Chapter 39 Knox
KNOX
The walk back to my cell felt like a death march.
Every step echoed off the concrete, each one hammering the same thought deeper into my skull: She’s done with you.
With my eye already swelling and my split lip throbbing with every heartbeat, I climbed onto the edge of my cot, the thin mattress groaning under my weight.
The cell was cold. Gray. Same as always.
But somehow, it felt smaller now. Like the walls had inched closer while I wasn’t looking, ready to finish what Harper started.
At first, I tried to convince myself she was just being noble. Pushing me away for my own good. Maybe she thought ending things would make me less likely to go after Silas. Maybe if I told myself that lie enough times, it would start to feel true.
It didn’t.
I wiped my bloody lip, replaying every word she’d thrown at me.
How the fuck could Harper see my protection, my devotion, as a rejection of us? How did she not see it as the opposite? That I’d literally end someone for hurting her?
And then that question answered itself.
That’s exactly the problem, you bastard.
She didn’t want someone who’d end a man for her. She wanted someone who’d choose her over the urge to do it.
And I couldn’t. Wouldn’t.
If only I could convince my heart to hate her for it. That would’ve been convenient. Clean. But my heart didn’t get the memo. It was still obsessed with her. Still cared for her. Still wanted the best for her.
Even now. Even after she’d gutted me with the truth.
I grabbed the back of my neck. I needed my heart to see that she was being judgmental. Critical. Narrow-minded.
But no matter how much I tried to hold on to the anger, it kept slipping through my fingers. The only thing left was the kind of pain that doesn’t have a name. The kind that just sits in your chest like a stone you’re going to carry forever.
I’d lost her.
I’d always known I wasn’t good enough for her. I’d felt like a selfish bastard for even entertaining the idea of letting her lower her standards for someone like me. A man with blood on his hands and bars on his windows.
But I’d let myself hope anyway.
Hope. What a fucking joke.
Harper could have any guy she wanted. She could walk out of this prison tonight, walk into some bar, and have men lining up to buy her drinks. She could have a real relationship with any of them. Go on dates. Hold hands in public. Wake up next to someone whose past didn’t have a body count.
And me? I’d let my emotions rip loose like a flag in a hurricane, and I’d fallen for her anyway. Hard. Stupid.
Only to confirm what I’d known from the start: she could never actually want to be with someone like me.
She’d never understand my choices. Today proved that.
And what she’d said about Gwen? Using my daughter against me like that. It was a fucking low blow. The kind of hit that lands because it’s true.
“If you’d let the police handle it, maybe you’d actually be there for her right now.”
Fourteen years I’d lived with that question. Fourteen years I’d buried it under the certainty that I’d done what any father should do.
Harper had dug it up in thirty seconds.
For years, I’d told myself what I did didn’t make me a monster. It made me a good father.
But maybe that was the lie I’d been telling myself all along.
Maybe I was fucked in the head. Maybe wanting to rip Silas’s spine out of his body for laying a hand on Harper was the kind of thought only damaged people had.
Maybe a normal guy would be satisfied with law enforcement slapping Silas on the wrist.
I wasn’t normal. I’d never been normal.
I’d taken a life and refused to apologize for it. Refused to show an ounce of remorse. Because I wasn’t sorry. I’d do it again.
And that right there was the problem, wasn’t it?
Harper had looked at me today and finally seen what I really was.
And she ran.
Maybe she was right to.
I’d shown her the thing I kept caged. Let her hear it rattling the bars. Let her see exactly how close I was to tearing someone apart with my bare hands.
She didn’t see protection. She saw violence wearing a different mask.
And it only confirmed what I’d always suspected: I didn’t deserve her. Maybe I didn’t deserve anyone.
I pressed my palms against my eyes until I saw stars. The pain was everywhere now. In my chest. My throat. Behind my eyes, where I refused to let it out.
This hurt worse than any beating I’d ever taken. Physical pain, I understood. Physical pain had rules. It faded. It healed. It left scars you could see, ones that made sense.
This? This was a wound that would never close.
I wanted to punch the wall. Wanted to feel my knuckles split open, wanted the sharp bite of broken skin to give me something else to focus on. But knowing my luck, I’d shatter something and end up in the infirmary.
The one place I couldn’t let myself go.
Not now. Not ever again.
I’d have to figure out a way to switch assignments. They’d have to drag me to solitary before I’d ever step foot in that place again.
At least I’d protected her from Silas within these walls. He’d swung first. And I didn’t swing back. With any luck, the piece of shit would be out of a job by end of day.
Small victory. Hollow as hell.
But as far as any relationship with Harper? That was gone. She was done with me. And I was here. Alone. Same as I’d been for fourteen years.
Honest to God, I couldn’t take this anymore. I couldn’t take anything else. One more blow, and I’d crack straight down the middle.
“Blackwood.” The clang of metal made me flinch. A guard’s baton rapping against my cell bars. “You have a visitor.”