Page 26 of The Vow Thief
I had been staring at the cell wall for what felt like days. The lights buzzed. They always buzzed. A thin, high whine baked into the walls, into the floor, into my teeth. It had become a part of my body. I hadn’t noticed it until I tried to think, and then I couldn’t notice anything else.
On the cot with one leg folded under me, I watched the crack in the ceiling breathe. It opened a little wider every time the heat kicked in. It reminded me of a vein about to burst. I swore it whispered at night, and I was lonely enough to listen. Probably tales of the women who had rotted here before me, each stretching it open with her loneliness.
I wondered how many of them had thought someone would come for them. I wondered how many had believed they deserved it.
I told myself to stop thinking about Matt.
And Sarah.
But the moment I said his name in my head, she was right there like a fucking curse. There was never a time when I remembered one without the other. I lost track of time. How long had it been since that night? I still felt the way the room had changed when he walked in, like the air had turned to poison vapors. He had stood there in the doorway with his hands clenched at his sides, staring at me like I was already gone. All that time we’d had, all the things we’d said, and he came just to tell me to leave him and his family alone. That I was a regret.
He had told me that before, but for some reason that night…it cut deep.
Like the pathetic other woman, I told him to get the fuck out. Screamed it, actually. I had wanted him to leave because if he’d stayed another second, I would have begged him to come closer.
And he left. He left me in here.
And now Sarah had him back. That empty, flax-haired nothing with her“mom blog” and her curated little pictures and her patient voice. She thought she was better than me.
In some ways, she was better; she handled the softer aspects. She filled the lunchboxes and smiled through PTA meetings. She was probably baking muffins in matching aprons with the kids right then, while I stared at a crack in the ceiling like it might break me out of this place.
But she was not better with him.
I was better for Matt in every way that mattered. I knew what he needed. She could take the kids and fuck off into her gentle little life, and I would take her husband and fuck him the way he was always meant to be fucked.
She thought she had rattled me the other day when she had sauntered into the visiting room like she was young and relevant. I could tell she had spent time in front of the mirror that morning. She had pushed her insecurities down, but I knew better.
The thud of boots on concrete snapped me out of my pity party.
Footsteps that didn’t belong to the impatient pacing of a guard bored with his post.
No, these were controlled. Steady. Clean strikes, spaced evenly, the way a man walked when he knew exactly where he was going, steps with purpose.
I sat up on my cot and smiled.
“Morning,” I said, soft and sweet and completely without sincerity.
He didn’t look at me. Didn’t slow or even flinch. He walked past my cell as though I was part of the furniture, and the echoes of his boots sounded long after he was out of sight.
The second morning, I tried again.
“Morning,” I said, not quite as soft.
His head didn’t turn, but his eyes flicked toward me. They were gray. Pale, flat, and so still, they felt like a surface you couldn’t see through. For the briefest moment, I felt them on me like hands that didn’t ask permission. Then they were gone, and he kept walking.
By the third morning, I was waiting.
I sat upright with my legs crossed and my shirt loosened just enough to show the line beneath my collarbone. It wasn’t subtle, but I wasn’t there to be subtle. I was there to see what he did with it.
When he appeared at the end of the corridor, I tilted my head slightly and spoke before he reached me.
“Good morning, Officer.”
This time, he stopped.
The lights caught the nameplate clipped to his chest.
Sean Macon.
