me, I caught a glimpse of the boy who used to rescue frogs.
“No touching,” a guard barked.
That incited a terrifying glare from my brother.
“Hey, Knox.” I pulled back to study his face, searching for traces of the brother I remembered.
His eyes were the same storm gray they’d always been.
“Sit down, sis. We need to talk.”