Chapter 3 #2
Refusing to cave in to that apprehension, I checked his pulse.
Strong, steady, slightly elevated beneath my fingertips.
His skin was warm, callous from years of labor, and I tried not to notice how carefully he kept his hands still.
Open. Nonthreatening. And reminded myself this was just restrained power.
Someone who could snap bones without effort, choosing not to. For now.
At least he wasn’t being a dick. In fact, he just … let me hold him. Let me take the lead.
“So, what did he do?” I asked, releasing his wrist and preparing the suture kit.
“Come again?”
“The other guy. The one who might need reconstructive surgery. What did he do?”
Knox’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Never had a nurse ask that before.”
“Maybe I’m not like the other nurses.”
“Clearly.” His lips rose slightly on one side. “But why do you care?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I’m curious what makes people do what they do.”
Because I need to understand. What made someone cross that line? What switch flipped in their brain that said violence was the answer?
With Silas, I’d never figured it out. The triggers, sure. Jealousy rooted in insecurity. Anger when he drank. Like my dad. But why escalate? Why not stop at yelling? Why graduate to fists?
Knox seemed to study me again, his gaze gliding over my face like a scan. “Sounds like you’re not just asking about me.”
The implication landed like a punch I didn’t see coming. Direct. No lead-up. No warning.
I swallowed. “You didn’t answer my question.”
He seemed to consider this, and I wondered if he thought about pushing me on his question. Thankfully, he went with, “Who says I’m the one who hurt him?”
I gave him a look. “Your knuckles are hamburger meat. and his face looked like it went through a blender. I’m not exactly Sherlock Holmes here.”
A low sound escaped him. Almost a laugh. “Sometimes, injuries look worse than they are. He’ll be fine.”
“Spoken like someone who knows exactly how many hits a face can take.”
He studied me again, something unreadable in those husky eyes. “Why do you care what happened to him?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. Not one I wanted to say out loud.
“Just making conversation.” I threaded the needle, focusing on the task. “This is going to sting.”
“Pain and I are old friends.”
I glanced up. “That’s either very tough or very sad.”
Something flickered across his face. There and gone. “Maybe both.”
Knox sat up slowly, and I watched his movements carefully. Controlled. Deliberate. The chains clinked softly as he adjusted, but he kept space between us, like he was conscious of not crowding me, not looming over me the way Silas always had.
Silas had always gotten bigger when he was angry. Taller. Louder. He’d fill up a room until there was no air left for me.
Knox did the opposite.
Stop cataloging the differences, Harper.
I applied the numbing agent and began the first stitch.
“Most people would at least wince.”
“You want me to wince?” Knox asked. “I can fake it if it makes you feel better about your needlework.”
“My needlework is excellent.”
“Then why do you look nervous?”
“I’m not nervous.” Not about stitches at least.
“You’re biting your lip.”
I stopped the needle and felt my mouth curl slightly. “I concentrate when I work. Don’t psychoanalyze me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Nurse …”
“Harper.”
“Harper.” My name rolled off his tongue like he was testing how it sounded. “Suits you.”
His necklace shifted as he moved, catching the light again. Whatever hung from it remained hidden beneath his shirt, but the string itself looked delicate. Leather maybe? The kind of thing someone kept because it meant something, not because it looked good.
Strange, that a man with fists like weapons would wear something so fragile.
“So,” Knox said, watching me work, “you from around here?”
I looked up. “Small talk?”
“Do you prefer awkward silence?”
I bit my lip and caught the way he raised his eyebrow, as if to say, See? You did it again.
“No,” I replied. “I guess not.”
“So, you from the Chicagoland area?”
“I moved here from Indiana.”
“To get closer to family?”
“No. They’re back in Indiana.”
“Closer to friends then?”
I thought of Faith, her chaotic dog. But I’d met her after the move. Before that, I’d had no one here. Not a single person.
“No.”
Knox tilted his head, studying me with those silver eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t move hundreds of miles to work here. All due respect, this place is a shithole.”
A laugh caught in my throat before I could stop it. “I knew it wasn’t a spa when I took the job.”
“So, that’s a yes? You left your friends and family and moved hundreds of miles away to work here?”
I kept my eyes on the suture. Pulled the thread through. Steady hands. Steady voice. “I wanted a fresh chapter.”
He was quiet for a moment. I could feel him studying me like he was reading something I hadn’t meant to show him. Based on the look he wore, he was officially intrigued by whatever he’d found.
“Fresh chapter,” he repeated, like he was turning the words over. “Isn’t that what people say when they’re running from something?”
So much for letting it go.
“That’s what people say when they want a fresh chapter.”
“Okay, but nobody moves hundreds of miles away from everyone they know for no reason. That’s not a fresh chapter. That’s witness protection,” Knox reasoned.
I leveled him with a lighthearted glare. “Are you always this pushy with medical staff?”
“Only when they’re bad liars.”
“I’m not lying.”
“You’re just not telling the whole truth. There’s a difference,” he said.
“You’d know all about that, I imagine.”
Knox conceded this with a slight nod. “Touché.”
I tied off a stitch. “So, how long have you been here?”
“Fourteen years.”
Fourteen years. I tried to imagine it. Fourteen years of this fluorescent lighting, these walls, this air that tasted like recycled misery.
“That’s a long time,” I said because what else do you say to that?
“Gets shorter if you stop counting.” He paused. “Gets longer if you don’t.”
I almost smiled at that. Almost. “Any family that visits?”
His free hand moved to the pendant at his throat. Just a brush of his fingers against the fabric hiding it. Barely noticeable, unless you were watching.
I was watching.
“My sister and parents visit me. So do my friends. I’m lucky. Lot of guys here don’t have anyone come see them.” This man who’d beaten someone into the medical ward an hour ago had family who visited him. Who turned his face into something almost gentle when he mentioned them.
I didn’t know what to do with that information, so I filed it away and kept stitching.
“They must miss you,” I said. It came out softer than I intended.
Knox’s eyes found mine. Held. “Yeah,” he said. Just that. But the weight of it filled the room. “You miss your family? Back in Indiana?”
“Sometimes. The good parts anyway.”
We fell back into silence, but it was different now. Warmer. The kind of quiet that settles between two people who’ve accidentally said something real. The kind of silence I should not be comfortable with.
But I was. The knot in my chest had loosened without permission. Not gone—it would never be fully gone around someone like him—but the sharp edges had dulled. My shoulders had dropped half an inch. My breathing had evened out.
When the hell had that happened?
I caught myself almost smiling as I tied off the last stitch, and the realization hit me like cold water.
This was dangerous. Not him—this. This ease. This forgetting.
This man was a convicted murderer. He’d killed someone. Taken a life. And I was sitting here, chatting about his family like we were at an HOA meeting.
Get it together, Harper. You know better. You literally know better.
“What happened to your cheek?” His question came out of nowhere.
My hand stilled. “Excuse me?”
“By your eye. Fresh scar. Right here.” He gestured to his own face, mirroring the spot. The chain rattled with the movement.
I pressed the antiseptic into his wound.
“It doesn’t look old,” he continued.
“We’re here for your injuries, not mine.”
“Guy in Cell Block D has one just like it. Said he got it from being punched by someone wearing a ring.”
My throat tightened. “You’ll need to keep these wounds clean.”
“The ring caught the skin. Left a little white line. Just like yours.”
Silence stretched between us. I could feel his eyes on me, but I kept mine on the gauze I was wadding up. On the medical tray. On anything that wasn’t him.
When I finally looked up, his jaw was working. Like he was grinding his teeth. Like he was fighting something back.
Then he did something I didn’t expect. He leaned back on the exam table, putting distance between us. Made himself smaller again, like he understood that the question he was about to ask might feel too big. His voice dropped lower. Carefully controlled. But underneath it, something simmered.
“Who gave you that scar?” It sounded like a threat wrapped in velvet.
I ignored him.
He was quiet for a long moment. “That scar have something to do with why you wanted a fresh chapter?”
I shoved the bloody gauze into the trash harder than necessary. “We’re not discussing this.”
“That’s not a no.”
“My life is none of your business.” My voice came out too sharp. Too defensive.
He studied me like my overreaction had answered every question he hadn’t asked. Then, slowly, he looked away. Gave me space. Gave me an out.
But his free hand curled into a fist. The kind that looked like it took effort to keep it that way instead of putting them through a wall.
Silence stretched between us.
Until someone dropped a metal tray outside the door. The crash was sudden. Sharp. And my body reacted before my brain could catch up.
I flinched. Hard. My shoulders jerked inward, chin dropping, hands flying up like I could ward off a blow that wasn’t coming.
Because Silas’s favorite pastime was throwing things at my head, and hearing them crash against the wall, inches from disaster, had apparently imprinted itself into my DNA.
When I forced myself to look up, Knox’s eyes were locked on mine.
Something had shifted in his face. Those eyes had gone dark. His face was tight, a muscle ticcing beneath the stubble as he just … stared.
First at me. Then the ground, his jaw flexing as he appeared to press his tongue to the inside of his cheek. Shaking his head slightly, he spoke in a low, dangerous purr.
“Takes a coward to hit a woman,” he muttered.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
A dangerous inmate at Coldwater Penitentiary had just figured out someone hurt me.
And he looked … angry about it?
That couldn’t be right. This guy was a murderer. A man who solved his problems with violence. Why would he care if someone used violence on me?
“Done yet?” The CO stuck his head through the door, oblivious to the tension suffocating the room.
Knox’s expression had smoothed out, gone carefully blank, but I could still see it burning beneath the surface.
“Yeah,” I managed. “We’re done. Keep it clean. If it gets red or a suture breaks, you’ll need to come back.”
Was it just me, or did he look particularly intense at that comment?
Knox stood slowly, the chains clinking as he rose, but somehow, he made even restraints look like a choice.
“Well”—he just looked at me with something almost like … softness—“see you tomorrow.”
“IF you have complications,” I clarified quickly.
That almost-smile returned. “Right.”
Then he was gone, leaving me alone with the antiseptic and the silence and the echo of his voice in my head.
“Takes a coward to hit a woman.”
My hands shook as I cleaned up the medical supplies.
What the hell just happened?
I’d sat across from a convicted killer, and somewhere between the stitches and the small talk, the fear had leaked out of me.
I’d almost smiled. I’d asked about his family.
I’d let myself sink into easy conversation like the chains on his wrists were jewelry and the blood on his knuckles was ketchup.
I couldn’t let that happen again.
I’d felt that subtle shift where the conversation turned easy, almost natural, and I’d started to forget where I was.
Who I was talking to. Knox wasn’t just another patient.
He was an inmate who’d just walked in, covered in another man’s blood.
And the effortless way he’d almost made me forget?
That was exactly what made him dangerous.
When I was done cleaning and disinfecting, I sat at the computer and opened his file.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard for just a moment before I started typing.
Every detail. Every wound. The split knuckles, the swelling, the lacerations—all from a fight so violent, I wondered if the other guy was even okay.
I documented it in precise, clinical language.
Black and white. Inarguable. Because charm didn’t leave bruises, but fists did, and anyone investigating that confrontation deserved a record that told the truth.
Even if Knox’s smile made you want to look the other way.
And it’d be here for me, too, in case I needed to reread it. Should I find myself across from those silver eyes again and felt my guard slipping, I wanted the record to remind me of what I already knew.
Men like him didn’t deserve my empathy. They deserved consequences.
I had a feeling I’d need to reread those words sooner rather than later. Because the way Knox looked at me when he left, it didn’t seem like a goodbye.
It was more like a promise to come back.