"Mishel's good now," she says, and stops there.
Her stomach growls. Quiet, but the room is small and I'm two feet away.
She checks her watch. "Shit. I forgot lunch." She shakes her head and picks her pen back up.
"When did you last eat?"
She looks up. "What?"
"Breakfast. Did you eat breakfast?"
"I had coffee." She tips her head. "I'm fine, Jude."
"After this, eat. Not coffee. Actual food, understood?"
She holds my gaze for a beat. "Umm, okay, yes. Where were we?"
The session continues for another fifteen minutes. She finishes her questions and I answer each one and she writes, and I watchher hand for the tremor from hunger. It's still there. Faint, but I can see it.
Near the end, she leans forward to check the medication chart clipped to the board at the head of my bed. Her arm stretches across the mattress edge, her body tilts toward me, and a strand of hair comes loose from her ponytail. Black, long. It falls across her face and catches at the corner of her mouth.
She tucks it back with her free hand. It falls again.
I reach up. Slow. My fingers find the strand against her cheek and draw it behind her ear. My thumb brushes the curve of her cheekbone. I hold her gaze while I do it.
She doesn't pull back. Her breath catches—I'm close enough to hear it. Her eyes stay on mine.
"Thank you," she says. Her voice is softer than before.
She turns to the chart and keeps writing, but there's color in her cheeks that wasn't there a moment ago.
The guard at the door has stopped breathing. He saw my hand near her face and he's working out whether what he saw is something he's supposed to report. Whether it was a threat. Whether the man in Ward C just touched the court-appointed monitor and what the hell that means.
She finishes her notes. Caps the pen and stands.
"Until next time, Jude."
"I'll be here."
Her mouth pulls left. "Yeah. I suppose you will."
The lock clicks behind her. The cell smells like burnt instant coffee and coconut and it'll linger for an hour after she's gone. Maybe longer. I don't want it to fade.
Her hair against the pad of my thumb was softer than I'd expected. The skin of her cheek was warm. The catch in her breath when I touched her—that small sound—I'm going to think about that sound for the rest of the day. The rest of the week.I'm going to think about what her voice sounds like underneath me.
I stand at the window and watch the corridor long after she's gone. The burnt-coffee smell fades but the coconut lingers.
I should be thinking about Kent's next filing, about the board review, about the strategy that's going to get me out of this building and back into the world. Instead, I'm thinking about her hands. The tremor in her left one because she forgot to eat.
Tomorrow I'll find a way to get her something. Protein bar, sandwich—Gage will do it. I've seen the way he watches her. He'll do it if he thinks it's his idea, but she'll know it came from me.
She asked about my week and I almost told her the truth.
That's the terrifying part. Not that I want her—want is manageable, containable, something I've controlled my entire life.
It's that I'd tell her.
For the first time in thirty-seven years, I want someone to know me. And I have no idea what to do with that.
