Chapter 3 Cade
THREE
CADE
The energy in the grim stone hallway is palpable. Visitation days are often like this—or so I’ve heard from the other guys.
An electrified feeling sparks life into my veins, wrists rotating within the cuffs’ tight confines as I shuffle fourth in line, chained to other inmates.
We’re being escorted to the visiting room by two guards—one leading and one trailing.
We pass a few others lingering, the guards’ beady eyes zeroing in on each of us without finding reason to harass us.
My head remains low so as not to meet their eyes, the same way I’ve kept it for the past few years.
Keeping my head down and following the many rules of this place is how I’ve made it this far, and nothing will be messing up the small remaining time left on my sentence. Not when my parole meeting is coming up sometime within the year. Freedom is so damn close—I’m itching for it.
There’s a scattering of visitors, one at nearly every table, and the guys beside me get even more restless as they spot their people. Without my requested picture, I’m stuck only guessing, scanning the crowd for whoever’s not making eye contact with someone else.
Like a bolt of lightning, I spot her—my sweet little pen pal, Aspen. It has to be her because she’s the only person not looking at the eager inmates being uncuffed from the lineup and shackled to the metal loops welded into each table.
Ninety-nine percent certain she’s Aspen, I take in what’s visible from my angle. Her hair is a mix of blonde and brown, like she couldn’t decide which colour to go with. She uses it to shield herself from the room. Her shoulders are hunched, and the table hides much of her body.
By the time it’s my turn to be escorted, my skin is on fire with anticipation.
The guard—Bennett is his last name, and therefore all I’m allowed to call him—is one of the chill ones.
Over the years, I’ve earned many smokes from him, and I get the sense I’ll be working for another one soon to replace Aspen’s scent with nicotine before insanity wins.
He walks me to the farthest table. Maybe she chose this one specifically. Maybe she wants to be alone with me—as alone as we could get in a place like this.
Bennett pushes down on my shoulder as I take the metal stool across from her and mutters, “Behave.” He attaches my cuffs to the loop, giving me just enough leeway to be able to just touch my visitor, should she reach for me in return.
Given the fact I’ve that never met the girl before, I opt to slide my cuffed hands beneath the table, proving to her I don’t plan on freaking her out more than she already is. I won’t survive if this visit ends her letters.
Alone, Aspen finally lifts her head, hitting me like a fucking Mack truck.
If I wasn’t already fascinated by her, I’m a goner now. There will be no going back—no way to inhale stale prison air rather than her honeyed, floral scent, provided by her workplace, I assume.
Obsessed.
That unique hair of hers frames a heart-shaped face—the perfect depiction of innocence—reminding me that she’s twelve years my junior and should definitely not be seated across from the likes of me. I probably did more in my first twelve years of life than she has in all twenty-four of hers.
Her lips are full and red, curled slightly at the corners—uncertain—and I wonder how much darker they could become with the right amount of teasing.
Her eyes are equally as striking—a vibrant blue that penetrates right through me.
Her nose is a little crooked, and what others would catalogue as an imperfection is something I appreciate because it implies she hasn’t been entirely gentle in her youth—she’s someone who can handle a little roughness.
Just a little. Enough she’d enjoy what I give her while retaining her alluring innocence.
She’s essentially a stranger, and yet, it’s like I know her. Make it make sense—because I certainly can’t.
She’s cataloguing me as well, brows dipping as she scans the faded scars on my forearms and chin, the nearly healed cut beneath my eye from a few weeks ago, courtesy of a man I know to be seated elsewhere in this room.
As we study each other, she doesn’t appear outwardly uncomfortable, as her shoulders have slowly uncurled in the passing seconds. She’s nervous, though, shifting three different times, scanning the room twice, and licking her bottom lip once.
“Hey,” I finally say, breaking the silence.
“Hi. Cade.” She scans my neck, where tattoos peek from beneath the orange collar of the jumpsuit, and down my chest. “Your name suits you.”
Well, fuck me. Her voice officially embeds itself into my fantasies—especially my name on her lips. Now, when rereading her letters, it’ll be with her low, inviting voice in my head, one that isn’t nearly as chirpy as I imagined.
“And your voice,” she continues, licking her lip again. “Somehow, I knew it would, but seeing you is different.”
And what do you see, sweetheart? Are you realizing I’m not all my letters make me out to be?
“Thanks for coming.” That’s the right thing to say, isn’t it?
Now that she’s in front of me, I realize I have no fucking idea what to say to her that won’t scare her off. And that can’t happen. Not after her letters have become my newest drug of choice. Infinitely better than the highs I once chased.
She smiles in response, an upturn of those full lips that brighten the grey stone of this depressing ass building into something relative to sunshine and oceans.
She reaches beside her as colour darkens her cheeks, retrieving a red envelope that she slides across the table towards me.
Her eyes lift from it to Bennett standing about four feet away with his back against the wall, surveying the entire room.
One doesn’t last this long in jail without knowing the location of every single person who could potentially ruin your day.
She worries her bottom lip and quickly explains, “It’s for you. I asked—you’re allowed to keep it, like the letters. Since Christmas kinda came and went without anything, I figured… I mean, it’s only a card, nothing major, but something I thought you—sorry. I’m rambling, aren’t I?”
She is, but it’s adorable. A massive sparkling personality shoved into such a small frame.
Christmas has long lost meaning around these parts.
Those with families might get something small, but misery replaces the general holiday cheer that other homes have.
There’s no Christmas Eve to live out traditions, no Christmas morning to open presents and eat an insane amount of food.
We have only the grey walls of our cells.
Which makes the envelope in my grip everything. Coming from Aspen, it’s priceless.
I’m stuck between wanting to tear into the card like an animal and opening it slowly, like the kind of respectable gentleman she’s probably used to. Her pulse jumps in her neck, and she shifts in place again, curling her hands on the table’s surface.
Breaking her stare, I slip a finger beneath the flap and tug out the folded cardstock.
The front cover is decorated with a glittery, green Christmas tree made from more cardstock, and Merry Christmas is written in an elegant gold script above.
Inside, there’s another message, this one written in the same slightly messy writing I’m used to.
Merry Christmas, Cade!
Aspen
“I, uh, made it by hand.”
Of course she did. Because this girl becomes pen pals with an inmate and visits them only two months and five letters into the relationship. It only makes sense for her to throw personalized homemade cards into the mix.
I slip the card back into the envelope and slide it as close as physically possible, already knowing that later my obsession will come out in full force when I’m memorizing her note—the way it’s written, the slant of her letters. It’ll join the stack of letters hiding beneath my thin mattress.
“I wish I got you something too.”
If it weren’t for the orange on my body and the cuffs on my wrists, damn fucking right I would have gotten her something. A big heart like hers deserves the world.
She shakes her head, and her hair sways with the movement. “No, it’s fine. You’re…” Her eyes bulge, but her obvious slip-up only makes me laugh.
“In prison. It’s okay to say. Not like it’s hard to avoid.” A jiggle of my cuffs draws her eyes down. “As I mentioned before, you can’t offend me.”
“Sometimes I talk before thinking.” A deeper colour decorates her cheeks, turning them a shade closer to the card in my hand.
“Don’t ever stop talking. But now, tell me something. Somethin’ I’ve been dying to know since the first letter. Why become a pen pal to an inmate of all people?”
What are you hiding?
Some of that red pales, which is…interesting. Very telling. There’s a flash of discomfort as she sucks in her teeth and glances at the guard and back.
Careful now. Show your hand too early and it’ll all come crashing down.
Aspen has just made herself more intriguing. Especially when she so clearly lies by answering, “It felt right.”
It led you to me, so of course it’s right. But it’s not the correct answer.
“So does shovelling your neighbour’s driveway, but you don’t seem like the girl who’d be writing letters to criminals.”
Her eyes flash upwards, sharp—defiant. Interesting. “What kind of girl do I look like?”
She’s fucking kidding, right? The kind who’d sneer at a place like this and run far, far away and not be hanging out with a man in prison who’s quite a bit older than her. If she knew what was good for her, that’s exactly what she’d be doing.