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My cheeks warm, and not from the hot coffee or the laundromat’s lingering humidity.
“I’m originally from Long Island,” I offer.
“Oh?’
“Yeah. I grew up there, but my dad got transferred to Austin my senior year of high school.” That’s the official party line, anyway.
“Damn. That’s rough. Moving during such a big year.”
“Yeah. It kind of sucked.” I take another sip of coffee. “I had no friends my senior year. So no football games. No prom. No nothing. It was a nothing year for me. But then I went to college here, and I met Gert.”
“Is she one of the women you were with at the bar?”
“Yeah. The gorgeous one. Long dark hair and eyes.” I shift in my seat. “You and she would make beautiful children.” I clasp my hand over my mouth. “Sorry. That just popped out.”
“All four of you were attractive from where I was sitting,” he says, “though you were the best of the bunch.”
She clears her throat, looking down. “Anyway, Gert and I hit it off right away, and we roomed together all four years. Jordan and Ashley were roommates as well, and on our corridor freshman year. Gert and Jordan got close because they were both English majors, so they had classes together. We became somewhat of a foursome, and Jordan and I had a lot in common. But Ashley and I… Well, we never really clicked.’
“The one who died.”
I widen my eyes. “That was blunt.”
“I’m blunt. You get pretty cynical on the inside.”
“I can imagine,” I say.
I’m a parole officer. I’m trained to sympathize with parolees.
He raises one dark eyebrow. “Can you, Vannah? Can you really?”
More than he knows, but I’m not going there. Not with a parolee. And sure as hell not with someone who’s seen me naked.
Then I laugh out loud.
He hasn’t seen me naked. I’ve always had my clothes on. We’ve only had quickies. He hasn’t even seen my pussy. He’s touched it, fucked it, but he hasn’t seen it.
“What the hell is so funny?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
“It was nothing. Really.”
“And again, I call bullshit.”
I sigh. “Fine. If you must know, I was thinking that I can’t get too detailed with you because you’re my parolee. Then I was thinking, ‘yeah, but he’s seen me naked.’ And then it dawned on me. You haven’t seen me naked.”
He narrows his eyes. “I’d sure like to.”
God…those eyes of his. They can burn right through me, and they’re focused like lasers.
I cross my legs. “We’ve had this discussion. You ended it, remember?”
“Yeah. And I can un-end it too.”
“You think? You think you hold all the cards here?”
“Baby, I know I hold all the cards here. And in your heart and your head, you know that too.”
I scoff and then take another drink. “You’re awfully sure of yourself for someone who’s just getting back to real life.”
He shakes his head, scoffing lightly. “You think prison isn’t real life? It’s real life at its most base level. It’s survival of the fittest, Vannah. It’s eat or be eaten. That’s the core of life, Savannah. No one knows that better than someone who’s been on the inside.”
I stop my jaw from dropping.
What he said makes an eerie sort of sense. Sure, we’re civilized as human beings, but when push comes to shove, we revert to our primal ways. We are, at our cores, animals.
Eat or be eaten.
Interesting words he chose.
He could have said ‘kill or be killed,” but he didn’t. Were his words purposeful? I want to ask, but I choose not to.
“I’m surprised,” he says.
“Surprised at what?”
“That you have nothing to say to that.”
“I know how prison works, Falcon. I’ve been working in the system for five years.”
“Sweetheart, unless you’ve been inside, you have no fucking clue how prison works.”
“I hear the stories. Sometimes horrific stories, when my parolees choose to share them with me.”
“Trust me, Vannah, you don’t hear half of it. There are some things we can’t talk about. It’s like when soldiers come back from a war with PTSD. I’m not saying prison is like a war. I can’t say that because I’ve never been in a war. I never had the privilege of serving my country.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Did you want to?”
“I did. A friend and I were going to join the Navy after college, try to become SEALS together. He went without me.”
“Because you…
“Went to prison. That’s right.”
“I bet you would have made a great SEAL.”
He shrugs, looking down. “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s all moot now.”
“It’s not too late, Falcon. You can still serve your country.”
“Who’s going to want an ex-con?”
“You can get a waiver from the secretary of defense.”
“Right. And I can also fly to the moon tomorrow.” He rolls his eyes.
He’s right. It’s tough, but I’ve seen it happen. And my God…Falcon Bellamy is an amazing specimen of manhood. If I were in a foxhole, he’s the one I’d want with me.
