"And if I testify, I'll lose my job."
"Maybe."
"Definitely." His voice is flat. "Hudson's been looking for a reason to push me out since I started asking questions about the treatment of the patients and sedation logs. This would give him everything he needs."
"So you won't do it."
The question hangs between us. Gage is quiet for a long time—long enough that I start to think he's not going to answer at all.
"Six years," he says. "Six years I've worked in places like this. Prisons, psych facilities, halfway houses. Every one of them had problems. Every one of them had men like Hudson running things and men like Jude locked up inside. And for six years, I didn't let any of it touch me."
"What changed?"
He looks at me the way he did in the corridor after Casey.
"You walked in," he says. "And you smiled at everyone like you actually gave a damn. And you kept going back into that room every single day when every other monitor they've sent quit inside a week."
His hand comes up, hesitates, then rests against my cheek. His palm is warm and rough and I lean into it without thinking. "You're the first person in six years who made me want to give a damn about anything. And then I watched you almost get taken, I watched him tear through walls to reach you, and I stood there and let him do what I wanted to do myself."
"Gage—"
"I'm not done." His thumb traces my cheekbone. "I'll testify. I'll tell them exactly what happened—every second of it. Casey's hands on you, Jude stopping when I told him to stop, all of it."
"You'd do that?"
"For you, yes." His voice drops.
The space between us closes. His forehead touches mine, and we stay there for a second, breathing the same air.
"This is different than the diner," I say.
"Yeah." His voice is rough. "It is."
Because it is. When he kisses me this time, it isn't soft. His hand grips the back of my neck and I pull him closer by his shirt and it's raw and graceless and exactly right. I kiss him back hard, and the guilt I keep waiting for still doesn't come.
Jude knows. Jude watched. Jude held on without holding me back.
Gage pulls back first. His breathing is ragged, his eyes are dark and his hand is still on my face.
"That's not making any of this easier," he says.
"It's not supposed to be easy."
His hand drops from my face but he doesn't move away.
"Casey," I say. "What happened to him?"
Gage's expression hardens. "Transferred to Ridgemont—long-term residential, heavy supervision."
"He's alive."
"Yeah."
"Is he—" I stop. Start again. "Does he still think—"
"He still thinks you're in love with him." Gage's voice is flat. "The delusion doesn't break just because reality contradicts it. If anything, this probably made it stronger. You're the woman he almost had. The one who got away."
Casey is out there somewhere, still building his story. And Jude is locked in a box because he tried to protect me from a man the system should have contained.
