Page 15 of The Care of Broken Things
Eli laughed, and Samuel realized he’d never really heard it before. It wasn’t especially loud or long, but the delight in it went bone deep, rumbling out of some secret place inside Eli only thisstranger had access to.
“Blame Samuel. He promised to keep me well-stocked.”
“Samuel!” the man exclaimed, as if just coming back to himself. “You said he’d be here! Where is—”
Samuel found himself looking into a pair of ordinary brown eyes framed by even more ordinary eyebrows. He was as certain as ever he’d never seen the guy before, and yet the smile that lit the man’s face could have convinced any audience they were long-lost brothers. “‘Big and blonde,’ he tells me. Conveniently leaving out how gorgeous you are.” The stranger grabbed his hand and pumped like he was trying to wring oil from it, surprisingly strong for his size. “I can see now why he was trying to keep you to himself, but I insisted I had to meet you. I can’t thank you enough. Really. Words can’t express it. I was just telling your sister—”
“Jenny,” Samuel said, looking around for her. How could he have forgotten?
But she was right there, hanging a few paces back, observing with the usual reserved focus. At the sound of her name, she came forward to wrap her brother in a hug of jasmine blossoms. Samuel dropped the man’s hand and hugged her back. Usually those hugs took all of his attention, but this time he was distracted.
“I didn’t think you could come in such a small package, Samuel. The famous sister, I presume?”
Samuel jerked when Eli pressed a hand to his shoulder and whipped around. “Yes. Jenny, this is—”
“Dr. Pearson-Thompson,” Jenny said, her voice clipped and more than a little frosty. “You’ve been causing trouble for my brother.”
Eli’s hand jumped up to rub at the back of his neck, making the muscles of his arm rotate and pop. “Wish I could deny it.”
“No,” Samuel said. “I told you, Jen. I acted on my own.”
There was a tug on his arm. The pale man. There could be no mistaking who he was anymore, but his mind slid over the name, refusing to label him. The man was Nathaniel, Eli’s husband. He had to be, and Samuel wished suddenly that Jameson was on visitation duty. He wouldn’t have let a civilian touch him like that. But Mathews didn’t care. He was picking at something between his teeth, and Chesterson, the other CO, was pushing at her cuticles.
“Come,” Nathaniel said. “I need to thank you some more. Eli, you want to grab the coffee?”
There were vending machines and a small canteen in the visitation room that allowed visitors to purchase food and drink, but prisoners weren’t supposed to be the ones to do it. But once again, Mathews didn’t care. As soon as Eli had turned to do his husband’s bidding Nathaniel pulled Samuel close and whispered. “Quick. How are things really?”
The man’s face had changed.
“Things?” This close he could see there was a scar running through one of the man’s eyebrows.
“He’s lost weight, and he’s not sleeping. What else? I know there’s more. He makes it sound like everything’s fine, but I need the truth. They’re targeting him, aren’t they?”
His eyes darted over to Eli who was bustling about the coffee station. He hadn’t gotten more than a glance before his face was wrenched back. Nathaniel’s expression had creased into anger. “No, you don’t get to play some bullshit honor code now. I don’t care if he’s sworn you to silence. You tell me everything right now.”
There was no honor code, and he hadn’t been sworn to silence, but still he hesitated. He knew how much the truth of things hurt Jenny. There wasn’t much she could do for him on the outside. He knew what Eli would want him to do: lie throughhis teeth. But he also knew that if he were in Nathaniel’s place, he’d want to know the truth no matter how bad it was.
He took a breath, gathered his thoughts, and began speaking with the same hushed urgency Nathaniel was using. “Yes, they’re targeting him. Some of these guys haven’t fucked a woman in so long they’ve given up on ever having one again. Then there are those who don’t want women. And some just like to rape. For the power of it, and the prestige, and your husband’s the biggest prize this prison has seen. In here, fucking someone's like owning them, and sex with Eli would make someone lord of the prison block.”
He’d thought Nathaniel was pale before, but he was whiter than milk now. The grip on his arm was making indents. “He’s strong,” Nathaniel said. “He’ll be stronger than anyone who tries.”
“He’s not the biggest one here, and even if he was, these guys don’t play fair.”
The grip tightened still further. His arm was going numb. “But you’ll protect him, right? You already have.”
“I can’t be with him all the time.”
“Why not?”
Because I can’t breathe around him,he thought. Becausehe scares me more than any of the predators in this place.Instead, he said. “I also need to sleep sometimes.”
“Can’t you do it in shifts?”
He was about to give an instinctive, “Of course not,” and paused. Sleeping in shifts. He’d never trusted anyone to guard his sleep before, nor would he ever, but Eli was the kind of naïve idiot who might.
“I suppose we could try.”
Nathaniel took a breath, though his grip didn’t ease. “But that wouldn’t really protect him, would it? You can’t watch everysecond. You need to eat. To shower. To shit. To do any of the thousand normal things people have to do. I know I’m already asking for too much, but can I ask something else?”
