Page 85 of Freshman

“I don’t know,” Alfie admitted.

“What did you like at school? What did you dream of being one day?”

“Dreams are for people who can afford them. I don’t have anything. In five years, ten years, I still won’t. This…” Alfie glanced around his barren living room. “It’s survival. I needed a job, I got one. I needed a house to rent, I’ve got one. I need food in my fridge and in my cupboards, I’ve got some. That’s it. I don’t have any dreams.”

“You have no idea how much I want to give them to you. You deserve—”

“I don’t deserve shit. I’m a nobody.”

“You’re my Freshman. The cute officer with the big green eyes. The shy smile and the blushing cheeks. The guy who flirts with a murderer and goes above and beyond to save a prisoner’s life. The one who doesn’t even realise what he craves, what he needs to feel good. Who doesn’t even know how to dream because it’s never been a luxury he possessed. I want to take care of you, in every way you want to be taken care of, I mean that.”

Alfie breathed out in a rush. They were traitorous buzzwords his heart longed for.

“I want you to be mine.”

Alfie gasped at Nate’s words. They made his stomach flip and his heart tighten. For his eighteen-year existence, those were the words he’d always wanted to hear, from anyone. Someone valuing him over someone else, someone picking him from the crowd, claiming him, not as a consolation but as the main prize.

Deny as he might, he just wanted to be wanted.

“I know you’re freaked out, but I’m freaked out too. I’m the one locked up, and at any moment I could lose you. Part of me wants to scare you away. I don’t want you to waste your life on me, but the other part, the more dominant part, wants to bind you to me forever. All I have in here is time, and I use it thinking of you. I’ve lived lives with you in my head. These fantasies we talk about aren’t fantasies to me. They’re promises for when I get out. They’re futures.”

“You’re not getting out for a long time,” Alfie croaked. “If ever.”

“I’ve got a plan, Freshman.”

Alfie widened his eyes in horror. “What?”

“You don’t need to worry—”

“You’re planning an escape?”

Nate didn’t answer at first. He left a chasm of a pause that Alfie hyperventilated through.

“And if I was, if I had some plan for the future, would you run to the prison and tell them, or would you let me escape?”

“I should report it.”

Nate hummed. “Should, but you won’t. I want you, Freshman, and you want me too, and I don’t know when the day will come, but it will.”

The phone cut out, and Alfie stared at the black screen. It reflected his panicked eyes and his open mouth. Nate was planning an escape, had admitted it, and that left Alfie with a huge dilemma.

The ‘us and them’, but he didn’t know whose side he was on.

20

For a whole week, Alfie managed to avoid Nate.

He got Glen to do the roll call on the top floor, and Nate didn't protest, he let Alfie have some space.

Escape. Nate was planning an escape.

Ryan was winding down his droning Monday handover, but before he clapped in a signal of finality, he stilled and wagged a finger. “Almost forgot. I want checks on Nate throughout the night.”

Alfie’s heart pounded beneath his ribs. He didn’t trust himself to speak in case his voice trembled. Ryan knew about Nate’s escape plan—he had to know, but did he know Alfie knew of it? He’d been vague, like he didn’t know when it might happen or was deliberately keeping Alfie in the dark.

“Why’s that?” Henry asked.

Ryan rubbed at the strip of facial hair on his chin. “Just a precaution. He got the news that Doris died this morning, and he’s been in his cell since. Not eating, not speaking, just lying on his bed.”

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