“I…okay. That’s fine. I’ll just wait here.” He doesn’t reply and goes out.
My heart is beating out of my chest. I need to move past my excitement of getting to meet Max Kincaid and get my mind onto obtaining his freedom for him. It’s another ten minutes; which only serves to increase my nerves, before the guard comes back and escorts me in. For a minute, I think I stop breathing. Max is sitting at a table, and if I ignore the orange jumpsuit, he looks even better than he did in his pictures. His black hair is straight and lays lazily on his head, making it look like someone has lovingly run their fingers through it. His dark eyes pin me immediately and with such intensity it takes all I have not to hesitate when walking towards him. His large hands are lying on the table with chains around them. I know that is normal procedure, but on him it feels wrong.
I don’t know what I imagined our first words would be to each other. In my daydreams of Max, I thought we’d meet, and I’d rescue him and he’d be the one. The man who would understand me, who would just…fit me. I thought somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind he might recognize that feeling when he saw me for the first time, too. It sounds all kinds of stupid and juvenile and normally I’m not that kind of woman. I don’t know why I am where Max is concerned.
All of those wishes and silly dreams are blown out of the water when his harsh, barking voice rings out and stops me in my tracks.
“Who the fuck are you?”
2
Max
I’ve given up on hope. Hope doesn’t exist. It hasn’t since five years ago when I heard the sound of cold metal slamming shut, and I began my stay at the Ormond County Correctional and Rehabilitation Institution. Hope left that day, and it hasn’t returned. Life took on the dull gray color of the prison itself, and I became a creature who didn’t live. I only existed.
Today is my parole hearing. My fourth to be exact. It doesn’t mean shit. They’re not going to set me free. That doesn’t happen when you kill a man. I don’t give a fuck. I find I don’t give a fuck about anything these days. I haven’t in a long time. I won’t get parole because every time a bunch of stiff-necked suits ask me if I feel remorse for my crime, I laugh.
I killed the man who murdered my wife. She was a whore. I didn’t love her, didn’t even like her. But I did love the child she was carrying. So I hunted him down, and I squeezed the life out of him with my bare hands. I watched as, bit by bit, the light drained from his eyes and just when he was about to die, I let the pressure off his neck and allowed him to gasp another breath. Then, I did it again. Rinse and repeat until finally I ended the motherfucker. I relished it. I spit on his corpse as I let him fall to the ground. I didn’t feel remorse. Shit, no. Instead, I got the first fucking hard on I’d had in months.
A machine-made sound buzzes and the retracting of my cell door begins. I stand there as Officer Jenkins comes into view. He’s a cocky asshole who gets his kicks out of beating prisoners, just because he can. I tower over him. Hell, I could snap him like a fucking twig. I’ve always restrained but as he looks at me a sneer on his face and spits at my shoes, I can’t help but wonder if two murders would send me to hell quicker? It might be worth the gamble.
“Let’s go, cupcake. Time for you to go and beg for freedom like the candy-ass you are,” he says, grabbing my arm and pulling me in front of him.
I don’t say anything; I don’t even change my facial expression. This piss-ant ain’t nothing to me. If I liked him, even marginally, I’d warn him there is a prison riot and break out planned for today. I might even go one step further and tell him he’s the one Hernandez, and his crew are planning on beating the shit out of. Hell, I’d even warn him about the jagged Coke bottle they had smuggled in and have been fixing up, just for his lily white ass. I don’t. The ass-reaming he’s going to get couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. We walk down a long hall, surrounded by prison cells on each side. I ignore the yelling, questions, and catcalls. I have a reputation as someone you do not fuck with, in this joint. That’s good enough for me. Hernandez tried to get me to join his crew for the breakout. I didn’t. There’s nothing waiting for me outside these doors. Not a fucking thing.
We make our way to the last set of steel doors, and they slide open as the guard on the other side lets us in. I’m escorted into an elevator where another guard joins us. I forget this one’s name. Byron or something like that, pretty decent guy. I’d warn him, but then he’d feel obligated to stop it, and that wouldn’t be good for me. So I don’t. My conscience has been colored gray like these fucking walls, too.