Kai
The floor is cold enough to seep into my bones, concrete biting through the thin fabric of the prison issue trousers until my knees ache and my spine feels like it’s grinding itself down to dust. I sit there anyway.
Back against the bed. Legs bent. Head tipped forward like I’m praying to something I stopped believing in a long time ago.
The letters are everywhere.
Not neatly stacked. Not organised. I don’t treat them gently anymore. They’re scattered across the floor in a mess of white and creased corners, envelopes split open and torn apart, paper folded and unfolded so many times the words have started to ghost through from the other side.
RETURN TO SENDER.
RETURN TO SENDER.
RETURN TO SENDER.
Stamped in red. Over and over. Like a verdict that never stopped being read.
I pick one up and smooth it out with my thumb, slow, reverent, like if I touch it just right the ink might bleed back into something alive.
My handwriting stares up at me. Tight. Controlled. Careful. The kind of writing that pretends the man holding the pen isn’t unraveling at the edges.
Scarlett.
I always start with her name. Every letter. Every time. As if that one word is enough to tether me to the world outside these walls. As if saying it enough times might drag her back to me by sheer force of will.
My mouth moves silently, shaping it again now.
Scarlett.
I laugh under my breath. It comes out wrong. Cracked. There’s no humour in it. Just pressure.
“You kept them,” I mutter to the empty cell, to the concrete, to the cameras that pretend they aren’t watching. “You read them. You fucking had to.”
I know she did.
She can pretend she didn’t. She can swear she never opened a single one, that she sent them back unopened, untouched, unread, but I know her better than that. I know the way her fingers linger. I know how she can’t leave things unfinished. I know how guilt chews at her until she bleeds.
She read them.
She just couldn’t face answering.
I drag a hand down my face, palm rough against my skin, fingers catching in the stubble I stopped caring about months ago. My eyes burn, but I don’t blink. I won’t give my body the satisfaction of breaking without permission.
Four years.
Four years of steel bars and concrete and men who think violence makes them powerful. Four years of nights spent staring at the underside of a bunk, replaying the same moment over and over until it’s carved into me deeper than any scar.
Her in the courtroom.
Her voice.
Not shaking.
That’s the part that still gets me.
She didn’t shake.
She stood there in that borrowed dress, hands folded like she was bracing herself against the truth, eyes forward, chin lifted, and she lied about me like it was nothing. Like I wasn’t sitting ten feet away, wrists chained, chest wide open.
He killed him in cold blood.
I don’t know why he did it.
We weren’t ever really that close.
I bark out a laugh, sharp enough to hurt.
“Not that close,” I repeat, quietly. Like if I say it softly it might stop ripping me apart. “That’s what you went with?”
I pick up another letter. This one’s older. The paper’s softer from being handled too many times, edges curled, creased where I folded it into my pocket even though I knew it would never leave this place.
I would’ve died for you.
I remember writing that line. Sitting on the edge of the bunk, pen digging into the page so hard it almost tore through. My hand was steady. My chest wasn’t.
I still would.
I press the paper to my face and inhale, like it might still smell like her. Like ink and regret could somehow turn into skin and heat if I just try hard enough.
“You fucking loved me,” I whisper, the words leaking out like a confession meant for no one. “Don’t you dare pretend you didn’t.”
I loved you.
I fucking loved you.
Not in the way men talk about love when they want to soften it, make it small enough to hold without bleeding. I loved her in a way that ate me alive, that rewired something fundamental in my head, that made the world narrow until there was only her and the space she occupied.
I loved her so much it felt holy.
I loved her so much it felt like a curse.
The letters slide under my fingers as I shift, paper scraping softly against concrete. There must be twenty of them now. Maybe more. I stopped counting after the first year. Stopped pretending the number mattered.
Every one of them came back.
Every one of them rejected.
Like she was training me. Teaching me what it felt like to be unwanted, unheard, erased.
I tilt my head back against the wall and close my eyes, letting the sounds of the prison bleed in around me. Distant shouts. Metal clanging. Boots on concrete. Somewhere down the block, someone is laughing too loud, too manic, like he’s trying to convince himself he’s still alive.
“I waited,” I say to the ceiling. To her. To the memory of her mouth pressed into my shoulder when she thought no one was watching. “I waited for you to tell the truth.”
She never did.
She let me rot in here while she built a life on top of my grave.
A ring.
I picture it without trying. Gold band. Something safe. Something clean. Something that looks nothing like the way she used to curl into me in the dark, breathing like she was afraid someone might hear.
“You wear it like armour,” I murmur. “Like it’ll protect you from me.”
It won’t.
The thought settles in my chest, calm and heavy and certain.
I open my eyes and look down at the letters again, really look at them, spread out like evidence. Proof of devotion. Proof of obsession. Proof that no matter how many times she tried to send me away, I kept coming back.
“I didn’t stop,” I tell her, my voice low, intimate, meant only for the version of her that still lives in my head. “Not once. Not in here. Not ever.”
I press my knuckles into my mouth, biting down hard enough to feel it, to anchor myself to something real. Pain is honest. Pain doesn’t lie.
“I learned,” I go on, quieter now. “You should know that.”
I learned how to wait.
I learned how to watch without being seen.
I learned how to sit in a cage and sharpen myself into something patient enough to last.
I learned that love doesn’t disappear when you lock it up.
It mutates.
The guard walks past the bars, keys jangling, boots echoing, and I don’t look at him. I don’t need to. He’s temporary. He always was.
Scarlett isn’t.
I gather the letters slowly, deliberately, stacking them into a neat pile for the first time in years. I square the edges. Smooth them down. Treat them with care again.
“You think you ended it,” I whisper, my mouth curling into a smile that never quite reaches my eyes. “You think you won.”
I slide the stack under the mattress, out of sight but never out of reach.
“You should’ve killed me,” I add softly. “That day in court.”
Because now?
Now the door is going to open.
And I’m coming home.
The lights never really go out in here. They just dim enough to remind you that darkness is a privilege you don’t deserve.
I stay on the floor long after my legs go numb, long after the cold stops being something I notice and starts being something I am.
My back presses into the wall. My head knocks once, twice, against the concrete, not hard enough to knock myself out, just hard enough to feel it.
To remind myself I still exist. That I’m still here. That I didn’t imagine her.
I drag the letters back out from under the mattress again. I tell myself it’s the last time. It never is.
I spread them out in front of me, slow, methodical, like I’m laying out a body. Each one a piece of her. Each one a fucking insult.
“You didn’t even have the decency to open them,” I mutter, staring at the red stamps. My throat tightens. I swallow hard and keep going. “You couldn’t look at my words, but you could look at me while you destroyed me.”
I pick up another envelope and tear it open again even though it’s already ripped to shit, paper splitting under my fingers. I read the same lines I’ve read a hundred times.
I still dream about you.
I still wake up reaching for you.
I still believe you’ll tell the truth.
I snort, bitter and ugly. “Fucking idiot,” I tell myself. “That’s what loving you made me.”
My hand shakes as I drop the letter. I don’t let it stop. I won’t give my body the satisfaction of falling apart without my say-so.
I close my eyes and she’s there instantly, like she always is. Not the version she pretends to be now. Not the one in court. The real one. The one she never lets anyone see.
Scarlett on the edge of the bed, knees pulled to her chest, chewing on her thumb when she’s nervous. Scarlett whispering my name like it’s a sin. Scarlett gasping when I get too close, not because she wants me to stop, but because she wants me to keep going.
“You were never afraid of me,” I whisper, my voice rough, curling around the memory. “You were afraid of wanting me.”
That’s what eats at me the most. Not the lie. Not the sentence. Not the years stripped from my life and fed to this place.
It’s that she stood there and pretended I was nothing when I was fucking everything.
I slam my fist into the floor, pain cracking up my arm. It feels good. Honest. My knuckles throb, skin splitting, and I welcome it. Blood is easier to deal with than betrayal.
“I would’ve burned the world for you,” I snarl into the empty cell. “I would’ve killed for you and smiled while I did it. And you stood there and let them put me in a cage like I was disposable.”
My chest heaves. I press my forehead into my knees, teeth clenched so hard my jaw aches.
“You didn’t just lie,” I say, quieter now, deadlier. “You erased me.”
The noise in the block swells and fades. Someone shouts. Someone laughs. Someone cries. It all washes over me, meaningless.
None of them matter.
Only her.
I shift, dragging my back up the wall until I’m sitting again, spine straight, eyes burning. I pick up a letter from the middle of the pile. This one’s newer. The last one I sent before I stopped pretending she’d answer.
I know you’re wearing a ring.
My mouth twitches.
I remember writing that line, pen hovering for a long time before the ink touched the page. I remember the calm that settled over me when I finally wrote it down.
I knew.
I’d always know.
“You thought I wouldn’t find out?” I whisper, amusement threading through the anger. “You thought distance would protect you?”
I shake my head slowly.
“I see everything, Scarlett. Even from in here.”
I stand abruptly, the motion sharp enough to make my head spin. The cell feels too small. The walls too close. I pace once, twice, boots scraping, breath coming fast and heavy.
“I counted the days,” I tell the air, my hands flexing at my sides. “Every single fucking one. Not because I missed freedom. Because I missed you.”
Missed isn’t even the right word. Missed implies absence without ownership.
She was never absent from me.
She was everywhere. In my head. In my blood. In the way my body reacted when I imagined her mouth on someone else’s name.
The thought twists something ugly and hot in my gut.
“No one touches you,” I growl. “Not without paying.”
I stop pacing and stare at the bars, fingers curling around the cold metal. I lean my forehead against them, eyes shut, breath fogging the steel.
“You think I don’t know you’re unhappy,” I murmur. “You think I don’t hear it in the silence. In the way you disappeared from yourself.”
She built a life that doesn’t fit because she’s wearing it like penance.
Good.
She should suffer. Just a little. Just enough to remember what she did.
I push off the bars and drop back to the floor, grabbing the letters again, clutching them to my chest this time, crushing them against my ribs like they might crawl inside me if I hold on tight enough.
“I didn’t stop loving you in here,” I say, my voice breaking for the first time, just a fracture, just a slip. “I perfected it.”
I learned how to turn it into something quiet. Something patient. Something that doesn’t rush or beg or hope.
Hope is for men who still believe they’ll be saved.
I know better.
The intercom crackles overhead, announcing count. My time is coming. I can feel it in my bones. In the way my pulse slows instead of racing.
Soon.
I slide the letters back under the mattress again, slower this time, deliberate. I wipe the blood from my knuckles on my trousers and don’t bother hiding it.
I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling, hands folded on my chest like I’m already dead.
“I loved you,” I whisper, letting the words rot in my mouth. “I fucking loved you.”
The smile that spreads across my face is wrong. Calm. Certain.
“And you’re going to remember that.”
Soon.
Very fucking soon.