"Where's Rick now?"
"Transfer corridor. They're moving Chadwick to medical for his weekly check."
My coffee goes in the nearest trash can. "Copy."
She's at the checkpoint when I get there.
Hope. Standing with her clipboard, pen moving, completely unaware that a man thirty feet away has been planning something that would hurt her. She's wearing that green sweater again, the one that makes her eyes look bluer, and she's got her hair up in that thick ponytail that swings when she turns her head.
Rick's at the far end of the corridor. He should be at the secondary checkpoint, but he's here instead, leaning against the wall with his eyes on her, he's not watching the corridor.
"Gage." She smiles when she sees me, wide and real, nothing held back. "I was hoping I'd run into you."
"Yeah?"
"I wanted to thank you for the coffee yesterday. You didn't have to do that."
I did, though. She looked tired. She's been looking tired for weeks, and I've been noticing, and that's not something I have time to sit with right now because Rick is moving.
"Has Rick said anything to you?"
It comes out harder than I meant it to be, and her eyebrows lift.
"Rick Dutton? No. I mean, he's not exactly friendly, but he hasn't said anything to me. Why?"
She doesn't know. Of course she doesn't know.
She asked me once why I always check the exits when I enter a room. I didn't know how to explain that I spent years in places where not checking got people killed. She nodded and went back to her notes.
She wasn't humoring me. She genuinely didn't think it was strange.
"Just keep your distance from him."
Rick's closer now. I can see the way he's looking at her, not at her face, lower, that slow up-and-down.
"Actually," Hope says, glancing at her watch, "I have to go. They're moving Jude to medical and I want to watch the transfer."
She calls him Jude, not "the patient," not "Chadwick," and I know why.
Last week I walked back from a radio call and saw them in the day room. His hand on her neck, her fingers in his shirt, her face flushed. She didn't know I was in the doorframe. He did. We looked at each other over her head and neither of us said a word.
I didn't report it. I should have. His hands on her is a reportable incident, could end her placement and add time to his sentence, but I let it go.
Maybe because writing it up gets her pulled from the facility and I'm not ready for that. Maybe because Chadwick is here for life and whatever she thinks she feels for him, it has nowhere to go. He can't take her to dinner. Can't pick her up at her door. Can't be anything to her past the day room.
I can.
"I'll walk you."
She tilts her head. "You don't have to—"
"It's fine, I'll walk you."
She doesn't argue, just nods and falls into step beside me, close enough that I catch her shampoo, floral, nothing heavy. You'd have to be too close to pick it up.
My ex-wife wore expensive perfume. Strong enough to stick to my clothes after I showered. I thought it was sophisticated, but she was covering the smell of my best friend's cologne.
I found out from a text that wasn't meant for me. Years of deployments, of wondering if I'd make it home, and the whole thing ended with seven words on a screen.Can't wait to see you tonight. Miss your hands on me.
