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I notice a slight constriction in the muscles around his left eye, though I don’t know how to interpret. Disgust? Anger? Incredulity? Max holds his cards close to the chest. Living that way must be exhausting. Keeps the muscles all tight, makes you aggravated, always a background anger rumbling within. I suppose men like Max use that to their advantage, as well, but at what cost?
“Remarkable shift,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows. “What’s that?”
“Killer to MIT.”
I smile, the subject far easier than the last. “Well, I was always more of a nerd than a murderer. After all, it was only the one.” I hear Dad gurgling, but the sound transitions into the clacking of fingertips on a keyboard. Soothing. The noise I would hear at three in the morning after everyone else had gone to bed, none but the light of my computer screen illuminating the room. “I’ve always had a predilection for tech. While the other young shifters of our pack were outside playing sports, I stayed in and monkeyed on motherboards, learned to hack.”
Max nods. “Uh, huh. So prison must’ve been a difficult experience for someone of your more…sensitivenature?”
The server appears, unfazed by the mention of prison. She wears a stained apron over a teal dress and a cloak of nonchalance that must buffer her against the riffraff that filters through this diner. “Hello,” I greet cheerily.
It’s my affability that gives her pause. Her eyes lift from the notepad on which she scribbles her customers’ orders. A smile tugs up the corners of her mouth when she sees me. “Hi.”
“We’re waiting on two more,” says Max, shooing her.
“I’ll come back in five,” she says, passing me one more glance before receding behind the counter again.
“Smooth operator,” says Max. “I hope you don’t intend on trying any moves while under my supervision.”
I turn and look at Asha through the window. She kicks a tennis ball high into the air, an impressive show of leg strength. I imagine how firm her thighs are, which I suppose is exactly the sort of thing I’m being warned against.
“Tell me about prison,” says Max.
More snippets of memory chase away thoughts of Asha’s physique. Rubbery dinner meats. Omnipresent musk. Sting of baton against my back.
“Prison was rough,” I answer honestly.
As I gaze into Max’s eyes, I return to the place. My world shrunk to the size of the maximum security cell block that housed me, shared with two dozen others deemed too violent for the privileges afforded less threatening inmates. That was a place of despair masked with brute strength. I watched men hurl themselves at one another in violent collisions to keep from hurting themselves. We were rats in a bucket.
“It’s a place that wears away at the soul.”
Another twitch at the corner of his eye. This time I think it’s bemusement. “How is it you emerged the way you have, then?” he asks.
I sigh.The way I have.Cheery and excited for the free world, he means. “I was in for only a few years.”
He leans closer, scrutinizing me. “Weathered the time, huh? Held out hope?” He reads deception in my answer. I can tell.
I could tell him that I hung on by a thread. That what got me through was helping out my fellow inmates. Or I could tell him all the lurid details people want to hear about prison, all the violence, drugs, murder, and so on. I experienced it all and I can still feel the impacts from some of the hits I absorbed, the echoes of bruises not easily forgotten.
That conversation would be pointless, though.
I can and would tell Max all of these things, if I thought he was truly interested, but I can tell he's not. I’m an open book, but you have to flip the pages. This man only wants me to bare enough of my soul to know whether I'm dangerous to him and his team.
So no pointless conversations for him.
Max changes gears. “Well, don’t hold out hope for Asha. She’s off limits.”
His eyes bore into me, waiting for my response. I simply nod. As stunning and intriguing as I find Asha, I’m not looking for trouble.
Sure, I weathered my time in prison, but I’m not looking to do any more. This is my one shot to stay out. Freedom. Something I never really tasted in my life, not even during those years on the lam, at school, under a false identity. Watching over your shoulder isn’t freedom. It’s just another form of imprisonment.
So, despite a history of mistakes, I don’t intend to make one here. I’ll abide by Max’s rules, serve the Enforcers, and keep myself out of that godforsaken Hell I left behind. No matter how intriguing the pretty asset is.
"I'm only here to help," I offer simply.
"I hope so," Max says, and there's a hint of a threat in his voice.
