Part 5 (1/2)
As soon as the door was closed behind me, I threw myself down on my bed and cried like a baby.
LATER ON, WHEN MR. CARTER had left for his flight, Hope came into my room.
”I'm not going to ask you if you're okay,” she told me, coming to sit on the edge of my bed. ”Because that's a stupid question when it's obvious that you're not.” Stroking my head, Hope sighed heavily. ”I'm so sorry about my dad, Teegs.”
Leaping off my bed, I began to pace. I couldn't sit still and take her pity. I couldn't f.u.c.king sit on this pain. Swinging around to face Hope, I begged, ”Please tell me I did the right thing.”
I closed my eyes and fought back the voice inside of me telling me that I had been wrong about him. I never wanted to break away from my life more than I did in this moment.
Was it pity making me feel like I was wrong?
Wrong for jumping to conclusions without hearing him out?
Was I a huge fool for even contemplating that my eyes had deceived me?
I was so confused.
”Tell me I didn't misjudge the situation,” I blurted out, unable to handle the emotions churning inside of me. ”Please, Hope, tell me your dad is wrong.”
”I don't know, Teagan,” she groaned. Climbing to her feet, she walked over to my bedroom window and looked out through the curtains. ”I want to believe you misjudged him,” she told me after a long pause. ”My heart is telling me you did...”
”But?” I offered, sensing there was a very big but to come.
”It's just too shady,” she admitted. Swinging around to face me, Hope scrunched her nose up. ”You saw him and Reese with your own two eyes, and it's not like they haven't been together many times before.”
”Exactly,” I exclaimed wearily. ”I saw them. I didn't make it up.” Even though I wished I had.
Hope sighed. ”Look, I've known Jordan my entire life,” she told me. ”And if he could do what he did to me, butcher my heart and betray me, then I'm sorry, Teagan, but I'm not holding out much hope the rest of the male population.”
”Yeah,” I whispered, taking in her words, feeling my heart break all over again. ”Neither am I.”
LIGHTS OUT HAD BEEN HOURS AGO, and I had been lying in the darkness ever since, listening to the noise coming from the cells on either side of ours. The a.s.sholes on our left were arguing over a missing pack of cigarettes. The ones on our right were fighting because they could; because there was nothing else to do in this place.
I remained perfectly still on my bunk, quiet as a mouse, as I racked my brain and tried to come up with a plan that wouldn't get me killed in this place. I'd been challenged to a fight this morning. I refused.
Now, I was biding my time, trying to figure out how the f.u.c.k I wouldn't have to use my fists in this place. I was surrounded by a.s.sholes, many of which knew my background as a street fighter. That made them curious. It made them want to take me down a peg or two. I wasn't afraid of any d.i.c.k in this place, but I didn't want the trouble. I was f.u.c.king weary.
”What was she like, Messina?” Lucky asked, breaking the eerie silence, and the question threw me. I had thought the guy was asleep.
Rolling onto my back, I folded my arms behind my head and stared up at the metal bars above my head. ”Who?”
”Your girl.” I heard him twisting around on the bunk above me. ”You never told me her name.” The sound of a match striking filled the silence followed by the aroma of nicotine wafting through the air.
”Teagan,” I whispered, feeling the burn in my chest that came with saying her name aloud. ”And she was...different.” Teagan was the only one who had ever known me like really known me. She had gone to the trouble of digging deeper, finding the screw-up inside of me, and loving me anyway. That wasn't normal. She wasn't normal. ”She was a pain in my a.s.s,” I added with a smirk, thinking back to the numerous times Thorn had caused me nothing but trouble.
”She love you?”
”Not enough.”
”You still love her?”
”It doesn't matter anymore,” I hissed through clenched teeth. h.e.l.l f.u.c.king yes I still loved her, but I wasn't the type of guy who talked openly about my feelings. Christ, before Thorn, I wouldn't have thought I had feelings to talk about. ”It's in the past.”
”It's the only thing that matters,” he corrected. ”And the past is never in the past. It's always waiting in the wings, ready to swoop in and f.u.c.k up the present,” he muttered and after a pause added, ”I'd bet my last cigarette she's the reason you're in this wonderful establishment.”
”It's not her fault,” I shot back defensively, tensing up. ”I was a f.u.c.k up long before I met her.” Shaking my head, I let out a sigh and asked, ”Why are you bringing this s.h.i.+t up, man?”
”Because when I look at you, it's like I'm looking at the eighteen-year-old version of myself.”
Even though I was p.i.s.sed as h.e.l.l at him for bringing up my business, I didn't dare open my mouth and say so. Lucky was as closed off as I was. It wasn't an everyday occurrence that the guy spoke about himself, and I wanted to hear what he had to say.
The bunk s.h.i.+fted and squeaked in protest as he climbed down. ”I'm gonna tell you a little story, Messina,” he announced, ”from one lovesick fool to another.”
The moonlight flooding in from the tiny bar covered window in our cell illuminated his profile and I watched as he walked over to our small desk, and hoisted himself on top of it before taking a deep drag of his cigarette and exhaling heavily. ”I fell for this chick from my hometown,” he began to explain. ”Fell real f.u.c.king hard. Her daddy was a cop, one of the good guys. s.h.i.+t, back then, I was one of the good guys,” he chuckled, flicking the ash from his cigarette before taking another drag. ”We'd dated all through high school and I was in deep, Messina. Real f.u.c.king deep...” His eyes glazed over and his voice trailed off.
Exhaling heavily, I sat up and grabbed my cigarettes from under my pillow. ”You don't have to tell me s.h.i.+t, Lucky,” I told him as I sparked up. ”It's cool, man. I understand.”
”The night I was arrested, I had the ring in my jeans pocket,” he told me in a quiet tone, ignoring my words. ”Was on my way to pick her up at her dorm Hayley was a freshman at the time...” His voice broke off then, it was the first time I had ever heard him quiver, and when he spoke again, I felt like I had been sucker punched in the chest.
”When I let myself into her room all I could hear was the sound of her crying weakly...begging for mercy and calling my name. Her blood,” he whispered. ”It was everywhere. Smeared all over the sheets. The walls. The f.u.c.king carpet. Her clothes had been ripped from her body... by the b.a.s.t.a.r.d standing over her zipping up his pants.”
”Jesus Christ,” I choked out, not knowing what to say.
”I killed a man that night, Messina. With my own bare hands,” he growled. ”And in doing so, I wasted the last moments I would ever have with her.”
”She died?”
”He f.u.c.king butchered her,” he confirmed coldly. ”And I butchered him while my girl was taking her last breath in this world.”
”Lucky,” I whispered. ”I'm so d.a.m.n sorry.”
”I got eleven years,” he said after a moment. ”Would've been a h.e.l.luva a lot more but her father had pull and I was convicted of manslaughter instead. And I've been here ever since. Existing.”
Rubbing a hand down my face, I struggled to take it all in. ”Why did you tell me all of that, man?”
Dropping his cigarette b.u.t.t in the sink, he jumped down from the desk and stretched his arms over his head. ”Because my girl's dead, Messina, and I aint ever getting her back. But it's not over for you,” he told me pa.s.sionately. ”Look, I've got another six years in this place so it looks like we'll be seeing this out together. It would be nice to have an ally.”
”You want me as an ally?” I asked, watching his climb back up on his bunk.
”I've got a good feeling about you, Noah Messina,” he chuckled. ”Now shut the f.u.c.k up and get some sleep.”
I didn't sleep a wink that night.
Instead, my mind went through Lucky's admission over and over until the sun rose and the lights were turned back on.
It's not over for you, he had told me, and Christ, I wanted to believe him.
More than anything.
THIS PLACE WAS A LIVING, BREATHING h.e.l.l.