It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Danny knew he should be overcome with excitement right now. He should be envisioning what it was going to be like to have Leah in front of him again. Leah wrapped in his arms, laughing as he buried his face in her hair. The lilting sound of her voice as she assured him she was okay. That everyone was okay.
That he was going to be okay.
But so much had happened since he’d last seen her in that courtroom, and he just couldn’t reconcile that fantasy with his reality anymore. That sort of daydream didn’t belong here. It seemed too far-fetched, too unrealistic.
And idealism was a childish indulgence in this place.
For the first ten days after his arrival, Danny hadn’t been able to speak to anyone on the outside. Upon entering the facility, he had been told he wouldn’t have access to the phone lines or computers until his inmate account was set up; they said it would be activated shortly, and he had believed them.
He should have realized then how disgustingly na?ve he was.
Apparently, a ten-day wait was something to be grateful for; there were guys who claimed to have waited twice that long for their accounts to be activated. But hearing that information didn’t provide Danny with any consolation. It only made him angrier.
Ten f*cking days.
Ten days to program someone’s name into a computer. Ten days of knowing the people he loved were panicking over not having heard from him. Ten days of the walls closing in by the hour.
An interminable wait, simply to prove he was at their mercy. That he was just a number now. That his suffering meant nothing to anyone in charge.
On the fifth day, his cellmate Troy had offered to call Danny’s family to let them know he was waiting on his account to be set up.
Danny hadn’t been allowed to go inside the call room, and the knowledge that Troy was a few feet away with Leah’s voice in his ear was almost more unbearable than the first five days put together. When Troy returned, he told Danny she had appreciated the call and promised she’d pass the message along.
He wanted to ask how she had sounded. If she’d been crying. If she’d asked any questions about him. If she’d seemed relieved, or sad, or angry. He wanted to ask Troy to repeat every single thing she had said to him verbatim so Danny could memorize it.
But instead he had nodded and went back to his cell.
Troy’s call home should have provided him with some level of relief, but the next five days were somehow more excruciating than the first. The need to connect with someone from home had become a living thing, twisting and churning and clawing at his insides until it could be sated.
The first time Danny had been allowed to call Leah, his rush to explain the visiting instructions had overshadowed the brief respite brought on by her voice. Danny had been required to provide the Bureau of Prisons with a list of potential visitors, and in turn, each person would receive a packet in the mail. As soon as the forms were completed and sent back, the BOP would conduct a background check and either approve or deny the applicants. Danny would receive word when the process was complete, and then anyone who had received clearance would be permitted to visit.
He had also explained that his phone use was restricted to fifteen minutes a day with a cap of three hundred minutes per month, and that within those restrictions, he would have to divide his time between Gram, Jake, Tommy, and his family. Leah had told him not to worry, that she understood they wouldn’t be able to speak every day.
And then their conversation was cut off.
Fifteen minutes up. No warning. No countdown. Just a click, and then nothing.
He’d spent the rest of that day feeling completely unnerved instead of gratified.
He tried to be more aware of the time after that, but it was surprisingly easy to get lost within the confines of fifteen minutes. It happened almost every phone call—the abrupt disconnection when his time was up—and each time was just as unsettling as the first.
The ability to end a phone call with “good-bye” was a suddenly a luxury, something he hadn’t even anticipated losing because it was such a basic fundamental of life, he’d never even given it a second thought.
So many simple, every day privileges—gone.
He shouldn’t have been as shaken by this place as he was. Danny’s life had been far from easy, but he had always taken pride in his resiliency; never once had he succumbed to adversity. Never once did he give in to the struggle.
But in his life before this, there had always been something to throw his energy into. Some distraction. Some way for him to expend his suffering.
Here, there was nothing.
He had enrolled himself in classes, but they only occupied ninety minutes of his day. He checked books out of the library, but he couldn’t digest any of the words. Maybe it was because his thoughts were the only thing they couldn’t put restrictions on, but Danny found himself perpetually lost in his own mind.
He had no idea it could be such an ugly place.
Thoughts would creep in uninvited, wafting in as sinuously as smoke and choking him just as quickly: Jake making a poor decision that would cause the business to go under; Leah growing bitter and resentful—seeking solace in another man’s arms; Gram getting sick and dying before he was released.
Various horrors would flash through his mind like a slide show, over and over until he couldn’t reason through them anymore. He couldn’t determine what was real and what was fabricated, what was speculative and what was a guarantee.
Three weeks. Eighty-eight more to go.
He had no idea if this was part of the transition or if it would always be this way. Maybe his mind would eventually run out of nightmares. Maybe he’d just grow numb to them.
Or maybe his thoughts would wear him down until he couldn’t remember who he was before this.
His lawyer had told him this place would be tolerable. Since the judge hadn’t deemed Danny a danger to society, part of the plea agreement stated he could serve his sentence in a minimum-security prison, and Danny had lost count of how many times his lawyer assured him minimum-security prisons were more like dormitories than correctional facilities.
He wished he’d never heard that goddamn comparison—or at least that he hadn’t been foolish enough to believe it.
There was nothing tolerable about this place. Nothing uplifting. Nothing redeeming. Nothing but the torturously unhurried passing of time.
He didn’t give a shit if there were no barbed-wire fences surrounding the property. It didn’t change the fact that he was living his life away from everything and everyone who mattered to him. That he didn’t even feel like his own person anymore. That every move he made had to be approved. Every decision, every step he took had to be sanctioned by authority.
His lawyer had failed to mention that the lack of perimeter fences wouldn’t compensate for how incredibly degrading it felt to be treated like a child twenty-four hours a day. The absence of sharp shooters in towers couldn’t make up for the constant misery of not being trusted.
Danny couldn’t resign himself to the fact that most of the people in charge had no reason to view him as trustworthy or honorable or decent. Most of them viewed him as a f*ck-up. A criminal who raised suspicion, someone who had to be watched and questioned at every turn.
There were a couple of exceptions—those guards who managed to make him feel somewhat human even while doing something like frisking him for contraband—but most of them spoke to the inmates like they were shit on their shoes.
At first, Danny tried to rationalize their behavior with the fact that these men spent their lives surrounded by people who had broken the law—some worse than others and many more than once. He reasoned that after years and years of witnessing a revolving door of crooks and felons and delinquents, their tolerance must have worn pretty thin.
Still, it didn’t make him feel any less shitty—or any less angry—when he was on the receiving end of that intolerance. Eventually he gave up trying to justify their behavior and accepted the fact that everyone had a role to play; they were the judgmental pricks on a power trip and he was a piece of shit criminal, and that was that.
Three weeks, and they had already managed to get inside his head.
Maybe he was never as strong as he thought.
Danny lifted his head off the pillow and looked at the clock on the wall. Any minute now, she’d be here. They were going to call his name, and he would make his first trip to the visitor’s center, and Leah would be standing before him.
And it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Because instead of excitement, there was dread. Instead of eagerness, there was panic. And instead of relief, there was shame.
He was so afraid she’d be able to see it—that he was already different. That they’d both given him too much credit.
He didn’t want to let her down. He didn’t want her to wonder what would be left of him after another nineteen months if three weeks had already affected him.
It was all so f*cking humiliating.
He didn’t know how to keep the darkness of his thoughts from her, and if she saw it, what would she think? Would she pity him? Be just as disappointed in him as he was in himself? Begin distancing herself from him?
The thought alone was enough to incapacitate him, because he realized she would probably be better off leaving him at this point. He would be destroyed, completely and utterly gutted, but that seemed to be the path he was on anyway.
Leah didn’t have to be subjected to this.
Danny rolled his head to the side as Troy walked into their cell dressed in his grays, one of two authorized outfits inmates were permitted to wear. A gray sweat suit was the required attire for the rec area or the gym; for everything else, there was a khaki jumpsuit.
“You working out?” Danny asked.
“Nah, just got back,” Troy said, sifting through the small locker in the corner of the room. He pulled out a pack of tortillas, some dried pepperoni, and a little bag of shredded cheese, and Danny knew Troy was about to make what he called a “bootleg stromboli.” He’d taught Danny how to make them during his first week at Fort Dix, after he’d already grown tired of the shit down at the mess hall.
Troy knew a bunch of resourceful tricks like that. He’d been down for thirteen months for possession of drugs while on probation, and he still had another three years to serve. But with good time, he could be out in just over two.
“They post the call sheet for tomorrow yet?” Danny asked.
“No, but I better be on it for the damn doctor. My knee is killing me.”
Danny lay back on his bed, blinking up at the ceiling. He hadn’t been down as long as Troy, but still, he knew there was no way Troy would be on the call sheet for the doctor tomorrow. Unless someone was bleeding or dying, he was basically forced to tough out whatever was ailing him. It had been one of the first things Danny had learned about this place.
Troy rolled up the stromboli and shook his head. “Wish I had some f*cking soda,” he said, pressing it together with his thumbs to make it stick.
“When’s your commissary day again?”
“Thursdays,” he said.
“I’m on Monday. I’m good with most of my shit for now, so I can get some when I go.”
“Thanks, man,” Troy said, licking his finger before pressing the tortilla down again. “I’ll owe you.”
Danny nodded.
Troy sealed the bag of cheese before he walked back to the locker. “Isn’t your girl coming today?”
Danny wet his lips. “Yeah.”
Troy shoved the bags of food in his locker before bumping it closed with his elbow. “If Shaw or Brighton are on duty, watch your ass.”
“What do you mean?”
Troy walked back to his plate and pressed down on the tortilla again. “They’re real dicks about everything. Touching and shit.”
Danny sat up on his bed. “I can’t touch her?”
Troy shook his head as he tucked in the ends of the stromboli. “You can hug her when she comes in, but that’s it. And keep that shit respectable. If you get flagged, they’ll take her off the list. And if you keep getting flagged, you lose visitation all together.”
Danny ran his hand down his face.
“Shaw and Brighton, they’re f*cking hawks, man. Anything that looks like you might be passing shit back and forth and you’re done. If Hanover’s on duty, you’ll get a little more leeway.”
And just like that, his earlier fantasy splintered into a million pieces before it disintegrated like powder; in its wake was the image of Leah sitting across him, her hands folded obediently in her lap as the guards monitored the three feet of insurmountable space between them.
He wished he’d known this beforehand so he could have given her some type of warning. Now, he’d be faced with the task of pushing her away. It didn’t matter that he could immediately follow it up with an explanation of the rules; he was still going to have to endure the initial look of shock and hurt on her face as he denied her affection.
“Did your girl know all this before she came the first time?” Danny asked.
“I don’t remember.”
Danny lay back on his bed, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “This is so f*cked up. I’ve been waiting for this.” He dropped his hands and looked at Troy. “But this is gonna suck, isn’t it?”
Troy sighed as he lifted his plate. “It is what it is, brother. You get over it.”
And with that, he walked out of the room.
Danny stared after him before turning his gaze to Troy’s side of the cell. There were four pictures taped to the wall above his bed: one of Troy with a woman who appeared to be his mother, and the other three were of him and his girlfriend. In one of the pictures she was sitting on his lap. In another, they were kissing.
Danny stared at the images, desperate to find a flaw in their relationship, needing to discover even an inkling of discontent—anything that would explain Troy’s indifference just now when he talked about his visits with her. But the people in that picture were unmistakably happy, their affection for each other evident in their eyes.
Maybe Troy’s apathy was just a front, just something he used to keep his true feelings at bay.
Or maybe thirteen months of this shit had managed to turn the people in that photograph into fictional characters—individuals who existed on paper but nowhere else.
Is that how he and Leah were destined to end up? Danny refused to believe he’d ever be capable of indifference when it came to her.
But then again, every last one of his expectations had been refuted since he’d come here, so what the hell did he know anymore?
“The following people have been requested at the visitor’s center,” a voice crackled over the loudspeaker. “Charles Velasquez, Darrel Simpson, Daniel DeLuca, Ray Brenner, Benjamin King, and Sean Foley.”
Danny’s heart came alive in his chest as his stomach churned.
Some small, unquenchable piece of his heart desperately needed to see her. He could feel it trying to fight its way to the surface, like someone submerged under water for far too long, striving for a restorative breath. But the more tenable part of him was terrified beyond belief.
He had no idea what he was going to do once they were in the same room together. What he would say. How he would behave. There were rules now. People were watching. Who were they supposed to be under these new circumstances?
As he approached the door leading to the visitor’s center, he tried to convince himself that once he saw her, everything would make sense. He wouldn’t have to think. This was Leah. Everything with her had always been so effortless, even when he was trying to fight it in the beginning.
This day was going to change everything for him. He just needed to have faith and let it happen.
Danny recited that mantra as he approached the inmates’ entrance to the center. The guard at the door was someone he didn’t recognize, but as he got closer, he could read the name Layne on his ID tag.
He gave Danny a quick once over before he opened the door and gestured for him to enter first.
On the other side of the door was a small room with an exit that led into the visiting area, and as Danny stepped in, Layne came in behind him.
“Arms out,” he ordered.
Danny lifted his arms, staring straight ahead as Layne patted him down.
Contraband checks were so commonplace around here that Danny often wondered if there was an inmate black market he hadn’t yet become privy to. But they were always conducted before a visit, and once the visit was over, they would check him again, making sure he hadn’t been passed something from the outside that he could bring back into the facility.
“Shoes off,” Layne said as he came to stand in front of Danny.
He dropped his arms to his sides. “You want my shoes off?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it? Is English your second language?”
Danny felt his jaw flex before he reached down to untie his boots.
He’d never had to remove his shoes during a contraband check before. It would be virtually impossible for him to retrieve something from his shoe during a visit without being caught by the guards, which meant Layne was just trying to make this difficult.
As soon as Danny’s boots were off, Layne grabbed them and turned them upside down, giving them a little shake before he inspected the soles.
And then he tossed them on the floor in front of Danny.
“Pick those up.”
Danny inhaled slowly before he squatted down to grab his discarded boots. He slipped them back on and stood, keeping his eyes on the small window of the door in front of him as he waited for Layne to give him clearance.
And then he saw her.
She was standing near the civilian entrance to the visitor’s center, looking beautiful and pristine and perfect, and all at once some dormant part of him resurfaced, making him want to rip the door off the hinges and run to her.
The sight of her did something strange to his body, like the shot of Demerol he’d gotten as a child just before the surgery on his broken leg. He could sense something warm rush through his veins, making him feel heavy and sedated, but oddly enough, it didn’t do a thing to ease his pain; the hurt was still there—he could feel it—but it had temporarily lost its power over him.
Danny watched as two guards asked her to empty the clear plastic bag she carried in place of her purse, since opaque bags weren’t allowed inside the facility. She did as she was told, taking a step back and spinning her mother’s bracelet between her fingers. It was a nervous habit of hers that Danny had always found endearing, but today it made him feel like his chest was being crushed.
He watched her chew on her lower lip as she glanced back and forth between them. He watched her run her hands down the sides of her jeans as she inhaled a deep breath. He watched her standing in a windowless room full of felons as two strangers searched through her things.
And he knew she didn’t belong there.
“You’re clear,” Layne said, his eyes on his clipboard as he wrote something. “Keep your hands to yourself or your ass will be thrown back through these doors so fast you won’t even get a chance to say, ‘I’m innocent.’ Is that clear?”
Danny swallowed before he nodded.
“I said, is that clear?”
Danny closed his eyes. “Yes.”
Layne dismissed him with a flick of his head.
As Danny reached for the door, he realized his hand was trembling, and he couldn’t be sure if it was nerves or stifled rage that was responsible. With one tiny breath to strengthen his resolve, he pulled the door open.
She was still standing by the entrance with the guards as they placed items back in her bag, and Danny made his way over to one of the smaller tables and sat down. He watched her take her bag back from the guard and nod with a tiny smile before she turned to enter the room.
Her eyes landed on him instantly, and her face broke into a wide grin as she took two quick steps in his direction before she stopped and composed herself. Danny stood, drinking her in as she continued toward him, and when only a few feet of space remained between them, he reached his arms out for her.
She ran the last few steps to him and threw her arms around his neck, and Danny exhaled heavily as he circled his arms around her waist, pulling her against his body.
The smell of her hair enveloped him, making him feel like he was being ripped apart and reconstructed all at once.
She let go of him almost immediately, giving him a quick peck on the mouth before taking two steps backward.
“They told me the rules,” she said, taking another reluctant step away from him, and it felt like his insides were spilling out onto the floor.
He hated every eye in the room that watched them right now. Every guard who sat glued to their interactions like they were watching an episode of reality TV. He hated every motherf*cker who refused to let him have this one moment with her.
“Should we…” she asked, gesturing toward the seats, and Danny cleared his throat.
“Yeah,” he managed softly.
They both sat across from each other, and Leah shifted in her seat before she smiled tentatively at him.
God, she was so beautiful.
“So…how are you?” she asked.
Such a simple question.
But as the seconds ticked by, he couldn’t even begin to formulate a response. What was he supposed to say? That he was completely miserable? That he spent the first night here heaving over the toilet after eating the slop at the dining hall? That every day the guards spoke to him with vitriol, and he was expected to take it or suffer the consequences? That he used the bathroom in a room with six toilets separated by plastic dividers without doors, so even his most basic human privacies had been stripped from him? That on his sixth night in this place, he saw another inmate cry and couldn’t decide if he wanted to console him or tell him his weakness was disgusting, because it mirrored his own?
He watched Leah waiting for his answer, and when her smile began to falter, she dropped her eyes and took a small breath. When she looked back up, her face was once again composed.
“How are your classes?” she asked, trying her luck with a different question.
“They’re good,” Danny said. “Keep me occupied in the mornings.”
Her smile broadened now that he seemed to be responding. “I would have taken you for more of a night class kind of guy.”
Danny smiled softly. “No classes offered at night because of all-call.”
“What’s all-call?”
“When we line up so they can make sure we’re all behaving and accounted for, and that no one made a run for it.”
Something flashed behind her eyes before a contrived smile curved her lips, and then she looked down at her lap. After a few seconds, she lifted the sandwich bag that held her ID and her money.
“I’m gonna go get a snack. You want anything?”
Danny shook his head. “I’m okay.”
“Okay,” she said softly as she stood and made her way over to the vending machine on the far wall. Danny watched as she stopped just before it and lowered her head, taking a slow breath before she looked up and began putting money in the machine.
She obviously needed a minute or she wouldn’t have gotten up so soon. In hindsight, he could see how the idea of an all-call might upset her. The thought of him having to line up and be scrutinized was a reminder of his status as a criminal—but there was nothing he could tell her about his life in there that wouldn’t generate the same type of reaction.
The absolute last thing he wanted to do was make her worry about him. He needed to be more thoughtful about what he said. This visit was supposed to be a little pocket of perfect inside a mess of shit, and it would never be that if he wasted their time together by upsetting her.
He needed to be the one asking the questions, and she needed to be the one talking. Stories from home would be safe topics of conversation. Funny stories. Normal stories.
Leah walked back to her chair with a bottle of water and a bag of M&M’s. “Want some?” she asked, holding it out.
“Can’t,” Danny said, nodding toward the wall where two guards stood watching.
“Oh, right,” she mumbled, glancing over her shoulder. “Sorry.”
“So, how’s Gram doing?” he asked, and Leah focused all her attention on opening her bag of candy.
“She’s good. Keeping busy, you know.”
Danny stared at her as she avoided eye contact, sifting through the bag before popping a few in her mouth.
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one trying to censor the conversation.
An awkward silence fell over them, and Leah twisted the bag between her fingertips.
“Tell me a story,” he said. “Something good.”
She lifted her eyes. “Something good?”
Danny nodded.
“Um…let’s see. I met Tommy’s new girlfriend the other day.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mm-hm.”
“What’s she like?” Danny asked.
This was safe. Pleasant.
“She’s adorable,” Leah said with a smile. “Really nice. And so smart. She’s going to school for forensic science. Like one of those CSI people.”
“No shit?”
Leah nodded. “It was so cool talking to her. She’s definitely a keeper. Gram loves her too.”
Something flickered in Danny’s chest. “Gram met her?”
“Yeah. Tommy brought her by one afternoon while I was visiting. We all ended up staying for dinner.”
Danny nodded slowly as he pressed his palms into the tops of his thighs.
The thought of them all sitting at Gram’s together should have made him smile, but the flickering in his chest tightened further until there was no mistaking what it was.
Jealousy.
What the f*ck was wrong with him? He had no idea he was capable of such repulsiveness. How selfish was it to resent the people he cared about for living their lives? What would he have preferred to hear? That they were all sitting alone in their living rooms with the curtains drawn, crying into a box of tissues?
“Are you okay?”
No. He wasn’t okay. He was the furthest thing from okay. He was spiraling into something ugly and he didn’t know how to stop, because hearing about home was supposed to be the one thing that helped him.
“Danny?”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he dropped his forehead to his clasped hands.
Tell her, he thought. Tell her you just realized you’re so far gone that other people’s happiness makes you angry.
“Danny…it’s okay,” she said. “Whatever it is, you can talk to me.”
But he didn’t know what he was supposed to say anymore.
He didn’t know how to be this version of himself with her. Trying to figure out the right words to use, what information to leave out of stories. Struggling to hide his reactions to things. She was one of the few people he could always be himself with, and having his guard up around her felt awkward and unnatural and wrong.
He couldn’t do this.
“This isn’t working, Leah,” he said, his forehead still resting on his fists.
“What isn’t working?”
“This,” he said finally, lifting his head. “Us.”
Leah blinked at him like he had just said something in a foreign language. “What are you talking about?”
The words were all there, just waiting to be said: that he couldn’t be around her until he figured out how to be himself again. That he didn’t want what they had to be dragged through shit in the process. That he needed to end their relationship now, because it was the only way to preserve it. And they could both remember it the way it had truly been—powerful and unblemished and real, not bruised and broken and so sullied it was impossible to remember it was ever beautiful in the first place.
Yes, the words were all there. But instead, he said, “I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, Leah. I’m realizing that now. And thinking we could make this work was one of them.”
“Danny,” she said, a hint of dread in her tone. The confusion on her face was slowly giving way to realization.
“It just doesn’t make sense anymore,” he continued. “For either one of us.”
She shook her head. “Stop. Don’t do this.”
“No, you don’t do this,” he said. “Don’t make this hard, Leah. I’m trying to tell you what I want.”
She stared at him for several seconds before she spoke. “And you’re saying you don’t want this?” Her expression was smooth, but her voice quavered slightly, betraying her. “You don’t want us?”
It took every ounce of strength in his body to keep the emotion out of his next words—the most despicable lie to ever leave his lips. “Not anymore.”
Leah kept her eyes on him, and he could see the rise and fall of her chest gradually increase in speed. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered.
He needed to end this conversation. Her suffering would be the last straw—the thing that demolished him and caused his illusion of strength to burst apart and scatter to the floor like the house of cards it was.
“It’s what’s best for both of us, Leah. I promise you that. I know you don’t think so right now, but eventually you will. And then you’ll be relieved we put a stop to this when we did.”
She opened her mouth to speak and he stood, cutting her off. Leah lifted her chin, looking up at him with eyes so full of vulnerability he knew he’d never recover from the weight of it.
“I just want you to know,” he said. He cleared his throat and took a step backward. “I just want you to know that every time I told you I loved you…I meant it.”
Leah shook her head. “Don’t say that,” she said, her voice hardening slightly. “You don’t get to say those words to me right now.”
Danny looked down and nodded. “Take care of yourself, Leah,” he said, and then he turned and walked back toward the inmates’ exit. He held his thumb against the buzzer that would alert the guard, and as the seconds ticked by, he kept his eyes on the door, refusing to look back.
Whatever he would find there—whether she was sobbing, or infuriated, or struck dumb, or relieved—none of it would provide him with any solace. No good could come of looking back. He had to keep moving forward.
The door opened and Danny stepped inside the small room, immediately putting his arms out to his sides, and as the guard patted him down, he heard the door click shut behind him.
He’d been right about one thing—this day had been a turning point for him. For the first time since he’d walked through the doors of Fort Dix, he felt something that resembled relief.
Because no matter how far he spiraled down now, he wouldn’t be dragging her along with him.