Chapter 8
Jude
Kent got me the day room.
Six weeks of swallowing the pill in Devina's paper cup.
Six weeks of Kennedy's office and the WORLD'S BEST THERAPIST mug and the careful stories fed at the pace his notes required.
Six weeks of corridor transfers where guards pressed into my shoulders and I kept my hands open, my mouth closed, and gave them nothing to report.
Hope's second monthly report delivered the argument Kent needed.
The patient's behavioral data supports transitioning supervised sessions to a less restrictive environment.
Assessment conducted exclusively within the patient's cell limits the clinical scope of independent monitoring.
Hudson's signature took eight days because refusing meant contradicting the notes Dr. Kennedy had written since the turn.
The day room sits at the end of the secure wing.
A few tables bolted to the floor. A few chairs.
A window, small and reinforced, facing an internal courtyard nobody uses.
Camera in the corner. Ankle cuffs threaded through a floor plate under the table, but my hands are free during a session because Hope told Hudson she couldn't file meaningful reports while the patient's upper body sat locked to furniture.
She's right. She also gave me range I haven't had since they locked me up and I don't think she's thought about what that means for a man built the way I'm built.
Gage stands at the door. Six feet from the table, arms folded against his chest. Nobody assigned him here. He chose it. The first time Hope walked through the day-room door he shifted from the observation booth to the doorframe and hasn't moved since.
She pulls her chair forward and sets her notebook on the table. Pen behind her right ear, cap facing back. A crease digs between her eyebrows.
"How do you like the day room?"
"Better than the cell."
"In what way?"
"It's bigger. A change of scenery is better than a vacation. Or so they say."
She laughs, opens to a fresh page and starts writing the date.
Under the table, her knee bumps mine.
She doesn't move it. Doesn't shift her weight, doesn't angle her chair. Her knee rests against my thigh through fabric and she writes the time.
I press back. A fraction.
Her calf slides against mine, slow, and my cock throbs hard enough to shift my breathing. She keeps writing. Same expression, same steady hand. Her leg presses into mine, and I'm harder than seven years of medication should allow.
Gage can't see under the table. He can see the half-second where her pen stopped and my posture changed, and the flat expression he wears when he's working tightens by a fraction.
He's watching her now. Not me. His eyes track Hope when she leans forward and follow her hand when she reaches for the chart. When she laughs his eyes stay on her a moment too long.
Her pen rolls off the table. It bounces off the edge and lands by my foot, under the chair. She pushes back from the table and comes around to my side, crouches next to me with one hand on the table edge for balance, reaching under my chair with the other.
The angle of her neck as she reaches. The soft skin at her nape, exposed where her hair falls forward. The smell of her—coconut and burnt coffee and skin. Gage at the door, turned to check the hall, a guard passing behind him, three seconds of inattention.
Two ways this ends. I wrap my hands around her throat, or I let her live. The want to kill usually overrides everything else. It has for twenty years, every room, everyone within reach.
Letting her live is new.
Her fingers find the pen. She sits up, tucks her hair behind her ear with her free hand.
"Sorry. Butterfingers today."
"Don't be. It's fine."
She goes back to her notes. Her pulse holds steady at the base of her throat.
Gage turns from the hall. His eyes find Hope first, then me. He holds my gaze for two seconds and I hold his. His hands tighten against his forearms and he doesn't look away from me for the rest of the session.
He can't get rid of me and I can't kill him without removing her protection. The cuffs on my ankles mean I can't walk her to her car or stand between her and whatever moves through this place after dark. He can.
Hope finishes her notes and stands. She smiles at me and gathers her notebook against her chest.
"I'll see you in a few days."
"Can't wait."
She leaves. Gage walks her out. The room smells like burnt coffee and coconut lotion.
A guard unlocks the floor plate and walks me back to my cell.
The quiet holds through supper, through the shift change, through the hours where Ward C shrinks to four cells and the low electronic drone of a wing that monitors everything and hears nothing.
I lie on the bed and think about her. The thought isn't just a memory; it's a physical weight in my chest, a fire low in my gut.
It started with her calf pressing back against mine under the table. A deliberate move. A silent fucking answer to a question I hadn't realized I'd asked.
Every detail from the day room. Her hair falling forward when she crouched beside my chair, the back of her neck exposed. The strip of skin above her collar where her pulse held steady, even with her body inches from mine.
I picture peeling that tight blouse from her shoulders, one button at a time.
The one she buttons one too high, hiding the shadow between her breasts.
I want to see her tits, full and heavy, spilling from a lace bra I just know she wears.
I imagine the weight of them in my hands, the feel of my thumb scraping across her nipple until it's a hard peak.
My hand moves before the thought finishes, a slow drag down my stomach to the thick ridge of my cock, already aching behind the rough fabric of my pants.
I wrap my fingers around the base of the shaft and the metal catches against my palm.
Eight rungs of surgical steel along the underside, cold against the heat of my skin.
The first stroke drags over each one and pulls a low groan from my chest I have to swallow.
I've been hard as stone since her leg pressed back against mine and she didn't pull away.
The fantasy shifts, sharpens. I'm fucking her on that table while Gage watches.
Her back pressed to the cold, unforgiving surface, her skirt hiked up to her waist. Her legs locked around my hips, pulling me deeper.
My hand is wrapped around her throat—not to hurt her, not really.
Just to hold her. To feel the frantic beat of her pulse against my thumb while she looks up at me with that same open, unafraid expression.
Her mouth. Her throat. I imagine the moans she'd make when I told her she was mine, when I buried my cock so deep inside her she saw stars.
My grip tightens on myself, my knuckles white.
My breathing changes, turning harsh and shallow in the silence of the cell.
I'm close, so fucking close. Behind my closed eyes, she's writhing underneath me, her head thrown back, her cunt slick and tight around me.
I can almost hear her, the sounds she'd make, spilling my name from those lips like a prayer.
"Jude," she'd gasp. "Oh fuck, Jude…"
My pace quickens, my hips starting to buck against my own hand. My balls draw tight. I see her face contorting with pleasure, her eyes rolling back as I pound into her, again and again.
Say my fucking name, Hope.
My breathing hitches. One more stroke and—
Voices outside my door.
My hand stops. The steel between me and the hall is three inches thick, and the guards who walk this wing believe it buys them privacy.
Good old Officer Rick. Wednesday night rotation. I know his voice well. His partner tonight is Justin, early fifties, a man who does his rounds and keeps his mouth shut because retirement is close enough to taste.
"—follow her to the parking lot." Rick's voice comes through flat, stripped of the friendly tone he wears for daylight. "She parks in the west section. Back row. No cameras past the dumpster enclosure."
Justin's boot scuffs the floor. "Rick."
"I'm not going to touch her, not really. I'm just going to talk to her. Remind her who signs off on corridor access. She didn't listen to my first friendly warning, maybe I need to be firmer this time."
"And if she writes that up?"
"What's she going to write? A colleague walked her to her car? I'm concerned about her safety. I'm being friendly." A pause. The rasp of a lighter. "Nolan's on board. Hudson won't say it out loud but he's done with the reports. All I need is for her to understand that this place has a memory."
Justin doesn't answer. His silence has weight. A man who has decided that what he's hearing isn't his problem as long as his name never touches the paperwork.
Their voices fade down the hall. Rick's boots heavier than Justin's. The checkpoint door opens and closes. The lock cycles and I'm alone with the buzz of the fluorescent.
Rick Dutton goes on the list. Not at the top. That position has been filled by the man who signs my medication orders. But high. Above Josh Cain.
Below Rick, one line down: Casey Robin.
Ward A. Mid-twenties. Dark hair, wide smile.
I've seen him four times through the transfer window.
Every time I passed he sat in the path she walks.
The bench near Ward B. The vending machine at the turn toward admin.
The magazine rack opposite the checkpoint.
His body angled toward whatever door she'd come through next.
His eyes patient and fixed on the space she'd fill.
I've watched him watch her walk past without turning her head.
She smiles at him the same way she smiles at everyone and keeps moving. She has no idea.
Casey disgusts me. Not morally—morality is a word people use when they want to dress up a preference—but technically. He's obvious. Compulsive. His mask has gaps a first-year psychology student could spot and the only reason the staff don't see it is because they're too busy watching me.
I run through what I know about her. Her aunt's name.
Her aunt's partners' names. Her best friend Mishel, the foster system and the caseworker who forgot the paperwork.
The instant coffee she defends with her whole chest. She gave me all of it in a single session without stopping to think about what a man with my history would do with names and routines and the people she loves.
She held one thing back. Her eyes shifted left and her thumb pressed harder against the pen barrel, she moved past it and I wanted what she kept more than anything she gave me.
Kent comes the next morning. He sits in the visitor chair, crosses his ankle over his knee, and skips the pleasantries.
"Dr. Hudson's pushing a twenty-percent sedation escalation."
I look at him.
"Clinical review next month. He's citing your recent Code White with Dane as justification.
Kennedy hasn't challenged it." Kent pauses.
"Her reports are the only thing standing between you and a dosage that puts you on the floor for sixteen hours a day.
The court liaison flagged her most recent audit as inconsistent with the proposed increase.
Hudson needs an incident to override her numbers. "
"I've given him nothing."
"I know. Keep it that way." He meets my eyes. "Stay flawless. Her reports are all we've got."
I bank the rage I have reserved for Rick in the same place I've put everything else. Behind the quiet that makes Devina's hands shake and Lane's eyes follow me down the hall.
"How long?"
"Five weeks to the review."
"And after?"
Kent uncrosses his leg. Leans forward, elbows on his knees. "After depends on how many clean reports she files between now and then, and whether Hudson finds a way to bury them."
He doesn't say what we both know. If they push her out, I lose the only person documenting what they do to me. If I let out my urges then her reports stop. Then Hudson will get to put me into a chemical coma.
"Five weeks," I say.
Kent stands. Buttons his jacket.
"I'll see you Thursday."
The door closes behind him. I stare at the ceiling. The fluorescent blinks in the corner.
Five weeks to the review. Five weeks of swallowing pills and answering Kennedy and keeping my hands open during transfers.
Rick Dutton doesn't have long. He just doesn't know it yet.