“So,” Laurel proclaimed as she returned, baby and a giant bowl of potato salad in tow. “Did Caleb tell you about his boss’s nephew?” She waggled her eyebrows. “He’s a partner at a big accounting firm. Single, of course. Balding but attractive. He’s got that Bruce Willis thing going for him. He’s very open to being set up. He’s just coming out of a bad relationship.”
“Isn’t Bruce Willis like sixty now?”
Caleb snorted back a laugh as he set the burgers down on the table. Laurel glared at both of them. “I didn’t say he was Bruce Willis. And I meant Bruce Willis like in his Die Hard days.”
Briar grinned and took a sip of her iced tea. Laurel plopped the baby in Briar’s lap and started fixing the kids’ burgers. “C’mon. When was the last time you went on a date with a nice guy?”
Briar couldn’t remember.
“Say yes,” she commanded in that bossy way of hers.
“Maybe,” she hedged.
“I’ll give him your number.”
“Laurel,” she warned.
“What? Is it so wrong I want you to meet a nice guy? Have you dated anyone seriously since college? Since Beau?”
Beau. Her stomach bottomed out. No. There hadn’t been anyone since him. Not really. She’d dated off and on a little in college after they broke up, but no one serious. Her father and Beau had pretty much killed her faith in the male gender. Neither were exactly stellar examples. After them, who wouldn’t swear off men forever? Of course, she had never told her sister the full story regarding Beau. Laurel had been pregnant with Addy at the time, but that wouldn’t have stopped her from coming after him with a shotgun.
“Let’s eat.” Briar clapped her hands and bounced little Tyler on her knee. Her sister wasn’t the only one good at pretending the past had never happened. Sometimes she wondered if she pretended enough, maybe she could forget it all.
IT WAS THE darkness that got to Knox the most—that found its way under his skin like a parasite digging for home.
The unending stretch of hours. The smothering silence that only came with darkness. He tried to sleep at night when the dark was the worst, the deepest, the most impenetrable . . . desperate to escape that smothering tar, but the hole was a tricky place.
In the hole, even the daylight hours were dark. Well, gray. Paltry light crept out from the small slit where they delivered food to him and where prisoners stuck out their hands to be cuffed. Like a weed growing out of concrete, the light fought its way in, trickling onto him where he sprawled on the cot. He held his hand up to that ribbon of light, turning it over, letting it flow over his fingers as though it were something tangible. Something he could feel.
Men went crazy in here. Tear--out--their--hair, see--the--ghosts--of--their--victims, and cry--for--mommy kind of shit. He clung to sanity by building a regimen and dedicating himself to it. That was the key to keep from going nuts in segregation, to keep the demons at bay.
Out of the hole, there wasn’t a day he and his brother didn’t break their backs exercising. He and North worked out both in the yard and in the privacy of their cells. It was one of the first things Knox established when they got to the Rock. A permanent workout routine. They didn’t need a gym. They stayed fighting--strong working out and pushing past the pain. Anything and everything to make themselves formidable amid a cesspit of punks and killers and men that would jack up their own grandmothers for a C--note.
A stint in the hole changed nothing. If anything, he amped up his workout. He kept at it, pushing though his injuries, training his body to the point of exhaustion. Push--ups. Lunges. Sit--ups. Jogging in place. By Monday he added jumping jacks, ignoring the tenderness in his ribs. There was no room for tenderness in the Rock. He killed all softness from his body, using the wall for a punching bag, toughening up his fists.
If, during the nights, the darkness ever got too much and pushed at his carefully constructed walls, he just closed his eyes and fell into the colors inside his mind. Peach skin and hair a dozen different shades. He imagined he was somewhere else, with someone else.
Dipping into a pool of make--believe, he dreamed up sunshine. Air that smelled after--rain fresh. Grass all around him. And a woman beneath him.
He stroked himself off, pulling hard at his cock, pretending it was a female’s heat, her softness milking him, her creamy thighs spreading wide in welcome. If, at the end, her face resembled the nurse from the HSU, if her mouth cried out sweet, dirty things as he fisted her hair, then so be it. It was just a fantasy to get him through. No harm.
Someday he’d be out of this hellhole and then he could stop losing himself in impossible dreams and start living again. Someday, when he and his brother were free of this place, he could finally have a life worth living. He wouldn’t need to jack off to the image of a girl who thought he was a low--life bastard.
SEVEN