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Then I’d gotten into the viewing room to find it jam-packed, even an hour early.
I squeezed my way in, found a small sliver of a bench on the very front row, and sat down.
The older man at my side looked at me nastily, and I turned around and gave him a glare right back.
He opened his mouth to say something, probably to ask me to move, when I felt a warm hand press down on my shoulder.
I looked over and up to find Derek standing at my side, his massive body protecting me, and generating so much heat that I yearned to lean into him.
He looked good today.
He looked good every day, but today especially.
He wasn’t in anything special.
A white t-shirt that fit him not too tight, but not loose either. A pair of faded jeans and a brown pair of work boots.
And then there was the white baseball hat.
There was a bright red clover on it, and I loved the hat.
I wanted the hat.
So bad that I’d looked the hats up online, intending to buy one, but the damn things were thirty-five bucks, and I barely had enough money to buy food every week. Wasting thirty-five dollars on a hat was insane.
But it didn’t stop me from wanting it.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered.
He grabbed me by the wrist and hauled me to my feet, dragging me to the side of the room where there was a little more privacy.
“What are you doing here?” he countered.
I raised my brows. “I thought it was obvious.”
“How did you even know it was happening today?” he asked.
I shrugged. “People talk. I heard about it at school of all places. One of the other cop’s kids told me. He’s a freshman and doesn’t realize he’s supposed to hate me yet. The popular kids will remedy that by the end of the day.”
Derek snorted and shoved both of his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked. “Watching someone die…”
I gave him a level look.
“Is something that I deserve,” I countered. “This man shot my father. I deserve to watch him die.”
There was a silence behind me that made me realize I wasn’t being quite as quiet as I’d intended.
Derek looked over my shoulder and sighed.
“So do you want to sit in the front or the back?” he asked.
I frowned at him, unsure what he was talking about.
But when I turned around, it was to find the seating practically cleared except for an older man who was sitting on the very back row. All the other people that had once been seated were now standing, deferring to me as they waited to see where I would want to sit.
All of them were looking at me as if I was about to break at any moment.
“Pick a seat, darlin’, so they can sit back down,” Derek murmured softly into my ear.
I picked the front row seat, directly in the middle.
The men piled in around me, filling the seating back up, but no one got too close to me.
And the man who had glared at me earlier for sitting too close to him resumed his seat on the very end. But not before he stopped in front of me and offered me his hand.
“I apologize for acting the way I did earlier,” he said. “My name is Roger MacMillan. I worked with your father as his partner until I moved down here for better pay. I was at the funeral that day, but there were a lot of people there and…”
I waved his apology away.
It was more than obvious that the man didn’t like being too close to people. And that’d been what I’d done, encroach on his space.
“No apologies needed,” I said quietly. “It’s nice to meet you.”
The man, Roger, sat down and looked at the empty room in front of us.
I did, too, allowing myself to take it all in.
“I asked the guard what his last meal was,” I murmured softly. “He told me he didn’t know, but he would find out for me. Is that stupid to ask?”
Derek shrugged his large shoulders as he said, “Maybe. Maybe not. Who’s ever one to say that any question is stupid? Why do you want to know?”
I didn’t know.
I just felt like it was something that I needed to know.
“I feel like he shouldn’t have gotten that choice,” I admitted. “What makes him think that he can have anything nice after what he did?”
Derek made an agreeing sound in the back of his throat as he said, “Well then, you’ll be happy to know that Texas doesn’t do last meals anymore. Some dumbass ordered a huge immaculate meal back in 2011, I think and didn’t eat it. So they did away with last meals altogether.”
I looked over at him.
“How do you know that?” I asked curiously.
