All of them pretty much ripped the room apart as they searched, uncaring about the mess that they were making.
All of them but one particular woman who took time cleaning up after herself as she ‘searched.’
Though, what she was searching for I didn’t know.
Her eyes skimmed over my books, her fingers trailing over the spines almost reverently.
I felt other things inside me clench at her obvious love of the books.
“Nothing,” I heard called by one of the guards.
“Same,” another one called.
One by one, they all called off their names and ‘nothing’ before all eyes settled on Blaise.
Blaise, who was staring at a photograph I had on the wall.
It wasn’t your usual type of photograph.
Honestly, had I known that she was going to be here, I would’ve torn it down.
But since I wasn’t given any warning, I hadn’t thought to take down the photo of Brees and me.
A photo taken about three weeks before it’d all gone down. A photo where we both appeared happy.
I hadn’t been happy. Even before the altercation with Blaise and him, I hadn’t liked him all that much.
He was a prick who thought his shit didn’t stink. He was also a prick who showed you one thing to your face and did something completely opposite when you weren’t there to keep an eye on him.
“Oh, that’s it then,” one of the guards said. “This was our last inspection.”
One of the guards started to pull out a sheet of paper and nodded once. “Except for bottom cells. Cells I’m not going anywhere near.”
The bottom cells weren’t that big of a deal anymore. But a long while ago they made the bottom area into the isolation cells, and in isolation, prisoners weren’t allowed to have anything in there with them. Not even a blanket or a sheet in case they tried to hang themselves while they were in there.
Which meant that there were none because unless a guard gave it to them, they weren’t going to have anything in those cells.
And guards didn’t rat other guards out. No matter what they did or didn’t do.
Though, I had a feeling Blaise was an exception to those rules.
“All right,” another guard said as he walked out.
The others followed until there was only Blaise.
But one guard, a big male guard that looked to have the hots for my woman—and in my head, she was my woman—stopped right outside the cell door.
“You got this from here?” the guard asked Blaise.
Blaise rose her hand in a lazy wave. “I want to ask him about this book.”
“I’ll be right outside.” He looked at me. “Don’t do anything funny.”
I gave him the deadest look I could muster, and he flinched.
I had no clue what he saw, but I had a feeling that it was what I felt.
And the anger, annoyance, and disgust with the situation I found myself in—had found myself in for all these fucking years—was really starting to get to me.
I was, for all intents and purposes, dead inside.
“I’ll be right out here,” the guard reiterated.
“I heard you the first time,” Blaise grumbled, sounding annoyed herself now.
She didn’t reciprocate the feelings that the other guard felt for her, and for some reason that made me feel intense satisfaction.
The moment the guard was ‘gone’ and we had as much privacy as one could in a jail cell in the middle of a federal prison, Blaise’s eyes turned to me.
There was no more aloofness to her face.
There was intense hunger. Hunger that I felt right back in regard to her.
She took a step toward me, not coming too close because the guard that still had us in his line of sight could still see me, and stared directly into my soul.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I wasn’t okay. I was slowly dying inside, day by day, and nobody even knew it.
“Fine,” I lied. “Why?”
She swallowed hard. “Because you don’t look like you’re doing okay. You look… defeated.”
I felt my spine stiffen. “I’m not fucking defeated.”
She grinned then. “Then don’t look it. Because, just between you and me, I’m trying as best I can here. When you fight and get in trouble, I can only do so much on my end. Eventually you’re going to either get really hurt, or do something I can’t fix. Like last week when you decided to beat the shit out of that guy for stealing your milk. I know you wanted the milk, and I know it’s a