Page 27 of One Step Sideways

And before I had the chance to question it, to panic, something made me dip my head at the same time as he looked up, and I barely had a second to realize what was happening before our lips touched.

Chapter Eleven

Kane

I had another second to delight in the body pressed against mine before it was gone. Ripped away so suddenly I stumbled, but then I took in Danny’s pallor and the trembling that skittered over his body and I stopped myself from reaching for him. He was out of the door before I’d even processed that.

Reaching for him?

What the actual fuck? I had nearly been the oldest fucking virgin in America. Before jail I had no friends and during lock up, it was only Archie who had protected me.

Until he hadn’t.

I ruthlessly pushed away the feeling of the slimy hands and sharp nails biting into me. Four of them had tried to hold me down, and I’d never known how I got away. I’d tried not to think about it, because I’d known a dick up my ass wouldn’t have been the worst thing I was likely to have shoved up there. And I remembered freezing for an endless moment as exactly that happened before I went beserk.

I must have thrown the shadows out and been so freaked I hadn’t realized. It had been a year after O’Connell started, and I knew damn well he’d gotten his buddies to look the other way. Showers were never unsupervised.

I took a few breaths and calmed down. I wasn’t inside anymore, and they couldn’t get to me. Where was Danny? Sadie had gone, predictably, and I wondered if he had gone to his room, but I also knew he wouldn’t leave Shae alone for that long. The man made me crazy in lots of ways, and right up to thatmoment I hadn’t acknowledged that getting rid of the hate had made way for me to feel something else for him. The trouble was, I didn’t think he had let go of his, and I wasn’t sure why he hadn’t. Did being close to me disgust him so much?

Was I gay? BI? Was it ridiculous for a thirty-plus-year-old guy to have any doubts? My feelings as a kid—if you could call them that—had been mostly about fear, desperation, and hunger. Not that they were much different now.

And somewhere in my own fucked-up mind, I knew that whatever had made him run wasn’t about me. This wasn’t a simple rejection. It was complicated and fucked up for both of us, but in a lot of ways my trauma—I hated that word—wasn’t as bad. Not that you should pile up bad shit like bricks. See who had the tallest stack. It wasn’t something measurable. You couldn’t compare. But right at that moment, I knew Danny was suffering and while I might not be able to help, I wanted him to know I cared enough to try.

Before I second guessed myself, I followed him to the room where we’d put Shae, and even though the door was ajar, I slid down the wall outside and sat.

Then I talked, tossing words out into the silence like fucking confetti, even though I didn’t know if he was interested in catching them. “I was okay while I had Archie. Okay being a relative term, but he kept me alive and kept the Shot Caller from ordering me to pay fines.”

“What’s a shot caller?” Danny asked from inside after a long moment when I wondered if he would say anything.

“Leader of the prison gang. There were factions, but the Aryan Brothers were the biggest gang in mine, probably the whole of Georgia for what they got away with. Archie protected me and I never had to pay fines. Fines ranged from outside contracts to good food to ending up in the hen coop.”

“The what?” Danny repeated, and I sighed, wishing I’d never brought it up.

“The hen coop is what they called the cells some prisoners are allocated to according to a special sign. Often sexual identity. At sixteen, I was small and skinny.”

“Fuck,” Danny breathed out.

“Yeah,” I said, suddenly tired that the life was still imprisoning me. Would I ever be truly free? “Thing is, the designation didn’t depend on reality, simply appearances. Crimes were taken into consideration. Basically, the hen coop is like a prison within a prison. They get jobs like cleaning other cells, which often leads to—” I swallowed down my dry throat. “Rape.”

I heard the door open but didn’t get up off the floor. I wasn’t even sure I could do this and look at Danny.

“Things went south for me when Archie died. By that point, I was too big to personally mess with and no one would have relegated me to the coop, but there was a guard that hated me. Never knew why.”

“Was that O’Connell?”

“How’d you know?” I wished I dared look up at him.

“Complaints, disciplinary actions. It all has to be recorded and signed. He was the regular name in the file I saw.”

Made sense. “He had it in for me. Food was his favorite, and I never knew how he did it, unless it was bribing the inmates.”

Danny closed the door behind him, took one look at me, and put his back to the wall next to me before sliding down. “Food?” Of course, Danny would focus on that.

“I spent a lot of time in and out of the clinic. It took me too long to work out that it must be the food making me sick, so I stopped eating it. I once had to go five days with no food.”

Danny pressed his lips together. “Which explains your caution.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It became ingrained. I was once in the line, and they swapped a fresh dish out as I was reaching for it. It didn’t strike me as odd until I saw the cook swap the dish back for the half-empty one after I was already sat down. I’d already taken a couple of bites because I was starving, so I just said I had to go to the bathroom, and I made myself throw up.”

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