Page 6 of Gather the Storm

Damn. We’d been outside in the yard, but the sun felt different out here.

Brighter.

I closed my eyes for a second, just to soak it in, then heard Jace’s voice cut through the moment.

“I don’t have the patience for your zen shit right now, Wolf. Let’s fucking go.”

I opened my eyes. He was standing with Otis near the final gate — the big one with coiled barbed wire at the top and a DO NOT TOUCH — FENCE IS ELECTRIFIED sign every twenty feet or so.

Most of the time he was just Jace — my best friend, my brother in all but name.

But being outside made everything look different, and I suddenly saw him the way other people saw him. He’d kept his dark hair short in prison and his eyes were still that weird shade of green that looked almost supernatural when he was pissed, but he’d gotten even bigger in lockup, because Jace was all coiledenergy, and putting him in prison had been like stuffing a storm inside a bottle.

He needed to move, which meant he’d been working out most of every day for five years, all of his natural rage heightened by our situation.

I’d never been diagnosed with synesthesia, but I always heard people — and sometimes things — as music, and Jace was a hectic symphony of heavy metal with a background track of screamo.

All of which was to say, he was huge and fucking menacing, something that said a lot when you considered the fact that Otis and I had done our share of bulking in jail, and I stifled a laugh at the sight of Jace’s now-massive body stuffed into the clothes he’d been wearing when we’d surrendered as eighteen-year-old kids.

“Yeah, no offense, but I’m thinking we’re not actuallyfreefree until we get on the other side of this fence,” Otis said, running a hand through his shaggy blond hair.

I walked toward them and we waited while the gate guard came around to look at our paperwork. He handed it all back to us and went back to the guard shack to open the gate.

A second later, it rolled open with a shriek of rusting metal.

“Fucking finally,” Jace muttered.

He stepped through the gate without ceremony, followed by Otis, then me.

I wanted to take a minute to appreciate the moment but Otis was right: we weren’t really free until this place was in the rearview, and after five years, I wasn’t taking any chances,

The gate rattled closed behind us. The sudden silence was anticlimactic. This big fucking thing had happened — we werefree— and it was like the whole fucking universe was saying, “So? Now what?”

“You sure your mom is coming?” Otis asked, scanning the empty visitor’s lot.

“Yeah,” I said.

Jace’s dad was dead and his mom had taken off long ago. Otis’ parents were way too nice for this situation. They’d show up with balloons and a cake and anyone who’d ever been in prison would tell you this was not that kind of occasion.

We were happy to be out, but we just wanted to go home, take a shower and beat off in private, get a good meal. Also, I was dying to get my hands on my guitar, because not being able to make music for five years had been almost as bad as having to eat the slop that passed for food at Blackwell Correctional.

A minute later, I heard the familiar rumble of my mom’s 1980 Chevy Malibu.

Otis frowned. “Sounds like the Malibu needs a new carburetor.”

Otis could fix anything, build anything, and he’d always helped keep my mom’s old car in good shape. It was something he’d worried about in prison: who would do the tune-ups on the old Malibu? Who would make sure the oil was changed regularly? Because my mom sure as shit wasn’t going to stay on top of it.

I thought it was a piece of shit, but my mom loved that car, and who was I to rain on her parade?

The Malibu came into sight, its bottle-green paint job too dull to shine in the sun, and I had to admit my eyes stung a little when I spotted my mom behind the wheel, her long dark hair flying, tanned arms stacked with beaded bracelets and bangles.

I’d seen her during visiting hours, but it was different seeing her out in the wild, knowing I would be able to hug her without one of the guards yelling, “No touching, inmate!”

She was grinning ear to ear when she pulled to a stop.

She jumped out and ran around the front of the car to give me a hug.

“You’re out!” Her arms were small but strong around me.

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