Chapter 10 Counting Days
Ten ~ Counting Days
Jaxon
IThought The Worst Part Of Prison Would Be The Cell. It’s not. It’s the waiting. Waiting to eat. Waiting to sleep. Waiting for the count. Waiting for showers. Waiting for letters. Waiting for news. Waiting to feel like a person again instead of something filed under a case number and a crime.
Time moves differently in here. It doesn’t flow; it drips.
One grey day after another, everyone the same shade, until you’re not sure where one ends and the next begins.
You measure weeks in mail days and laundry cycles.
You measure months in court dates and cancelled visits.
You measure everything by what you’re waiting for.
And now, after all this time, I get the one piece of news I wasn’t ready for: I’m getting out.
December 23rd. Two days before Christmas.
Early release. Reduced charges. Her statement helped, my lawyer said that twice, like he couldn’t quite believe it.
So did my “good behavior,” as if not starting fights and doing my job in the laundry room was some kind of miracle.
Maybe it was.
Maybe miracles look like a worn-out public defender who didn’t give up, a DA who didn’t want to risk a jury, and a girl who wrote the truth down on a piece of paper and sent it into a system that doesn’t usually listen.
I don’t tell anyone. Not yet. The less attention I draw to myself in here, the better.
Guys who make noise about their release dates sometimes find that trouble comes looking for them before they can reach the gate.
Old grudges. New jealousies. Bored men with nothing better to do than ruin something for someone else.
So, when the guard walks me back from the admin office, I keep my face blank. When he unlocks my cell and jerks his chin for me to go in, I do. No comments, no jokes, no questions. The door slams. The lock slides home. The silence that follows is thicker than usual.
I sit on the edge of my cot and just… stare at the floor.
Freedom should feel like fire. Like someone lit a match in the dark and suddenly everything’s glowing and possible.
It feels like frost. Cold around the edges, creeping in slowly.
Making everything tighter, sharper. Because now there’s space for the question, I’ve been trying not to think about it for weeks to finally sit down beside me. What now?
I rub a hand over my face and let my head drop forward. The concrete wall presses against my shoulder blades. The hum of the fluorescent light above buzzes at the edge of my hearing, too soft to be a real distraction.
December 23rd. I turn the date over in my head like a coin between my fingers. Three weeks from now. Not long enough to really get used to the idea. Longer than I want to spend in here, knowing the end is that close.
“Congrats,” my lawyer had said in the admin room, adjusting his too-big tie. “You’ll be out in time for Christmas. That’s something, right?”
I’d just grunted. Because yeah, it’s something. But it’s also everything. And I don’t know what to do with that.
He’d pushed the paperwork toward me, explained in that fast, rehearsed voice about conditions and parole, about check-ins and restrictions.
No leaving the county without permission.
No weapons.
No “associating with known criminals.”
Keep a job.
Keep your head down.
“You do this right, Jaxon, and this is behind you. You mess up…”
We both knew the rest.
I signed where he told me to, ink scratching across official boxes. My name looked strange on those lines. Too small. Like it didn’t fill the space it was meant to.
“Her statement helped,” he repeated, tapping one section of the file. “The detective said she was insistent. Clear. The DA didn’t want a jury hearing a scared woman talk about a guy dragging her into the woods, and you pulling him off. Makes you look… better than they like defendants to look.”
“Did you just admit the system’s stacked?” I’d asked, eyebrows lifting.
He’d huffed a tired laugh. “I didn’t say that. I’m just saying you owe someone a thank you.”
“I already said it,” I’d muttered. “On paper.”
He’d sobered, nodding once. “Then say it again. With your life.”
That’s the conversation that echoes now, sitting on this thin mattress in this too-small space, my hands hanging between my knees. Say it again. With your life.
What the hell does that even mean?
I look up, eyes landing on the shelf I’ve half-bolted together above the bed. Three folded sets of clothes. A plastic cup. A few paperbacks, their spines broken from being read and re-read. The prison handbook with its missing page.
And her letters. They’re stacked neatly in the corner, folded back into their envelopes, edges soft from the number of times I’ve thumbed through them.
The first few are thinner, shorter, and careful.
As the weeks go by, they get longer. Looser.
There are little doodles in the margins now, sometimes, a star, a cup of tea, a tiny snowman with a crooked smile when the weather turned.
I reach up and take the stack down, handling them more carefully than anything else I own.
It’s funny. I’ve been locked up for months, surrounded by men twice my size, and the thing I’m most afraid of damaging is twenty sheets of paper written by a woman I’ve seen for maybe thirty seconds in my life.
I thumb through them, not really reading the words yet, just feeling the texture, scanning the familiar loops of her handwriting.
Letters about her week. About the writing group she goes to on Thursdays, five of them in the back of an old library, sharing pages and tea and nerves.
Letters about a plant she accidentally overwatered and then coaxed back to life, like it was a miracle.
About the old lady downstairs who bakes too many cookies and insists on giving her some “because you’re too thin, dear. ”
Little things. Ordinary things. The kind of things you stop noticing when your life is all crisis and fallout.
Somewhere around the middle of the stack, there’s one smudged in the corner from where, she confessed in a postscript, she spilled cinnamon sugar while baking.
My thumb always pauses there, presses into that faint, rough patch.
I find the last one and slide it free. I don’t need to check the date. I know it by heart. Two weeks ago. I reread her last letter. Not because I need to, but because I want to. Because her words have become the place I go when everything else feels too loud or too gray.
You said you don’t make plans anymore; she wrote.
I get it. Plans feel dangerous. Like promises the world will laugh at.
But if you get out before Christmas… I keep thinking about what that would look like.
Where would you go first? What you’d want most. If you’re still reading my letters by then… maybe, you’ll want to find me.
And if you do… I think I’d say yes.
That line plays on a loop in my chest. Maybe you’ll want to find me. I think I’d say yes. I want to find her. More than I want anything. More than I want a decent steak or a real bed or a hot shower that doesn’t come with a time limit and a line of guys behind you.
I want to stand in front of her door, wherever it is, and see her safe with my own eyes without a chain around my ankle, without a guard two steps away, without the memory of snow and blood between us.
I want to see what her face looks like when it’s not twisted in fear.
I want to hear her voice when she’s not shouting.
But right behind that want is a weight. A voice that’s been with me longer than she has, settling into my bones like an old injury. The one that says I’m not the man she sees in those letters.
I’m not the protector or the poet or the soul with gravel and grief and good intentions. I’m just a guy with a record. With callused fists and bad decisions in his rearview. With a history of walking into the wrong fights and leaving too many things broken behind him.
What if she regrets it the second she sees me again?
What if all this connection we’ve built in ink and paper evaporates the moment she has to tilt her head back to meet my eyes, the moment she sees the scar, the moment she realizes I’m not just the guy from the letters—I’m the guy from her nightmares, too.
The roar and the blood and the body slamming into the snow.
What if I walk up to her door and all she sees is what I used to be?
A threat.
A mistake.
A story she doesn’t want to tell anyone.
I scrub my palm over my face again, annoyed at myself for even letting this line of thought breathe.
She’s the one who asked me to find her. She’s the one who kept writing, letter after letter, even when I took too long to answer.
She’s the one who told the cops the truth.
The least I can do is be honest back. Still, my stomach knots.
What does a man like me do with hope? I’ve never held it this long without dropping it.
My gaze drifts to the tiny window above the bed. The glass is old, warped, streaked with grime no one bothers to scrub. Through the bars, I can see a slice of sky, pale and flat in the afternoon light.
Somewhere out there, people are buying last-minute presents and arguing about turkeys. Somewhere, kids are writing lists and sticking them on fridges. Somewhere, someone is stringing up tinsel and muttering about how it always gets tangled.
Somewhere out there, she’s living her life. Going to the library. Watering her plants. Baking cinnamon rolls when she can’t sleep. And she’s thinking about a man in a cell. About me.
I put the letter down in my lap and reach under the mattress for the pencil and the handbook again. I pull another blank page from the back, careful not to rip it jaggedly, smoothing it against my thigh.
My hand hovers. I don’t know how to say everything I’m thinking.
I don’t have the words for the way her letters have taken all the empty hours and given them a shape.
For how they’ve stitched something back together inside me, I thought was past repair.
So, I don’t try to say all of it. I start where I can.
M,
They gave me a date. December 23rd. I’ll be out by Christmas.
The pencil feels clumsy, but the words are clear. I pause, pressing my tongue to the back of my teeth.
I keep telling myself not to expect anything, not from the world, and not from you.
That line stings as I write it because it’s exactly the kind of self-protection I’ve lived on for years. Expect nothing. Be surprised by nothing. That way, nothing can touch you. Except she already has.
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope.
I exhale slowly, watching the graphite settle in the grooves of the letters.
You’ve been the only clear thing in a fog of months. The only reason I feel human most days.
My ribs ache at that admission, even on paper.
There’s a long stretch of empty space after that.
I tap the pencil against it, thinking. The ticking of the block clock down the hall nags at the edge of my attention.
I don’t want to write promises I can’t keep.
I don’t want to tell her I’m going to show up on her doorstep and fix both our lives. That’s not how this works.
So, I tell the truth.
If I find you… I won’t show up unless I’m ready. And I won’t show up unless I believe I’m something worth finding.
My throat feels tight as I write that. Because it’s a bigger if than the words can carry.
If I can keep my temper in check. If I can find work. If I can walk down a street without wanting to fight every guy who looks at me like I’m nothing.
But if I do…
The pencil pauses. This is the part that feels like stepping off a ledge.
Would you still want me to?
I sign it before I can second-guess it.
– Jax
No initials this time. Just my name. The one she heard in a courtroom and saw on a file.
The one she’s been writing at the top of the paper for months.
I stare at it for a long time before sealing the envelope.
The paper looks small in my hands. Fragile.
Ridiculous, maybe, that I’m pinning so much on a handful of sentences that may or may not land the way, I hope.
I fold it, slide it into the envelope, lick the flap, and press it down. My tongue tastes glue and dust. I don’t bother decorating the outside, just her initial and the address I’ve memorized now, written in the careful block letters the guards can read easily when they censor.
I sit there with it for a while; the envelope balanced between my fingers.
This might be the last letter I ever send from here.
The thought hits me sideways. From now on, anything I say to her could be said face-to-face.
No more two-week delays. No more hoping the mail room doesn’t “lose” something.
No more checking the schedule on the wall like it’s a lifeline.
Next time I write to her, I want it to be in person. If she’ll let me. A guard walks by on mail pick-up, keys jangling at his hip, expression bored. He pauses when he sees the envelope in my hand.
“Outgoing?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say, standing to step closer to the bars. My fingers brush his as I pass it through.
He doesn’t comment, just tucks it into the stack with all the other letters to moms, girlfriends, kids. Bills. Court notices. Junk. He moves on, whistling something off-key and Christmas-sounding under his breath.
I sit back down and press my palms over my face. In my mind, I can already see the letter in her hands. Her at that little table she wrote about. Steam from a mug curled up beside her. Brows furrowing as she reads. Lips pressing together. Maybe she’ll smile.
Maybe she’ll cry.
Maybe she’ll curse me for putting this.