Page 2 of Overprotective Cowboy

Ted stood up and hugged Nate again, realizing he only had to count down three more days. He watched Nate head for the exit along with all the other visitors, and a flash of gratitude and appreciation for the man filled him.

Ted didn’t get a lot of visitors, as his family lived a few hundred miles away, and neither of his parents could make the drive alone anymore. They emailed still, and he talked to his mother on the phone every week, even if the conversation was only fifteen minutes long.

He waited in the room with all the tables and chairs where visiting took place until the guards released them, and he had to make a decision about that afternoon’s automotive class. It would be his last one, and he hadn’t anticipated that.

So he’d go, because Dallas ran the workshop, and the man who was part of the Mulbury Boys never went anywhere without the scent of grease accompanying him. He loved running the workshops, and he even had special permission to work in the shop when he wasn’t doing classes. The beauty of the low-security facility.

There were plenty of rules too, and Ted had bucked against them at first. He’d been in the unit for a while before Nate had shown up, wide-eyed and clenching his fingers into fists as he entered the unit for the first time.

Ted remembered exactly what it was like to walk into the facility for the first time, and he and Nate had tried to make the transition as easy as possible for newboots after that.

He wouldn’t be tinkering with an engine for a couple of hours though, so he returned to the dormitory, choosing not to go outside quite yet. Spring had arrived in Texas, and Ted wondered what the air at the ranch tasted like. Nate had told him about the bees the ranch cultivated, and Ted closed his eyes, almost able to hear the buzzing and taste the honey.

Almost.

Ted had lived his whole life with the wordalmostriding on the back of his tongue. The fact that he’dalmostused a knife in the brawl he’d gotten into which had landed him in this facility was the biggest one. Yeah, that was a very bigalmost.

“I saw Nate leaving,” a man said, and Ted opened his eyes to look at Slate Sanders. He’d joined the Mulbury Boys the moment he’d come into the facility, because he was a little bit older, a little bit wiser, and extremely laid back.

“Yeah,” Ted said. “He came to visit me. I’m going to Hope Eternal.”

A smile formed on Slate’s face, though Ted could see the longing in his eyes. He’d received a sentence of only thirty months, though, and he’d be out in ten. He could be in the camp too, but he’d stayed in the low because of the opportunities here. With more people, there was more access to health care, and infinitely more classes and opportunities to learn something.

Slate needed something else once he left this place, and he’d wanted the chance to take as many classes as possible so he could find something he could do after his sentence was up.

He came from the financial sector as well, the same as Nate, though Slate had been a stock broker out of Dallas, and Nate had been an investment banker in Houston.

Dallas had been a surgeon who liked to take apart engines on the weekends, and he’d really embraced his mechanic side behind locked doors and high fences.

“That’s great,” Slate said.

“Yeah,” Ted agreed. He honestly had no idea if the ranch was great or not. Nate acted like it was, but Ted had spent so much time here, with his schedule decided for him, his meals chosen for him, and his wardrobe handed to him.

He could barely remember life beyond the bars, and a tremor of nervousness ran through him.

“See you later,” Slate said, and just as quickly as he’d come, he left. Ted sighed and closed his eyes again, images running through his mind. He wasn’t sure if they were memories or imaginations, because he’d had plenty of time to daydream in here. The fact was, Ted could barely distinguish between what was real and what wasn’t, what his life before he’d come to River Bay had been like, and what he’d wished it had been.

Three more days, he told himself.

Then it was two days. Then one.

Monday dawned, and Ted had everything packed and ready to go before the sun rose. The door to the dormitory opened for the five a.m. count, but this time Gregory Fellows walked in. “Ready, Ted?” The Unit Manager wore a smile, but Ted didn’t quite know how to return it.

He looked at the men he was leaving behind. He’d said all of his goodbyes already, and he met Dallas’s eyes, then Slate’s, then Luke’s.

“Yeah,” he said, shouldering his bag that held all of his worldly belongings. He’d have to surrender it when he left, and it would be searched. He didn’t mind. He had nothing left to hide. All of his secrets, all of his dirty laundry, had been exposed, and Ted had survived.

Buoyed by the thought, he followed Greg out of the dormitory as the men he’d shared his sleeping and living quarters with cheered and clapped for him.

Outside in the hall, no one was cheering and applauding, but Ted rode the energy the other inmates had given him. Every step that took him farther from the dorm made his heart pound harder, and he went outside with the guards, getting a pair of handcuffs around his wrists before they went down the steps to make the move between buildings.

Ted hated the jangle of shackles, but he held still as a Unit Officer put them on his ankles. Once he had all his jewelry on, he shuffled down the steps and along the sidewalk, wondering what waited through the door. The Warden? Nate and Ginger, a woman he’d never met in real life? His lawyer?

Greg opened the door with a keycard, and he stood back as a couple of officers entered first, followed by Ted. His lawyer did stand there, and he took Ted’s bag and handed it to a couple of officers who wore gloves and unzipped his duffle. Ted tried not to care, and really, he didn’t.

Prison really had removed the anger from him. Then Jarrell Rose shook his hand, and Ted didn’t hate seeing his lawyer, maybe for the first time. When he’d first been indicted, he’d thought his lawyer could help him. After all, Ted himself had been a lawyer in his first life. He thought he’d worked to help people.

But as Ted had learned painful lesson after painful lesson during his trial and subsequent incarceration, his faith in lawyers was nearly gone.

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