could do the same. Webster wished he could just talk to him, let him know that he had a plan. Well, not so much a plan as a hail Mary but it was all he had. It was all either of them had.
Sweat dripped onto the concrete floor below as he lowered himself into another push-up. There wasn’t much else to do in the hole, and if Cy didn’t keep moving, he was going to start imagining things. Dark things. He couldn’t afford to let his imagination run away from him in this place. He’d seen too many men go in the hole a person and come out barely human. Solitary was designed to break people down.
There was no way to tell how much time had passed, but he suspected it wasn’t nearly as long as he imagined. Cy was grateful for the dull, flickering fluorescent light high overhead. In some prisons, there was no light at all, no sound. Just a man and his thoughts and silence so heavy it made the ears ring.
Not there, though. Nicky would have hated it there. The noise never stopped in the hallway, whether it was the hum of the electricity in the walls or the screaming of the other inmates as they slowly went mad from the time spent alone. It would have all been too much for his sensitive boy.
Cy flinched at the sound of metal scraping metal as a guard slid his meal tray through the slot in the door. He grimaced at the two slices of bread and watery oatmeal, but he ate it anyway, barely tasting it, far more worried about Nicky than he was about the food or even his own state of mind.
As he ate, he contemplated how quickly his priorities had changed. All Cy had cared about a month ago was getting out of prison in the next year and never looking back. Then Nicky had shown back up in his life and changed everything. Or maybe nothing had changed. Maybe Nicky had always been Cy’s to protect. As weird as it sounded, it felt true. Cy liked taking care of Nicky, and he loved how much Nicky wanted Cy to take care of him, even when he was fully capable of caring for himself. Or he would have been if the universe had any interest in fighting fair.
Cy had understood what he was signing on for by putting Thor out of commission, yet sacrificing his freedom for Nicky’s life had been the easiest decision he’d ever made. The moment he’d seen Nicky’s battered body, the garish purple fist-sized bruises overshadowing the finger and palm-shaped marks Cy had left himself, he’d known he had to do something drastic, had to let people know that touching what was his had consequences. And Nicky was his. Always had been. He’d live in this hellscape forever if it meant Nicky was protected.
But now that he was there, in the hole, there was no real way to know if Nicky was safe or not.
The sound of keys scraping against metal outside yanked Cy from his thoughts. When he saw Rogers in the doorway, he clenched his teeth so he didn’t say something that was liable to get him dead.
“How’s it going, inmate? When I heard you were in the SHU, I had to come see for myself. I thought maybe you’d finally taken out your revenge fantasy on your little boy toy cellmate. Imagine my surprise when I find out that you tried to kill his attacker instead.”
Cy didn’t speak, just drew his knees up, resting his elbows there so his hands were in plain view. He didn’t want Rogers to think there was anything threatening about his posture.
Rogers wandered the tiny cell, his hand on his weapon. “I don’t get it. I really don’t. That kid cost you twenty years, man. Twenty years and you decide to keep him as a pet?” Cy tracked Rogers as he spoke. “I mean, like I know you boys get horny in here, but you’d rather fuck him than finish him off? It don’t make no sense. Frankly, we’re baffled.”
Cy snorted. “Maybe it’s because I’m not the monster you think I am? Maybe it’s because, even at seventeen, I knew none of what happened to me was the fault of one six-year-old boy. You’re the ones who dangled him in front of me like a piece of raw meat, hoping I’d tear him apart. You act like we’re animals but what does