Chapter 48 Knox
KNOX
Fourteen years, two months, and eleven days.
That’s how long I’d been counting concrete blocks, fluorescent lights, and the ceiling tiles in my cell. Five thousand one hundred fifteen days of the same gray walls, the same fluorescent hum, the same slow march of minutes that felt like years.
Today, that march ended.
Ronan was waiting for me outside our cell, arms crossed, jaw tight. My cellmate. My brother in all the ways that mattered. We’d shared that six-by-eight concrete box for years, and in a few minutes, I’d walk through a door he couldn’t follow me through.
“So, this is it,” he said, trying to look unbothered. He wasn’t fooling anyone.
“This is it.”
“You’d better not forget about us regular folks once you’re out there, living your best life.”
I huffed out something close to a laugh. “Yeah, because my parole officer is really going to love me showing up for weekend visits.”
“Tell him it’s educational. Scared-straight program. You’re doing a public service.”
“Pretty sure that only works if I was actually scared straight.”
Ronan grinned, but it wobbled at the edges. He stuck out his hand, and I took it, pulling him in for the kind of hug men don’t talk about. The kind that says, I love you, and, Thank you, and, Please survive this, all at once.
“One and a half years,” I said against his shoulder, my voice rougher than I intended. “Less with good behavior. You hear me?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He coughed, cleared his throat, stepped back. “Now get the hell out of here before I do something embarrassing like cry.”
“Wouldn’t dream of ruining your reputation.”
“My reputation is impeccable.”
“Your reputation is that you snore like a chain saw with a sinus infection.”
He shoved me toward the corridor. “Go. Be free. Send pictures of actual food. Burgers. Steak. Something that doesn’t look like it was already digested once.”
I walked away before the guilt of leaving him behind could wrap its fingers around my throat and squeeze.
The guard at the end of the block jerked his chin toward processing. “Blackwood. Let’s go.”
One last walk down that fluorescent corridor. One last set of doors buzzing open and clanging shut behind me.
Then I was standing in the discharge processing room.
“Arms out.” The guard’s voice was bored. Routine. Just another Tuesday for him.
For me, it was the first day of the rest of my life. Or whatever bullshit greeting card phrase fit the moment.
I lifted my arms while he conducted the final pat-down.
Standard procedure. One last indignity before they shoved me back into a world that had moved on without me.
He checked my armpits, ran his hands down my sides, made me lift my feet.
I’d done this dance a thousand times for yard checks, for visits, for transfers.
But this time, when he stepped back and grunted his approval, something loosened in my chest. Something that had been clenched tight for fourteen years.
“Sign here. And here. Initial there.”
I scratched my name across a stack of papers I barely read.
Conditions of parole. Mandatory check-ins.
The usual leash they’d keep around my neck for the next few years.
A corrections officer droned through the rules while I tuned him out, my eyes fixed on the brown paper bag sitting on the counter.
Civilian clothes.
Ryker had dropped them off earlier this week. Said he’d handle the paperwork, make sure everything went smoothly. The man had skills I’d never understand and loyalty I sure as hell didn’t deserve.
I reached into the bag and pulled out a pair of dark jeans.
They felt foreign in my hands. Soft. Not the stiff, industrial fabric I’d worn for over a decade.
There was a gray henley underneath, tags still attached, boxer briefs that probably cost more than my monthly commissary budget, and boots that looked like they belonged on someone who hadn’t spent the last fourteen years behind bars.
The guard pointed to a corner. “Change there.”
I peeled off the orange outfit and kicked it aside. Good riddance. The boxer briefs were next. Replaced with soft cotton instead of prison-issue sandpaper. When I pulled the henley over my head, the fabric brushed against my skin like something I’d forgotten existed. Comfort. Actual comfort.
This is real. This is actually happening.
After putting on the jeans, I shoved my feet into the boots and stood there for a moment, staring at my reflection in the window.
Same tattoos crawling up my neck, disappearing into my hairline.
Same silver-blue eyes that had seen too much.
But different somehow. Dressed like a person instead of a number.
“Blackwood.” The guard nodded toward a door I’d never walked through. “You’re free to go.”
Free.
The word sat strange in my head. Like trying to remember the lyrics to a song I used to know by heart.
I picked up the plastic bag containing my meager possessions: forty-seven dollars in commissary funds converted to cash and a photograph of Gwen so worn, the edges had turned soft as fabric.
The corridor stretched before me. My boots echoed against linoleum, each step carrying me closer to a threshold I’d dreamed about for years.
A guard swiped his badge at the final checkpoint. The door buzzed. Clicked.
Opened.
And then I was outside.
The sun hit me like a fist. I stopped dead, squeezed my eyes shut, and tilted my face toward the sky. For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
This was sunlight. Not the rationed version from the yard, filtered through chain-link and razor wire. This was pure, uncut gold pouring down from a cloudless sky, soaking into my skin like it was trying to fill all the empty spaces fourteen years had carved out of me.
I inhaled.
The air smelled different out here. No lingering trace of industrial cleaner and body odor and institutional food. Just … air. Clean air. With hints of someone’s distant bonfire and something sweet I couldn’t name. Maybe hope smelled like that. Maybe I’d just forgotten.
The sounds were different too. No clanging metal doors.
No guards shouting count. No constant white noise of hundreds of men trapped in too-small spaces.
Just the distant hum of traffic. A bird somewhere.
Wind rustling through trees that had started to bloom in early spring.
A beautiful dichotomy to the two inches of fresh snow that had fallen over night.
Rare for May, but not impossible. Winter making one last desperate attempt to hold on.
I stood there with my eyes closed, letting it wash over me. Letting it sink in.
I’m out. I’m actually out.
And then I opened my eyes.
She was standing slightly to my left, like she’d positioned herself to give me this moment first. This breath of freedom before she stepped into it.
As if Harper could ever be anything but the best part of any moment.
The first person I saw in my new life was the woman who held my heart in her small, steady hands.
She stood about twenty feet away, dark hair shining in the sunlight, those green eyes locked on mine.
Grass on a sunny day. Light. Hopeful. The kind of eyes that looked at the world and still found reasons to believe in it.
The second she saw me looking, her whole face transformed.
That smile. God, that smile. Wide and unrestrained and so full of joy, it made my chest ache. She broke into a run, closing the distance between us like she couldn’t stand another second apart.
I barely had time to brace myself before she launched.
She jumped, and I caught her, her legs wrapping around my waist as her arms locked around my neck. Her chin tucked into my shoulder, and she held on like she was afraid I’d disappear if she let go.
“You got out,” she whispered against my neck. “You actually got out.”
I buried my face in her hair. Vanilla. Something floral. Harper. A scent I’d only caught in stolen moments in the infirmary, and now I could breathe it in without counting the seconds until a guard walked by.
My fingers threaded through her silky hair, feeling the strands slip between my knuckles. Soft. Everything about her was so goddamn soft.
“Don’t you have to work today?” I asked, pulling back enough to see her face.
She smirked. “Took a personal day.”
“For me?”
“No, for the other convicted murderer getting released today. There’s a two-for-one special. I’m very busy.”
I huffed. Still sarcastic. Still the woman who’d looked at me in that infirmary, seen every ugly truth I carried, and decided I was worth saving anyway.
She pulled back, studying my face like she was cataloging the differences. Like maybe I looked different outside these walls than I did inside them.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. You just …” She traced a finger along my jaw, and I leaned into the touch before I could stop myself. “You look like you belong out here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Her voice softened. “You look like mine.”
And then she kissed me.
Not the careful, stolen kisses we’d shared before. Not the desperate, silent ones in the infirmary with our ears straining for footsteps. This kiss was different.
This kiss was free.
Her mouth moved against mine. Urgent and greedy and completely unrestrained.
No guards to catch us. No threat of solitary hanging over my head if someone walked in.
Just Harper, wrapped around me in the parking lot of a state penitentiary, kissing me like she’d been waiting her whole life for this moment.
I kissed her back with everything I had. Every fantasy I’d buried in that dark cell. Every night I’d stared at the ceiling and imagined exactly this. My tongue traced her lower lip, and she opened for me instantly, her own tongue meeting mine in a way that made my blood run hot.
Our hands couldn’t stay still. She tugged at my shirt. I gripped her hips hard enough to bruise.
Behind me, someone whistled.
Harper pulled back with a breathless laugh, her cheeks flushed. “We have an audience.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Some staff member heading to their car, grinning like they’d just witnessed the best entertainment of their week.
“Don’t care.” I turned back to her, but she was already unwrapping her legs, sliding down my body in a way that made me grit my teeth.
“Behave.” Her eyes sparkled. “At least until we get in the car.”
That’s when I noticed it. Parked about fifty feet away, gleaming black and so out of place in this prison parking lot that it might as well have landed from another planet.
I cocked my head. “A limo?”
She grabbed my hand and tugged me toward it, shooting me a mischievous grin over her shoulder. “I told you I wouldn’t be able to wait until we got home.”
Home.
The word burrowed into my chest and stayed there, warm and insistent.
But I couldn’t think about that right now. Because Harper had hired a limousine with tinted windows and a partition, and she was leading me toward it with a look in her eyes that promised things I’d only dreamed about.