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It was full morning by the time Lavena found me on the back porch, cigarette at my lips, and a million thoughts clamoring around in my head.
“You better not let Mom catch you smoking.” She pinched the smoke from my fingers and took a deep inhale before passing it back. The smoke escaped her lips in a white plume. “She’ll make you smoke the whole pack.”
I snorted. “There’s only three left. I think I’ll survive.”
My sister clicked her tongue. “Not if you’re smoking. Stuff’ll kill ya.”
She was already dressed for the day in jean cut-offs and a black tank over a bikini top. Her hair was twisted up in a messy knot and held in place by two chopsticks.
“How does it feel being back?”
I shrugged. “Unreal. Like I’ll wake up and be in that cell again.”
I didn’t tell her I hadn’t slept hardly since returning out of that very fear. The few times I dozed off, I’d come awakegasping, drenched in sweat, blinking around my surroundings as if expecting the walls to be too close, too white.
Freedom seemed to be mocking me, toying with my reality, taunting me as if waiting for my guard to drop only to snatch it all away. I had yet to mentally process the two worlds and the abrupt shift between them. I hadn’t even been given a warning when they released me. They’d pulled me from my cell three months early, hauled me to the warden’s office where I was told I was being released for good behavior — whatever that meant. I wasn’t given directions. I wasn’t eased into the process. I went from getting chucked into a shoebox for four fucking years to getting tossed out just as abruptly. The entire time I stood outside the prison gates, staring at the miles of nothing ahead of me, the dirt road, the miles of dead grass, I waited for them to come running out, laughing that they were just fucking with me.
No one came.
No one stopped me when I boarded the bus.
No one pulled us over at the gas station where I was told I was on my own.
No one was waiting for me when I found the only payphone on the face of God’s green earth and collect called my dad.
Collect called.
That was still a thing I never thought would last.
But apparently I was free.
Lavena nodded once then slid her arm through mine. Her head rested on my shoulder. “Was it awful in there?”
“It wasn’t great.”
I’d had it a lot better than most of the guys in there. I had the uncles and Milo, and the Medlock name. I was given a lot of space, which suited me fine. I made a few connections, formed the necessary acquaintances, but kept to myself.
“Make any friends?”
There was a rule in prison — be careful what you say to the person you share a block with. They were always the first to turn on you if it meant getting a lesser sentence. The only person I could almost see myself possibly calling … not a friend exactly. Not even an acquaintance. I didn’t know what, but maybe Milo.
“If I had to trust someone to have my back, I guess it would be Milo.”
Lavena clicked her tongue. “I guess being mom’s little brother, he would have had to watch out for you.”
I gave a grunt. “How were things here?”
She shrugged. “We were all upset, but I think Edmund took it the hardest.”
I glanced down at her blonde head resting on my shoulder. “Why?”
“He thinks if he hadn’t gone to that party or gotten into that fight with that Volkov kid you would have been home.”
I turned, detaching myself from her grasp. “Thatkidwas a grown ass man. He had sixteen years and a hundred pounds of muscle on Edmund. He approached an eighteen-year-old and started a fight thinking he could prove something. Edmund got lucky by accident. I took the fall because he didn’t deserve to be punished for defending himself.”
Her blue eyes narrowed. “You don’t think we haven’t told him? He won’t listen.”
I made a mental note to talk to my baby brother, to give him a hard shake if necessary. Ivan Volkov had been a thirty-four-year-old asshole on a power trip and buzzing on coke. He saw a kid from a rival family and thought he could prove something. If Edmund hadn’t managed to push him over the railing down fifteen feet, he would have killed Edmund, and no one would have batted an eye then. The only reason the cops got involved at all and the matter wasn’t settled between the families like any other situation was because some jogger watched Ivanhit the ground. He was the only witness. The only one who saw someone with dark hair running away. At that distance, he couldn’t even be sure it wasn’t me when I came forward. Edmund and I were almost the same height and build and we both had dark hair.
