"The system is what I'm fighting."
"I know. And God help them all." She grins. "Because I've seen you fight, Hope Turner, and you don't lose."
I drive home with the cheese plate Mishel insisted I take and the warmth of a glass of wine still in my chest. The apartment is dark when I unlock the door, and the letter is waiting on the kitchen counter where I left it.
I pick it up, read it one more time.
I think about Hudson's gray eyes. About the way he mentioned my accident, my diagnosis, as if he'd been saving them for exactly the right moment.
I think about Jude in isolation, sedated for a week because a guard threatened me and he responded.
I think about Gage, and Kent's voice on the phone.
Then I sit down at my kitchen table, I open my laptop and I start typing.
Week thirteen's supplemental report. Additional documentation of protocol violations observed during routine monitoring. Cross-referenced with facility records obtained through proper channels.
Let them build their file. I'll keep building mine.
One of us is right, and it isn't them.
Chapter 19
Jude
Gage knows my fingers have been inside her. He's known for a week, and he hasn't reported it, hasn't transferred off the rotation, hasn't done a single thing except keep standing at that door every time she walks through it. That's not duty.
The day room is empty, same hollow afternoon light through the reinforced windows, and the only sound is the fluorescent tubes buzzing overhead. I requested this window three weeks running.
Gage understands. He's at his post by the door, twelve feet away, and his shoulders are tighter than they were last week. His jaw harder. He's been different since. Quieter. More watchful, and more present than any guard who's clocked out should be.
Hope arrives at 2:47, three minutes early. Her clipboard is tucked under her arm and her hair is up in that thick ponytail that makes me want to wrap it around my fist. She's wearing another skirt—softer fabric than last time, navy blue, knee-length. I wonder if she chose it knowing what I'd do to her. I wonder if she chose it hoping I would.
"Week thirteen," she says, settling into the chair across from me. "How are you feeling?"
"Better now that you're here."
Her cheeks flush. She pulls out her pen and clicks it twice—a nervous habit she doesn't know she has—and makes a show of reviewing her notes.
"Dr. Kennedy's behavioral assessment came in. He's recommending continued observation with reduced session frequency."
"Kennedy thinks talking about my childhood for fifty minutes a week constitutes treatment."
"He thinks a lot of things." She glances up. "I disagree with most of them."
"I know."
Gage shifts by the door, his boots scraping the floor, and I watch Hope's eyes flick toward the sound before returning to me.
She's aware of him. Has been for a while, but it's different this week. Both of them are different—Gage stands closer to the door when she's in the room, and Hope's eyes find him half a second before they find me. I don't know what changed between them on the outside and I'm not going to push it. I can read it in the way she holds herself when he's nearby—not tense, just conscious of where he is in a room. That should make me want to break things.
But it doesn't.
I've been watching them for weeks. The coffee she brings him, the questions she asks about his day, the way his entire body orients toward her whenever she enters a room. He wantsher. Wants her in a way that's uncomplicated and clean and everything I can't offer her—normal instead of this.
And she wants him back. Not instead of me—she still comes to this room, still looks at me the way she always has—but she wants him too, and I don't think she knows what to do with that yet.
I worked that out around week ten and it hasn't gone anywhere. My first instinct should have been to eliminate it, the way I eliminate anything that threatens what's mine. I didn't. Because watching her want Gage doesn't feel like losing her. It feels like watching her be more of herself, and I'm not built to fight that.
