Chapter 5
Ava’s never been one to enjoy an early morning. The warm, heavy steam from the shower she exited tries to lull her back into a post-sleep doze. The room is cloaked in a thick haze while she ponders the three cups of coffee she’ll need to wake up and wipes a hand across the mirror to reveal her own reflection. Wet hair, flushed skin, and the ragged edges of her most prominent scar stare back at her.
It’s not the only mark on her body, not by a long shot, but this one sits deeper than anything John left behind. Most of his scars reside on the inside. The ones he put on her skin are easy to hide, if not so easy to forget.
The small cigarette burns on her stomach clustered in a group.
The lashes across her lower back from the one night he’d gotten drunk enough to attempt that.
The burn on her upper arm from the stove.
None of it holds a candle to the horrific reminder she’s looking at now. At least six inches long, from the top of one breast down to the underside of the opposite one in a gruesome arc. She can still feel the bite of glass on her skin. The panic left behind still simmers under the surface, ready to spring forward again at a moment’s notice, never having healed completely like the wound on her body did.
Usually, she tries not to think about it. Even succeeded in blocking that day from her nightmares with the help of sleeping pills that knock her out cold every night, leaving nothing in her mind except a drug-induced fog. No room for dreams to fester.
Only now, since the incident with Dean in the infirmary, it’s all she can think about.
She wanted to explain herself, make him understand why she lost it so completely that she almost needed someone to scoop her up off the floor. He has no idea how easily he could have been someone else at that moment. Someone who didn’t put his own cuffs back on when they were loose. Someone who took advantage of the situation and nearly killed her in the process.
He can’t know that’s exactly what gave her this faded, brutal scar.
She is still alive, though. She made it through that day. The relief that flooded her when Dean secured himself back to the rail rivaled a similar feeling that had rushed up like a tidal wave so long ago. When she was bleeding out on the infirmary floor and realized she was still breathing.
She hadn’t had a chance to explain anything to him. Not that she even could because talking about it never comes easy, especially to someone she barely knows and only newly trusts. She couldn’t even tell Lori the details. Had to shove it all inside to move forward, which is a thing she’s gotten good at. Every awful memory has its place in the back of her mind. John, the car accident, that day in the infirmary. She is skilled at padlocking those compartments and tossing away the keys, at least until something new wrenches them open.
No matter how much he deserves an explanation for her behavior, and she does think he’s earned one, she can’t give that just yet. Maybe not ever.
Dean is easy to talk to, though. Gruff and quiet, but there is something about him that makes her want to share and that’s only gotten worse now that a small thread of trust has bloomed between them.
Her fingertips trace the lines of that long-healed wound from one end to the opposite, her mind drifting. It’s all too easy to let her hand shift enough to cup the weight of one small, soft breast. Her thumb flicks over the pink nipple, her expression impassive as she watches herself in the mirror. Would he touch her softly like this? Would his calloused hands be rough or gentle on her skin? Would he be disgusted by the marks littering her body?
As quickly as those questions form, she shakes them off, her hand falling away and a scowl forming as she grabs her clothes. She’s not doing herself any damn favors daydreaming about this man.
He’s unavailable in the most obvious sense of the word. Probably not interested. How could he be? And he is in prison.
Doesn’t matter anyway since she has no intention of letting anyone touch her like that ever again.
She scolds herself for being ridiculous and makes a mental date with her vibrator for later that night to work off some of this excess arousal that’s cropped up out of nowhere. It’s unwelcome and obnoxious, but she would rather be horny than ruminate on her past.
She absolutely won’t be thinking about Dean while she’s using it. Not even for a second. She’ll pull up a mental image of some faceless, nameless person. An attractive celebrity perhaps, one of the Chris’. Hemsworth or Pratt or who the hell even knows, they all look the same, but fantasizing about someone like that would be mundane and safe, and doing the same thing with Dean’s face behind her eyelids is the opposite of safe.
It doesn’t mean anything anyway; she tells herself. Something the voice in her head has said more often than she’s comfortable with since meeting him.
“He’s attractive. He’s got nice arms. He’s a good person…I think….no, he is….it’s natural to have the occasional dirty thought about a man I can’t have.” She mumbles to herself as the blow dryer whips hot air through her hair. “Completely natural. It’s fine.”
* * *
There are cupcakes in the break room. Ava knows because she ate one while watching Nick suck down three. So when he brings Dean into the infirmary and turns on his heel to wander away, she knows exactly where he’s headed off too. The temptation of just one more cupcake is hard to resist.
Dean greets her with a shy smile like he’s not quite sure where they stand with each other now. It’s the first time they’ve been alone together since the last visit ended in a panic attack on her end and confused but sincere reassurance on his.
She meant it when she told him he gained trust points with the choices he made and she wants more than anything to ease any doubts he might have now. Make things as comfortable as they can be again.
Her own thoughts from earlier that day choose this moment to creep up. Reminding her that she’d touched herself, however briefly, and thought of him. Her cheeks feel warm and her words stutter when she greets him, her reaction earning a slight frown in return.
This isn’t her. She’s not the type to stammer or blush, she does much better at being the one to tease and flirt, on the off chance she gathers the confidence to try, but today the tables are turned and it’s all her own doing. She has to get a handle on her wandering thoughts, she thinks as she inspects his injuries. They look better every time she sees him and he seems relatively normal these days, but the growl from his stomach makes her pause, with a tilt of her head. “Are they feeding you in there?”
He nods too quickly, another growl louder than before betraying his words. “Yeah. It’s fine. I’m fine.”
Well, that was convincing. She doesn’t believe it for a second. “I know it’s only twice a day and that can be rough. Were you able to set up a commissary account?”
She’s only trying to help because he looks starved. His stomach has growled several times since he arrived and his eyes are unfocused and glassy, fingers fidgety, and skin warm. All signs of low blood sugar, at the very least.
He seems frustrated by her question, shaking his head with a shrug. “That ain’t it. Food from the cafeteria is fine, I got there late and missed my chance.”
She’s about to interrupt and tell him that’s completely unacceptable because by law, they’re supposed to make sure he has two meals per day regardless of being late, but he cuts her off before she can, clearly wanting to avoid this subject.
“It’s complicated. I’ll be okay.”
Complicated.
She turns that word over a few times, figuring it to mean that his lack of a meal has nothing to do with the guards and everything to do with his fellow prisoners. She’s heard of things like this happening, where one group will starve another, but she hoped that Dean was in the clear. That after his first encounter, he’d be left alone.
He doesn’t seem like the type to be a consistent target. Those are often weak and small and eager to fit in where they never will. The others can smell it on them like blood in shark-infested waters. None of that describes Dean, who she suspects doesn’t give a shit about fitting in and looks strong enough to hold his own, provided he’s not up against a group.
Ava sighs, frustrated at her inability to do much about this. She wants to ask him how long it’s been since he’s eaten anything, but decides against it because he may not tell her and she’s wasting precious time, anyway.
Nick is often good for at least fifteen minutes uninterrupted and they’ve already flown through eight, maybe ten. Cutting it close. She ignores all the warning bells in her head that tell her this is a bad idea and walks the two steps across the room to her bag.
The granola bar in her hand feels like contraband the moment she touches it. She unwraps it and holds the food out to Dean.
He’s looking at her like she’s lost her damn mind and maybe she has, but he’s hungry and he won’t get anything back in the pod tonight. He doesn’t deserve to suffer this much. At least she doesn’t think he does. She can’t be entirely sure yet.
She’s been tempted to ask Greg what landed him in prison in the first place. Her curiosity almost got the better of her, but she managed to keep herself in check. It would feel like a violation of his privacy to snoop and she’d rather he tell her himself. If and when he feels ready.
“No. Gonna get you in trouble. I can’t,” he says with a mournful look toward the food.
“I know the risks. We’ve got at least five minutes left and I can always hear Nick’s shoes on the floor before he comes in. It’s okay. You can take it.”
He looks at the bar again and back up at her, wrestling with this choice. He’s refusing only because he’s worried about her job, which only makes her want him to take it even more. “No one will know, and no strings attached. I promise.”
That did the trick. He takes it a second later with a soft ‘thank you’ before inhaling it on the spot. She wishes she had more to offer, but one is better than nothing. By the time she’s tossed the wrapper away and he’s finished off the last bite, he already looks more focused and the growling has stopped, even if there’s a tint of shame at having to accept her help.
“My neighbor’s cat had kittens last week,” she tells him, completely out of the blue, in a clumsy effort to change the subject. Who knows, maybe she’ll get lucky and he’s a cat person.
“Yeah? You takin’ one?”
“No. I can’t be trusted with a pet. I can’t keep a plant alive. But look, they’re cute and fat and I took a hundred photos of them.”
She grabs her phone off the counter and pulls up pictures of the tiny fluff balls, holding it up to Dean so he can see, his forefinger reaching out and scrolling through them.
She’s closer to him now than she’s ever been. Even when she showed him her car, she stepped back until he was finished, but now she lingers right there, only a step away. It’s an effort to prove to him and to herself that she’s not afraid, and also because she wants to.
“They look like cows,” he says, more than a little amused. She’s fed him and made him smile…sort of. This feels like a solid victory.
The babies do look like cows. Six white kittens with black spots, fluffy fur, and half-open eyes.
The slide show is cut short when Nick’s footsteps sound heavy on the tiles and she tucks her phone into her pocket again. He escorts Dean back out and her heart squeezes at the thought of him not eating a damn thing until she sees him again in two days.