cell, he felt his body clench. It was too good to be true. They knew. They had to know all the evil he had committed within the walls of this soul sucking fortress. They must have known he didn’t deserve the other side.
Yet here he goddamn was.
Waiting.
He felt almost guilty. Not for leaving this shithole, but for leaving him. Dominic. His childhood friend who had helped him when it got too much. His childhood friend who was atoning for a crime he did not commit.
“You want to survive?” Dominic said, staring solemnly into Thames’ busted up face. “You need protection. You don’t make it far in here without protection, and protection comes at a cost. Nothing is free. You will always owe somebody here.”
It had been Thames’ first week at Blackwater Maximum Penitentiary, and the experience had been unsavoury to say the least. He was an immediate target, but he stood his ground and he knew never to let up, even if it meant being outnumbered by a group of skinheads.
He had never felt so inferior in his life. For once, his fists did not protect him from the world.
For once, being alone was not going to save him.
Protection came at a cost, and the cost was not going to end when Thames walked out of here. He had to remind himself that. He swallowed hard as he stared blankly at the empty wall.
Eight years penance. He served the full-term sentence. He lost his chance for parole when the prison yard had descended into premeditated chaos and he’d been caught on camera beating a man unconscious. He had had no choice. He remembered why he did it, but he didn’t remember tackling the man to the ground. What Thames did remember the most was looking up at the camera and wanting to die.
He had done so well leading up to that point. It was yet another cruel twist of fate. He couldn’t make it back to her. Out there, beyond the walls, she was living without him. Out there, time was bleeding by, and she was letting him go.
He told her to move on.
She must have by now.
He wished he could say he had stopped thinking about her. To say he had let her go over the years because it would have eased the heartache. Sadly, that was not the case. He breathed her in every time his lungs came up for air. She was his every waking thought, and if he was trying to think of something else, he felt her presence in the back of his mind, lingering like a ghost.
How was it possible to love somebody longer than you had been with them? He hadn’t seen her face in eight years, nor had he seen the face of the child they had excitedly prepared to bring into the world. He didn’t know if she still cared, didn’t know if she had been with anyone else, and yet she was still branded into what was left of his heart as fiercely as the day he met her.
He still wanted Charlotte Miles. He killed for her. Removed the demon from her life so she didn’t have to live in fear. He felt he had no choice at the time. He was violent, he was triggered, and he didn’t know how to contain himself.
The man today would have done things differently.
Jesus fuck. This loop of thought never stopped.
Thames swallowed again. This time the lump in his throat felt heavier. He wanted to cry. He wanted to cry because he knew it would ease the pain, but he didn’t think he could anymore. Only certain emotion was allowed here, and he learned long ago that to survive within these confines one had to be hard and callous. Yes, he had adapted well to letting certain parts of him die, and yet…he couldn’t remember the exact moment he let his soul go. He woke up one morning some years ago, and he was not the same man. That man fled somewhere in the darkness of the night, and he never felt him again.
Now, Conor Thames was just a shell. You didn’t have to look hard to see how hollow he was inside.
The holding cell unlocked. It was the sound of freedom. Once upon a time he had been pumped to hear it. This time he felt dread. He didn’t know what was waiting for him on the other side.
He didn’t know if he was strong enough to face it.