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That was exactly what the state department needed to see, a banged-up prison warden that didn’t look like he could control his prison.
Just fucking wonderful.
By the time I got my inmate into his cell and a guard closed it behind me, I was a fucking mess.
I needed to go change my clothes, and I was ten minutes late in leaving for the day.
Normally I wouldn’t be too upset about leaving late, but I’d told Pru I would be there at a certain time so that she could go out to eat with her family.
Which had been another deciding factor in my mood today.
Fancy hadn’t asked me to come. In fact, she’d never even mentioned it to me.
Why? Did she not want me there? Was I too weird to be around her family?
Those thoughts and questions had swirled around my brain all day long, and by the time I’d walked into the fight between the inmates that the guards had been trying to stop, I’d been in no mood to be lenient.
In fact, I would say that I was beyond that point and had been for quite some time.
There was no more leniency in my repertoire. Not today, anyway.
“You going to get Diane to look at that?” Rome gestured toward my eye.
I grabbed the towel he’d tossed my way and pressed it to my face.
“No. I’m going to pick up my kid, and then go to the ER, I guess.” I paused. “Or that new hospital clinic. That one maybe. I’m not sure.”
“Why not just get it done before you go?” he suggested. “Watching a kid while you get something like that done isn’t going to be very easy.”
I looked at him. “I’ve been away from her all day. Pru has been watching her since this morning. Plus, she has to be somewhere, and I only have twenty minutes to get there so she can leave. I’m not leaving her there.”
Rome lifted his hands. “I’ll watch her.”
I was shaking my head before the offer even left his mouth. “Sorry, but no. She can sit there with me while I get it fixed up.”
Knowing better than to argue with me when I had my mind made up, he allowed me to leave. I walked out of the prison’s front doors and didn’t look back.
My mood had only deteriorated when I arrived at the truck that I still hadn’t returned to Phoebe’s father.
I needed to go buy my own.
It’d been three days now, and I realized rather quickly that this was my new reality.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe in the cab, and despite having every single window down, I arrived at my house in a horrid mood. Seeing Brielle’s car in my driveway didn’t help matters.
Stalking over to Pru’s house, I rang the doorbell and waited.
Pru opened the door with a smile on her face that quickly fell when she saw the way I looked.
“Oh, no. What happened?” she asked.
I frowned. “Nothing. Can I pick Isa up?”
Her frown made me pause, thinking that I’d offended her in some way, but then she shrugged.
Pru opened her door wide and gestured me through. “That’s not nothing, but if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.”
I opened my mouth to tell her that it wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about it, but because I was bleeding, but then shut it. I doubted she’d care.
Hoax might, but Pru? I had no relation to her, so she’d likely not have the same obligatory caring that Hoax would.
“She did really good today,” Pru said as she led me farther into the house. “I was honestly impressed with how well. At first, I thought she was going to be standoffish, but she really liked the twins. Plus, it didn’t hurt that Phoebe, who seems to be Isa’s superstar, stopped by before and after work.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Pru if Phoebe had said anything about me, or possibly explained why she’d left so abruptly this morning, but I curbed the gut reaction.
I didn’t want to involve Phoebe’s sister in our relationship. Granted, I knew that it was probably foolhardy to think that Pru wouldn’t be in our life, but I also liked to think that maybe they’d stay out of our business long enough for us to figure our shit out first.
A trickle of blood that ran from my head down my chest had me remembering exactly why I should be hurrying.
“She’s right here,” Pru said.
I walked around the corner to find Hoax on the couch, fast asleep. Isa was sitting on the couch next to him, head resting on Hoax’s bicep, sound asleep. The twins were in a bassinet directly in front of Hoax, both sound asleep, too.
“Magic,” I murmured softly.
Pru snickered. “Hoax was actually outside running around with the pig, the dog, and Isa. They’re all tuckered out. The twins are never awake. I’m fairly sure that they’re going to sleep forever.”
