"For now."
Silence.
"You shouldn't be here." His voice is steadier now, like the effort of talking to me is pulling him further toward the surface. "They'll use it against you. They're already—"
"I don't care."
"Hope—"
"I don't care what they use." I lean closer, close enough that my hand finds his on the bed. His fingers are cold—the sedation must be affecting his circulation—and they curl weakly around mine when I touch them. "I'm not leaving you in here. I'm not letting them do this."
"You can't stop them." His eyes hold mine, and underneath the fog there's something I've never seen in him before. Fear. "Kent's the only one who can, and they've taken his leverage. The documentation you built, the case—"
"I'll build more."
"They won't let you back in."
"Then we'll find another way."
His hand tightens on mine. Weak, but present.
"Why?"
The question is simple. The answer isn't.
I think about the man who noticed my coffee order and my schedule and the way I smiled at everyone the same way. The man who broke through a security door because someone had his hands on me, and then held me with those same hands like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
I think about the two versions of him that exist at the same time. The monster and the man. The killer and the person who asked about my head when he'd been drugged into near-unconsciousness for almost three weeks.
"Because you came for me," I say. "When it mattered. When no one else could. You came."
His eyes close. When they open again, they're wet.
"I'd do it again."
"I know."
"Every time. I'd tear down every door they put between us."
"I know."
The thirty minutes pass too fast. The guard knocks on the door—a warning—and I have to let go of Jude's hand. Have to stand up, step back, watch the distance grow between us.
"I'll come back," I tell him. "I'll find a way."
"Hope—"
"I'll find a way, Jude."
The door closes. The locks engage—three of them. I stand in the corridor outside his cell and I don't move for a long moment, just breathe, just let the image of him settle into my memory.
The man who filled a doorway, flat on a bed he can't get out of.
They did this to him because he protected me.
Gage is waiting at the end of the corridor. He doesn't say anything when I reach him—just falls into step beside me, his presence solid and steady while we walk through the solitary wing and back toward the main building.
Kent is in the administrative waiting area.
