Page 18 of Claim

Colin tilted his neck. “Do you think they think about you?”

I huffed out a breath that might’ve passed for a laugh in another life. “They’d be better off not to.”

I turned the page again, more to keep my hands busy than because I was actually reading, but the lights cut out without warning and a low hum rippled through the wing, followed by the usual chorus. A few shouts, a laugh, someone swearing. Then the sound folded in on itself and thinned out. Darkness pressed close.

Colin shifted below me, the mattress creaking.

I lay still, staring at a ceiling I could no longer see, listening to the prison settle around us. And in the dark, with the book closed on my chest, I thought of him.

The one I missed most of all and felt guilty for it.

I had no right to miss Tristan Hale-Fitzroy.

None at all.

* * * *

Morning unlock came with the usual crash of sound.

Keys first. Then the rattle of doors, one after another, metal on metal, the whole wing waking at once. Shouts carried down from the landing. Someone laughed too loudly. Someone else swore. The smell of boiled shit drifted up from below.

I swung my legs off the bunk and stood, shoulders stiff, ribs aching from sleeping wrong and too long. Swear they’d cut the lights early last night, just to remind us who owned the hours. Colin was already up, pacing the narrow strip of floor as if he’d been waiting for permission to exist.

“You going down?” He peered up at me, hopeful.

The bloke was old enough to be my old man, yet there he was, looking to me as if I was the difference between coping and not. Maybe I had that look. I’d been playing parent since I was a kid, keeping Keeley fed and steady, learning early how to be big and intimidating. Or maybe Colin was just terrified and mistaking proximity for safety.

Either way, he had the wrong idea.

I grabbed my cup.

The door slid open and the wing spilt into motion. Men poured out in clumps, stretching, yawning, jostling for position. No one looked rested. Everyone looked hungry. Colin fell in beside me, walking with me as if he thought last night had meant something. That our little chat had made us friends.

It hadn’t.

I nudged him subtly with my elbow, not looking at him. “Stick back.”

“What?”

“Don’t walk with me.”

He frowned, confused. “I thought—”

“Don’t.” I gritted my teeth. “For your own good.”

And it was.

As much as it might’ve been nice to have another human to talk to who didn’t look at me like a problem to be solved or a threat to be measured, I couldn’t risk it. Not for me. I could take whatever came. Had been taking it my whole life. But him? Standing near me would paint a target on his back, and I wasn’t carrying that on my conscience as well. Sometimes I wished the thing would leave me entirely. Make this simpler.

Colin slowed automatically, letting a step open between us. It was the right move. Then the press of bodies thickened, and he drifted back in again, instinct overruling sense. He was new. He didn’t yet understand how visible closeness was in a place like this. Or who watched me. All the fucking time.

I glanced sideways and caught him.

Ghost.

He stood on the opposite landing. Dressed. Awake. Clocking everything. He slid his gaze from me to Colin and back again as if checking the edge on a blade. Then he tipped his head. Interested. Learning now that I had a cellmate who wasn’t hard. A bloke he could fold away without anyone asking questions. Harris had been big. In for domestic violence. We’d never spoken in the eight weeks we’d shared, but his size alone had done the job. A buffer. A statement. A reason to think twice.

Now I didn’t have one.