Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71444 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 357(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 238(@300wpm)
“You sleep well?” I ask Hyde.
“Yeah,” he answers gruffly. “Fuck yeah.”
He’s bleary-eyed but not tired like his sleep was too long and too deep, and he’s struggling to return to the land of the living. I like the idea of wrapping myself around Lory and burying my face in her sweet-smelling hair. I love the idea of burying my dick deep inside her and holding it there for hours, just warming it. Maybe I’ll get the chance tonight.
“She good with what you did?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says again. “She’s cool.”
“So, you think she’ll be okay with taking things further?”
Rock lowers his coffee and licks his lips. They both know what I’m asking. Is fucking on the agenda? My dick is impatiently stiffening between my legs.
“She’ll be okay.” Hyde rubs his scorpion tattoo so hard it’s as though he wants to erase it from his skin.
“And you?”
“Yeah.” His eye twitches, and he rubs it, licking his tongue over his teeth. He’s still a murky green, but his eyes have a brighter edge like the rim of the sun peeking around the moon during an eclipse. “Yeah. I’ll be good.”
Maybe I was right about Lory’s ability to bring him back.
When Lory appears, the atmosphere shifts again. She smells like regulation shampoo and soap, but in her Grady-donated clothes, she looks more like the girl every man wishes lived next door. She tugs at the hem of her blue shirt like it doesn’t fit her how she’d like. My mind fills with thoughts of stripping off those clothes and making her filthy again. My cock is like a frigging homing pigeon for her cunt, but I don’t want to spook her. Our patience is paying off.
We eat cereal together and talk about our ideal breakfasts. Mine involves sausage, bacon, eggs, fried tomatoes, and mushrooms. Rock likes an omelet with everything in it.
“Buttermilk pancakes with blueberries and maple syrup,” Hyde says, almost dreamily. “What about you, Sunshine?”
The nickname is new, so maybe they did bond. Maybe she really is okay.
Lory considers, pursing her pretty lips and staring up at the ceiling. “It’s got to be yogurt and berries. I just love the really thick stuff. Full fat.”
For all of us, it’s basically anything that isn’t what we’re being forced to stomach.
I watch as Lory laughs at Rock’s attempts at humor and listens intently to Hyde’s childhood story. She has a way of focusing her dark eyes on a person and giving them her entire attention.
We pass the time the best way we can. I teach Lory a card game I learned from another inmate years ago to distract her from where we are and what she’s here to do for us. Rock takes it upon himself to keep things light, cracking jokes. Hyde stays close to her, but he’s different today—quieter, more introspective. I catch him watching her when he thinks no one is looking, his expression softening in a way that makes my chest tighten with a mix of hope and fear. At one point, he tugs her into his lap and feeds her little bites of bread slathered with peanut butter. It’s hardly gourmet, but she opens her pretty lips for each offered bite and smiles softly when he wipes a fleck of peanut butter from her lips and licks it from his finger. They remind me of high school kids fooling around in the cafeteria.
We’re walking a tightrope, all of us trapped together, but Hyde is doing better than I could have hoped.
When I check the clock on the wall and find it’s eleven am, I can’t wait any longer.
Lory’s sitting across from me, and she must sense the increased intensity of my gaze because she shifts in her seat, and then her eyes dart to the open door of the room she shared with Hyde last night.
She knows what’s coming.
And she licks her lips.
“Lory, want to come with me?” I make it a question, but I’m sure she hears it as an order. She could say no, sure. But she won’t get paid for that.
I wish it wasn’t resting like a wedge between us. In another world, in another lifetime, I wish I could have met this girl in a bar or at a supermarket, taken her home, and shown her a good time. We could have dated, and maybe more. It’s easy to imagine how a man could fall in love with a sweet girl like Lory, and I’m not a man who’s ever been in love. I don’t remember what loving or being loved is like. Respect, I understand. Friendship, I get. But love? It’s something that exists in books and movies and for people with fewer boulders weighing them down.
It’s for people who are free enough to let go of their hearts.
I hold on to every single protection mechanism I’ve developed. I sleep with one eye open and the rattling of suspicion in my ears.