Chapter 18 #2
I take a long sip of wine. The cheese plate is beautiful and I haven't touched it.
"Work is... complicated."
"Complicated how?"
I think about everything I can't say. The day room.
His fingers inside me. The kiss that made me forget cameras exist. Gage's mouth on mine in a parking lot, his hand on my neck, and the way he pulled back like it cost him something he couldn't name.
The letter on my kitchen counter and Hudson's gray eyes in the corridor.
"They're building a case against me. The facility. They think I've gotten too close to one of the patients."
"Have you?"
The question hangs there. Mishel's face is open, curious, without judgment. She's asked me about boys since we were twelve years old, and she's never once made me feel bad about an answer.
"Yes," I say.
She nods slowly. Sips her wine. "Okay. When you say close, do you mean like... close close? Like, feelings close?"
"Yes."
"Hope." She sets her glass down. "Is that even safe? Has he hurt people?"
"He's a patient. Maximum security. Convicted of—" I stop. Shake my head. "It doesn't matter what he's convicted of. What matters is that I was supposed to be neutral, and I'm not."
"It matters a little bit, babe. It matters if he could hurt you."
"I don't think he would."
"You don't think—"
"He's had chances, Mish. Dozens of them. We've been alone together, he's been close enough to—" I stop again because I can hear how it sounds. "He's never once made me feel unsafe. Not for a second."
She watches me for a long moment, chewing the inside of her cheek the way she does when she's deciding whether to push harder or let it go.
"Is he good to you?"
"He is. In ways I didn't know I wanted."
Mishel sets down her wine glass. Leans forward.
"Hope. I've known you since we were kids.
I watched you organize your Barbies by career path.
I watched you study for tests that weren't happening for three months.
I watched you become this terrifying, competent, professional person while I was still figuring out how to pay my electric bill on time. "
"Mish—"
"Let me finish." Her voice is firm. "In all that time, in all those years of watching you be perfect at everything, I have never once seen you do something that wasn't thought through.
So if you're telling me you got close to someone you shouldn't have gotten close to, I'm guessing you have reasons. Real ones. Not just feelings."
My throat tightens.
"He's not what the file says he is," I say quietly. "The facility—they're not treating him. They're punishing him. Nobody notices, nobody cares. I walked in there to do a job and ended up seeing him as a person. And now I can't unsee it."
"Okay." Mishel pulls her legs tighter under her. "But how does that even work? Stolen moments in a psych ward? That's not a relationship, girl, that's a hostage situation with feelings."
"His lawyer is trying to get him out. There's a real case, a real path. It's not—it's not impossible."
"So there's a future in this. Potentially."
"Potentially."
She's quiet for a moment. Then: "You said the lawyer's involved. What's he like?"
I take a long sip of wine. "Tall. Sharp. Irritatingly attractive."
Mishel's eyebrows climb. "Hope."
"And the security guard at the facility took me on a date last week and kissed me in a parking lot."
She stares at me. Her wine glass hovers halfway to her mouth.
"I'm sorry—the guard? So there's the patient, the lawyer, and a guard?"
"I'll tell you more when I've worked it out."
"When you've worked it out." She sets her glass down and presses both hands to her face. "Hope Turner, you've had three dates in the last two years and now you're telling me there are three men?"
"Potentially, three men. Can we talk about something else?"
"Absolutely not. Gah fine. For now." She drops her hands and reaches for mine, squeezing hard. "Just promise me you're eating actual food and sleeping actual hours and not burning yourself down for a system that doesn't deserve you."
"The system is what I'm fighting."
"I know. And God help them all." She grins. "Because I've seen you fight, Hope Turner, and you don't lose."
I drive home with the cheese plate Mishel insisted I take and the warmth of a glass of wine still in my chest. The apartment is dark when I unlock the door, and the letter is waiting on the kitchen counter where I left it.
I pick it up, read it one more time.
I think about Hudson's gray eyes. About the way he mentioned my accident, my diagnosis, as if he'd been saving them for exactly the right moment.
I think about Jude in isolation, sedated for a week because a guard threatened me and he responded.
I think about Gage, and Kent's voice on the phone.
Then I sit down at my kitchen table, I open my laptop and I start typing.
Week thirteen's supplemental report. Additional documentation of protocol violations observed during routine monitoring. Cross-referenced with facility records obtained through proper channels.
Let them build their file. I'll keep building mine.
One of us is right, and it isn't them.