Page 48 of Gathered Sparkle

Not that I could give him any of those things.

“What’s your angle?”

“No angle. Just figured you could use a break. You look like you’re one bad day away from checking out for good.”

I flinch. He’s not wrong, but hearing it out loud is a slap.

“So, what’s your story?” he asks, seizing me up more. “You don’t look like the type to end up in a place like this.”

“Yeah? Well, looks can be deceiving.”

He waits, patient, as if he’s got all the time in the world.

Fuck, we probably have.

I don’t know why I tell him, maybe because I think he’ll judge me, call me a murderer the same as everyone else, and I won’t have to deal with this fake kindness anymore.

“I killed someone.” The words taste like ash. “My girlfriend. In a car crash.”

Oscar doesn’t recoil or call me a monster.

“Drunk driving?” he asks, his tone surprisingly even.

“No. Just... careless. Stupid. I was going too fast, and now she’s dead. It was an accident.” I force the rest out in a rush. “But I might as well have killed her. I failed her.”

The silence stretches. I expect him to tell me I deserve to rot here and agree with the voice in my head that says the same thing every time I close my eyes.

But instead, Oscar nods like he understands.“You ever think maybe you didn’t deserve to be here?”

The question hits me with the force of a punch to the gut. “What the hell do you know about it?”

“I know guilt,” he says simply. “And I know that carrying it around like a badge of honor doesn’t bring anyone back. It eats you alive.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything.

Oscar doesn’t push. He stretches out on the cot opposite mine, folding his arms behind his head like this is just another night in a cheap motel.

“Get some sleep. I’ll look out for assholes tonight.”

I stare at him, the words settling over me like a blanket I didn’t know I needed.

I’m safe.

The concept feels foreign, laughable even. He can’t guarantee that, and I don’t know him. He could be worse than all of them. But something tells me he’s not. And I’m so damn exhausted from years of keeping one eye open that I let myself believe it.

At least enough not to fight sleep when it comes, dragging me under.

The memory feels too real as if he’s sitting right in front of me, and for a moment, I swear I can hear his voice. But it’s gone, slipping away into the past where he belongs.

Oscar.

I blink, shaking off the lingering weight of the memory. Fuck, what I’d give to have him here right now.

“Ace? What happened?”

Her voice pulls me fully back to the present, grounding me in the here and now. I want to deflect, shove it all down where it can’t hurt me, but she deserves more than that.

“You happened,” I start, the words barely making it past the lump in my throat. “But also… jail.” She shifts on the other side of the door, and my hands clench into fists against my thighs as I try to find the strength to go on. “They shipped me off to juvie first. It was hell, but I managed. I had to. Then, when I turned eighteen, they sent me to adult prison. And that… that was a different kind of hell.”

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