Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Three
G abriel sat on his bunk and watched the sun creep in through the window as the sink dripped. He’d listened to that drip for more years than he could remember. It was there at night when he went to sleep, and it was there in the morning when he woke up.
When it had first started it had been an irritation, one that had only deepened when he’d realized the prison had no intention of fixing it. Alex had complained about it bitterly when he’d arrived, about how the constant repetitive noise made it impossible to sleep or think or breathe without feeling like insanity was one splash away and stored just inside the eardrums.
Gabriel wasn’t sure at all how he would be able to sleep without it now. Like everything else about this place, it had slowly gone from something he hated, to something he tolerated, to something that was simply there. They all hated it, groaned about it, wished they could be somewhere else, but those like him who had known that this was all there’d ever be, were resigned to the inevitability of it.
He’d hoped to get out someday, but he hadn’t expected it to be today. Maybe in a year or five, when he would’ve more time to prepare for his life after prison.
He still wasn’t sure he believed there was actually going to be an after. Would the guards come to his cell to release him in a few hours like they’d promised, or would they come to tell him that it had been a mistake? Or a dream?
He thought he remembered it clearly. Walking into the courtroom with his hands and ankles chained and the shame of having Mia and her family, her friends see him that way. Seeing Brittany and Michael and the others as they’d all sat in that fucking witness box and paraded his sins and his failures out into the light for everyone to see.
Brittany and the child they’d lost. Richard. Seth. Hugh and the blood he’d never managed to wash off his conscience.
He hated that Mia had been there to hear it, but he’d known he couldn’t keep her away. When he’d asked Amy to try and talk her out of it, she’d laughed in his face. Nothing kept Mia from doing what she wanted to do, what she thought was right and, in the end, he’d been glad she’d been there when the judge had asked him to stand and read him the sentence that would change his life.
The first time, when he was too young to understand the cost of it as they’d taken his life away, he’d been numb with nothing left to lose. This time, there was Mia. The judge had given him a chance to live, but Mia had given him a reason.
He tried to silence the part of him that feared she might not come today, and he would walk out the doors to an empty parking lot and a bus that would carry him away from here and to nothing. Maybe she, too, had expected years longer to prepare and she just wouldn’t be ready.
The worry kept his mind occupied as they came to get him and his small box of personal items from his cell and escorted him to the small area where they did out-processing. He was given a change of clothes—a plain white T-shirt and inexpensive jeans—and an envelope with two crisp hundred dollar bills and a few fives and ones that the small woman behind the desk explained was the remainder of what had been in his commissary account.
“There will be someone here to pick you up? So, you won’t need a bus ticket or a ride to the station, right?” She was curt, not looking at him as she processed his paperwork.
He swallowed hard, hands shaking as he considered what would happen if she didn’t come. “She’s supposed to be … I mean, she said she would …” He trailed off, swallowing again when the woman pierced him with an impatient look. “Yes,” he said, more firmly. “Yes, someone is coming.”
She nodded, signing the last form in the stack with a flourish. “You’ll be escorted out the front and you’ll need to leave the premises immediately.”
He nodded, handing over his prison garb and picking up the box containing all of the evidence of the last thirteen years of his life—some art and letters from Mia. He was supposed to get his personal items back, the things that he’d had on him when he was arrested, but they shrugged at him, and he knew the only thing that he’d had in his pockets that night was a knife, and it would stay locked up as evidence in some vault owned by the state of Texas.
He followed the guard out and down the endless passageway, each set of doors that he passed through clanging shut behind him with the same feeling of finality that he’d had when he’d first come in.
It should have been liberating, but it made his knees quake.
The guard barely waited for him to be fully through the last set of doors before pulling it closed with a click and he walked out of the prison and into the bright light of mid-afternoon. There were no chains on his wrists and the jeans they’d given him felt odd and tight around his waist after so many years of wearing nothing but loose jumpsuits. He scanned the parking lot and pushed a hand through his hair as he tried to figure out what to do next. The erratic racing beat of his heart echoed in his ears, drowning out the sounds of birds in the trees and the far-off bark of a dog. He pushed back against a rising panic, a feeling of disconnectedness that started in his ears and spread until it reached his fingers and his toes. He didn’t know what to do. Or where to go. He couldn’t go back inside and he couldn’t breathe …
And then she was there, standing on the other side of the small driveway between the sidewalk and the first row of parked cars, wearing a pretty blue sundress and a smile. He flexed his fingers at his sides as the feeling returned to them and watched as she shifted uneasily from foot to foot, bottom lip caught between the white of her teeth.
There’d always been something between them—guards, handcuffs, walls—and despite all of the times he’d told her that he couldn’t wait to find out what she tasted like or see her pretty little body spread out under his, it suddenly seemed like nothing more than an impossible fantasy. How could he do that, when he couldn’t even cross the distance between them now?
She took half a tentative step forward and he did the only thing he could think to do, the thing he had done the first time she’d come to visit him, and she'd been looking at him with eagerness and uncertainty. He opened his arms and waited.
There was a quick flick of a glance, right then left as she looked for cars passing in the parking lot, then she bolted, her feet crossing the space in three loose-limbed, bounding steps before she flung herself into his chest with such force that he took a step back to steady them as his arms came around her to catch and hold.
She stayed there for several heartbeats, her face pressed against his chest as they took in each other’s familiar warmth and comforting smells, but it was no longer enough and when she tipped back her head and looked up at him with wide wet eyes full of joy and pink lips parted in welcome, there was nothing he could do but press his mouth to hers.
When he’d imagined this moment, he’d expected it to be soft and tender, but she met his kiss with an enthusiasm that surprised him. There was inexperience in the way she fit against him, her hands coming up to grip his face and hold him steady as she pressed her mouth to his just a little too hard, lips barely parted, but he pulled her close and wiggled his head to settle against her mouth more comfortably.
There would be time for her to learn the finer points of kissing and for him to discover the taste of her but for now all that mattered was that he could hold her for as long as he wanted and feel the soft shape of her in his arms and the soft pliability of her lips, and smell of the sweet floral fragrance of her perfume in air that didn’t carry the faint traces of bleach and sweat.
He pulled away, rubbing his cheek on her hair as she laughed wetly and wiped the tears from her cheeks. The trembling smile she gave him was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and he wanted to spend the rest of his life kissing her, but there were better places than here to do that.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand and leading him across the parking lot. “Let’s go home.”
Home.
Did she consider her home to be his? Would he be staying with her now that he didn’t have to stay here?
The suddenness of it all left him with many questions that they hadn’t had time to discuss and he waited until he’d settled into the passenger seat of her little blue sedan to ask her.
“Is that where we’re going? Your apartment?”
She looked at him quizzically, reaching for his hand as she turned out of the parking lot and onto the open highway. It was rural and there wasn’t much to see, but he found himself watching the window at the sights of passing fields and cows as much as he did her perfectly freckled nose as she answered him.
“Unless there’s somewhere else you’d rather go?” she asked, her brows drawing together with sudden uncertainty.
“No,” he said quickly. “We hadn’t talked about it, and I didn’t want to assume. I wasn’t sure how your dad would feel about me going there.”
She frowned, mouth twisting on a grimace and cheeks pinking. “He’s not going to be thrilled with every decision I make but if you want to be with me then I want you there.”
He caught the hesitation, the quick uncertain glance. “Mia,” he said quietly, pressing her knuckles to his lips for a kiss that lingered. “There is nowhere I would rather be than with you.”
“Good.” She smiled, setting back in her seat, and relaxing just a bit. “We’ll have to hide you just a bit for a while since you aren’t on my lease but if I pick up some overtime shifts before the lease expires, I’ll have enough saved up for us to move when it runs out.”
“Is your apartment not big enough?”
She pulled up to a stop sign, making a show of looking both ways as she subtly avoided his question.
“Mia?”
“It’s big enough,” she said. “But we need a place where we can put you on the lease. You’re not really supposed to have people there that aren’t because most places don’t want anyone living there who hasn’t passed a background check. For the safety of the other residents, you know?”
“Background check,” he repeated slowly. “So, they won’t put me on the lease at your apartment, even if I have a job by then, because …”
“Because you have a felony on your record,” she said when his question went unfinished. “It doesn’t matter which kind.”
“I see.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, her smile overbright. “There are places that let people with felonies move in and we’ll find one.”
“You’re going to move into an apartment complex where all the people who just got out of prison live because they can’t live anywhere else?”
“Yes,” she said. “And, yes, it’s probably slightly more dangerous than my current complex because most of the people that run them look the other way on pretty much anything if you can afford the ridiculous amount that they charge for rent but eventually we’ll buy a house and then it’ll be fine.”
“It’s okay,” he agreed. “We can buy a house.”
“Exactly,” she said, giving him a vigorous and determined nod. “It may take some time on what I make, probably not until after I finish school and get a better job, actually, but it’s not impossible.”
“Why would we be doing it only on the money you make?” he asked, forgetting momentarily what he had been about to tell her.
She swallowed and squeezed his hand. “Probably not entirely but … Well, it’s just that it can be hard to get a job with a felony on your record, that’s all. I don’t want you to feel pressured or think I’m going to be mad if it takes a while for you to find something. You should take some time to adjust, anyway. Watch some movies. Eat some ice cream, cookies, and McDonald’s.”
He sat up straighter in his seat, distracted by the endless possibilities. “Can we?”
“Can we what?”
“Eat McDonald’s? Or whatever? Just something that’s not prison food?”
“Sure, there’s a bunch of places that we can stop between here and my … our … apartment.”
Twenty minutes later he was peeling the wrapper off a cheeseburger and sipping Coke through a cheap plastic straw. She’d gone through the drive through, deciding not to go in because she didn’t want the first place he went as a free man to be the inside of a greasy fast-food restaurant. Instead, she’d set the bag in his lap and handed him his cup and the straws as she’d driven down the street to a small green park where she’d kissed him again, more softly, in the shade of a big tree at the edge of the parking lot before they’d settled in at a concrete picnic table. The air smelled of French fry grease, summer heat and freshly cut grass, simple luxuries that he’d thought he’d never experience again. It took all of his restraint to not lie down on the ground at their feet and stay there all day as the sun crept over his body.
“I can’t believe you’re actually here,” she said. She was nibbling on her food but she hadn’t taken her eyes off his face. “It doesn’t seem possible.”
“I’m here because you gave me hope and a reason to fight for my life when I got the chance. I’m going to take care of you,” he promised. “I’m going to give you every single thing you’ve ever wanted and love you for the rest of your life.”
“I know.”
“I mean it,” he insisted. “I’m going to buy you a house and pay for your school and anything else you need. I don’t ever want you to have to worry about anything.”
Her brows creased and she stared down at a line of ants parading across the tabletop, collecting what they could from a spilled drop of red liquid from someone else’s lunch. “Don’t put that kind of pressure on yourself. Our future isn’t going to be easy and we’ll probably spend more time eating ramen than McDonald’s, but we’ll figure it out together.”
He reached for her hand, wrapping his fingers around hers and caressing the knuckles with his thumb. “My mother figured it out for us.”
She looked up, teeth nipping down on the bottom lip that he still wanted to run his tongue over. She deserved more than what he had to give, she deserved everything, but knowing that she would have been willing to live with so much less made him all the more eager to give it to her. “Lilah?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“I talked to Amy this morning and apparently my grandfather left me a trust fund that Mom never bothered to tell me about. Now that I’m an adult and out of prison, it’s mine.”
“She was going to let you rot without a lawyer when you had money that was rightfully yours?” There was a bitter spark in her eyes and her mouth was pressed in a thin and hostile line.
“Amy was just as shocked when Lilah asked her to pass along the information to me, but I’m honestly not surprised. Mother doesn’t see the world in shades of gray. It’s either right or it’s wrong. I’ve almost always been wrong as far as she was concerned.”
“That’s not how a mother should behave,” Mia said hotly. “She should be on your side, helping you, protecting you. If she had been, things might have been different.”
“They might,” he agreed. “But they weren’t and now I’m out and I’ve got you and my money to take care of you.” He threw back his head and laughed. “We’ve got a trust fund, baby!”