Page 58 of Deliver Me

When it had first started it had been an irritation, one that had only deepened when he’d realized the prison had no intention of fixing it. Alex had complained about it bitterly when he’d arrived, about how the constant repetitive noise made it impossible to sleep or think or breathe without feeling like insanity was one splash away and stored just inside the eardrums.

Gabriel wasn’t sure at all how he would be able to sleep without it now. Like everything else about this place, it had slowly gone from something he hated, to something he tolerated, to something that was simply there. They all hated it, groaned about it, wished they could be somewhere else, but those like him who had known that this was all there’d ever be, were resigned to the inevitability of it.

He’d hoped to get out someday, but he hadn’t expected it to be today. Maybe in a year or five, when he would’ve more time to prepare for his life after prison.

He still wasn’t sure he believed there was actually going to be an after. Would the guards come to his cell to release him in a few hours like they’d promised, or would they come to tell him that it had been a mistake? Or a dream?

He thought he remembered it clearly. Walking into the courtroom with his hands and ankles chained and the shame of having Mia and her family, her friends see him that way. Seeing Brittany and Michael and the others as they’d all sat in that fucking witness box and paraded his sins and his failures out into the light for everyone to see.

Brittany and the child they’d lost. Richard. Seth. Hugh and the blood he’d never managed to wash off his conscience.

He hated that Mia had been there to hear it, but he’d known he couldn’t keep her away. When he’d asked Amy to try and talk her out of it, she’d laughed in his face. Nothing kept Mia from doing what she wanted to do, what she thought was right and, in the end, he’d been glad she’d been there when the judge had asked him to stand and read him the sentence that would change his life.

The first time, when he was too young to understand the cost of it as they’d taken his life away, he’d been numb with nothing left to lose. This time, there was Mia. The judge had given him a chance to live, but Mia had given him a reason.

He tried to silence the part of him that feared she might not come today, and he would walk out the doors to an empty parking lot and a bus that would carry him away from here and to nothing. Maybe she, too, had expected years longer to prepare and she just wouldn’t be ready.

The worry kept his mind occupied as they came to get him and his small box of personal items from his cell and escortedhim to the small area where they did out-processing. He was given a change of clothes—a plain white T-shirt and inexpensive jeans—and an envelope with two crisp hundred dollar bills and a few fives and ones that the small woman behind the desk explained was the remainder of what had been in his commissary account.

“There will be someone here to pick you up? So, you won’t need a bus ticket or a ride to the station, right?” She was curt, not looking at him as she processed his paperwork.

He swallowed hard, hands shaking as he considered what would happen if she didn’t come. “She’s supposed to be … I mean, she said she would …” He trailed off, swallowing again when the woman pierced him with an impatient look. “Yes,” he said, more firmly. “Yes, someone is coming.”

She nodded, signing the last form in the stack with a flourish. “You’ll be escorted out the front and you’ll need to leave the premises immediately.”

He nodded, handing over his prison garb and picking up the box containing all of the evidence of the last thirteen years of his life—some art and letters from Mia. He was supposed to get his personal items back, the things that he’d had on him when he was arrested, but they shrugged at him, and he knew the only thing that he’d had in his pockets that night was a knife, and it would stay locked up as evidence in some vault owned by the state of Texas.

He followed the guard out and down the endless passageway, each set of doors that he passed through clanging shut behind him with the same feeling of finality that he’d had when he’d first come in.

It should have been liberating, but it made his knees quake.

The guard barely waited for him to be fully through the last set of doors before pulling it closed with a click and he walked out of the prison and into the bright light of mid-afternoon.There were no chains on his wrists and the jeans they’d given him felt odd and tight around his waist after so many years of wearing nothing but loose jumpsuits. He scanned the parking lot and pushed a hand through his hair as he tried to figure out what to do next. The erratic racing beat of his heart echoed in his ears, drowning out the sounds of birds in the trees and the far-off bark of a dog. He pushed back against a rising panic, a feeling of disconnectedness that started in his ears and spread until it reached his fingers and his toes. He didn’t know what to do. Or where to go. He couldn’t go back inside and he couldn’t breathe …

And then she was there, standing on the other side of the small driveway between the sidewalk and the first row of parked cars, wearing a pretty blue sundress and a smile. He flexed his fingers at his sides as the feeling returned to them and watched as she shifted uneasily from foot to foot, bottom lip caught between the white of her teeth.

There’d always been something between them—guards, handcuffs, walls—and despite all of the times he’d told her that he couldn’t wait to find out what she tasted like or see her pretty little body spread out under his, it suddenly seemed like nothing more than an impossible fantasy. How could he do that, when he couldn’t even cross the distance between them now?

She took half a tentative step forward and he did the only thing he could think to do, the thing he had done the first time she’d come to visit him, and she'd been looking at him with eagerness and uncertainty. He opened his arms and waited.

There was a quick flick of a glance, right then left as she looked for cars passing in the parking lot, then she bolted, her feet crossing the space in three loose-limbed, bounding steps before she flung herself into his chest with such force that he took a step back to steady them as his arms came around her to catch and hold.

She stayed there for several heartbeats, her face pressed against his chest as they took in each other’s familiar warmth and comforting smells, but it was no longer enough and when she tipped back her head and looked up at him with wide wet eyes full of joy and pink lips parted in welcome, there was nothing he could do but press his mouth to hers.

When he’d imagined this moment, he’d expected it to be soft and tender, but she met his kiss with an enthusiasm that surprised him. There was inexperience in the way she fit against him, her hands coming up to grip his face and hold him steady as she pressed her mouth to his just a little too hard, lips barely parted, but he pulled her close and wiggled his head to settle against her mouth more comfortably.

There would be time for her to learn the finer points of kissing and for him to discover the taste of her but for now all that mattered was that he could hold her for as long as he wanted and feel the soft shape of her in his arms and the soft pliability of her lips, and smell of the sweet floral fragrance of her perfume in air that didn’t carry the faint traces of bleach and sweat.

He pulled away, rubbing his cheek on her hair as she laughed wetly and wiped the tears from her cheeks. The trembling smile she gave him was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and he wanted to spend the rest of his life kissing her, but there were better places than here to do that.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand and leading him across the parking lot. “Let’s go home.”

Home.

Did she consider her home to be his? Would he be staying with her now that he didn’t have to stay here?

The suddenness of it all left him with many questions that they hadn’t had time to discuss and he waited until he’d settled into the passenger seat of her little blue sedan to ask her.

“Is that where we’re going? Your apartment?”

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