Page 17 of These Tears

‘I wouldn’t let my woman near this place.’ A tick ripples over his jaw muscle, and his eyes beam brighter.

The caveman undertow of my woman is far more enticing than it should be. Worse, the words now cling to the inside of my skull and start playing on repeat.

Instinct swallows the logic and my hands lift the camera again. The shutter clicks.

‘What was that for?’ he asks, voice harder.

‘Anger,’ I answer with delight.

He draws his thick brows tighter together, a shadow falling over his hooded eyes as it does every time he tries to read me. He looks scarier that way. ‘My question made you angry?’

‘No. My answer made you angry.’

His mouth shuts with a clean click. The uncertainty melts from his face and gives way to something else.

A beat might have passed. Or a lifetime. His eyes brighten, his nostrils flare just once, and I’m struggling to take my gaze off his.

‘Guard!’ he calls.

I scoff, folding my arms. ‘Seriously? For a big bad wolf, you’re awfully touchy.’ The joke comes out too easily.

‘People always said I’m more of a big scruffy bear,’ he supplies.

The crack of tension in the room sends my eyes rolling.

Was that a joke?

Humming in amusement, I let the sound curl behind my teeth while packing away the camera. I rise just as the pot-bellied guard swings the door open.

‘What, no kiss?’ George jeers at Crane, who simply slides back into that same posture I’d found him in on my first day – a man retreating inwards to someplace no one else is allowed. His arms settle heavily on the table. His shoulders curve forwards, his head dipping until the light reaches only the unforgiving black of his curls.

A soundless fortification against the world – and me. And yet, something about the way he holds his head down makes me wonder if this is what he looks like even when no one’s watching.

I bite down the words rising to my lips. But I know they’d only make things worse for him.

And I’m not sure I want him to lose points with the guards.

Hours later, the conversation leaves me too restless to focus on anything else. I keep seeing him whenever my attention slips – the set of his jaw, the sudden flash of that smile, his eyes dropping to my ring.

By the time I’m back home from a studio photoshoot, I barely make it through the door before my eyes lock onto the laptop calling me from the coffee table.

My coat is still hanging from one arm. I haven’t even taken my shoes off. Yet I’m already readying myself to type his name into the search bar.

I fucking know better.

But something in me keeps telling me he shouldn’t be in there. That it’s wrong for him to cast his gaze towards the world he can only see through bars.

It feels like I’m circling a hollow space every time we talk, every time he calls the guard to cut my visit short. As if a crucial piece of the puzzle sits upturned and I have no way to flip it back.

Is he afraid of what he’ll say if we stay past the threshold of his comfort? Am I afraid of what I’d do if he did?

Half an hour later, I prop my feet on the coffee table and settle the laptop across my knees, while my tea steams between the camera and my ankle.

The quiet helps me focus on the handful of vague articles that bubble up in my research. They mention a local timber businessman killed in a domestic altercation, the son arrested. Nothing more. No photographs of the accused. Just a greyscale image of a clean-shaven man in a crisp shirt beneath the name Arthur Crane, sixty-eight. The text is thin, watered-down. Almost evasive.

Arthur looks like a man moulded by harsh winters and harder opinions. He bears very little resemblance to his son; his features are drawn tight with an authority that isn’t loud but elicits obedience all the same. The rigid set of his mouth is but a grim line etched into his face like a scar grown too comfortable. His eyes look past the camera, as if dismissing whatever is being asked of him.

There’s no obvious malice in his expression, but something in it feels unsettling either way.