Release

by Aly Martinez

  After that, there was still no sign of life outside of my room. I knew this because, like a completely well-adjusted person, I put my ear to the door and didn’t hear any movement on the other side. I was too scared I’d run into Thea if I went out to check.

  It was funny. I’d spent almost half my life surrounded by the biggest, baddest criminals the state of Georgia had been able to capture. Yet, I was terrified of a five-foot-five woman who for some asinine reason was still in love with me.

  I couldn’t be around her. Not if I wanted to keep my head straight and my eye on the prize. I had three years before I got off parole. I needed to get a job, tuck away some cash, and, the second I was allowed to leave Georgia, get the fuck out of there. Maybe, if I was lucky, I’d be able to convince Nora to come with me. We didn’t have to go far. We could stay in the south if she wanted. South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee—there were schools everywhere. She wouldn’t have trouble finding a job. The hardest part would be convincing her to leave Thea.

  However, maybe if she did, Thea would finally move on with her damn life and stop obsessing about me.

  I’d known they lived together for a while. I didn’t want anything to do with Thea while I was locked up, but I was happy as hell Nora had someone to lean on. I had been under the impression that Nora had gotten her own place when she found out about my release. I had been under that impression because Nora had straight-up told me she was getting her own place after I’d declared there was no fucking way I was living with Thea.

  Now, I was hiding in my room, waiting for Nora to wake up, open my door, and escort me to breakfast like a fucking bodyguard so I could avoid confrontation.

  Next up in my efforts to kill time was a workout. Sit ups, push-ups, planks, running in place. This was when I realized Nora hadn’t bought me any deodorant.

  Another shower.

  Another naked lap around the bedroom, and this time, I managed to keep my hands off my cock.

  Finally, I got dressed. This required me to pick through a bunch of preppy shit Nora had bought for me to find tattered jeans and a fitted green tee that clung to my chest like a damn glove. In my closet, I found a belt and a pair of distressed brown lace-up boots that maybe could have doubled as combat boots if the war was taking place on a runway. But what the hell did I know about style? I’d been wearing orange or puke beige for almost half my life.

  When I was done with all of that and there was still no sign of Nora, I sat on the edge of the bed and decided to give the phone thing a try. I wasn’t totally out of the technology loop. We had computers at the library and we were allowed to use them if we earned the privileges. But they might as well have been dinosaurs compared to the phone she’d bought me. I couldn’t even get it to read my face with the fancy secret laser thing. I gave up trying pretty quickly.

  So there I was, bored out of my fucking mind, starving, and poking at my newfound wrinkles in the bathroom mirror, when I heard a knock at my door.

  “Ramsey?”

  I froze, my eyes locked on the mirror, panic staring back at me.

  Thea.

  Jesus. I needed to find somewhere else to live.

  Leaning out of the bathroom, I stared at the door. If I was super quiet, maybe she’d think I was still asleep and go the hell away.

  When I didn’t reply, she knocked again. Her voice was timid and sweet, not at all like the fearless girl I’d grown up with. I fucking hated it.

  “Ramsey? You hungry? I’m making breakfast? I was wondering if you wanted something?” Everything from my name to the fact that she was making breakfast was a question, as if maybe she was asking permission to cook in her own damn house.

  My stomach was currently feasting on my backbone. Still, I said nothing.

  She sighed. “Okay. Well, if you change your—” There were several seconds of silence.

  I quirked my eyebrow at the door, trying to figure out why she’d abruptly stopped talking, and then cursed my inability to develop x-ray vision.

  I held my breath, hoping to hear her footsteps as she walked away.

  No. Such. Fucking. Luck.

  The door swung open and she came walking inside with her hands stacked over her eyes. “Look, I know you’re awake. I heard you running earlier. I also heard you take at least three showers. Sorry, but the house isn’t that big. Neither is the hot water heater. Are you at least dressed so I can open my eyes?”

  Brave. Unapologetic. And completely oblivious to boundaries. Now that was the Thea I knew.

  “Get out,” I barked.

  “Dressed? Not dressed? Help me out here?”

  “Get. Out.”

  She kept her eyes closed. “You gotta eat, Ramsey. You can’t stay locked up in this room forever.”

  I wanted to tell her to get the hell out again. Honestly, it was on the tip of my tongue. But it never made it past my lips because my traitorous eyes stole a head-to-toe of her lithe body. She was barefoot, wearing jeans—tight ones that tapered at her ankle. They looked like mine in the sense that they had a rip in the knee. They didn’t look like mine in the sense that they hugged the curve of her hips and more than likely her ass too. A pink tank top stretched across her chest, and I swear on my life, fuck x-ray vision because I could see the pebble of her nipples beneath the fabric.

  It wasn’t a ridiculous dress.

  It wasn’t stupid fucking heels.

  She wasn’t wearing a face full of clown makeup.

  She was just Thea.

  The nostalgia pumped through my veins like acid even as my cock stirred. Fuck, I should have jerked off again in the shower.

  “I’m dressed,” I bit out, desperate for her to put her damn hands down and maybe use them to cover her tits instead.

  Her long, brown lashes fluttered as she opened her eyes. Those fucking eyes had once owned me. As a huge smile lit her face, I felt the claim all over again.

  “Oh, look, you chose one of the outfits I picked out for you.”

  Of course I had. Of fucking course. As soon as I got her out of my room, I was going to take the outfit off and light it on fire.

  I ground my teeth. “Where’s Nora?”

  “She had an emergency at work and had to go in about an hour ago. I’m supposed to take you to meet your parole officer and then take you shopping to get whatever you need that we might have forgotten.” She smiled. Well, she smiled wider. She had already been fucking smiling to begin with.

  “What the hell kind of a work emergency can a first-grade teacher have?”

  She shrugged. “Ran out of glue? Dripped the blue paint in the white? Substitute used permanent markers on the dry erase board?” She shrugged again. “Take your pick.”

  “Or maybe she was trying to force me to spend time with you when she knew good and damn well I can’t miss this meeting with my PO, so I’ll have no choice but to let you drive me there.”

  She blinked all innocent and sweet. “Or that.”

  “Right,” I muttered, gripping the back of my neck and wishing I could snap it to put myself out of this misery once and for all. “What are you playing at here, Thea? You think if we spend the day together, I’m going to suddenly realize I can’t live without you and drop to a knee and propose?”

  I waited for her to cower. Maybe burst into tears like she had outside the prison. She’d come at me with some shit after I’d thrown the gum in the trash, but it had been for show. She wasn’t the only one who could eavesdrop. I’d heard her puking in the bathroom not two minutes later.

  This time, she didn’t even flinch. “God, I hope not. I haven’t had a manicure in ages.”

  I glared at her.

  She pushed up onto her toes and glared right back. A burst of laughter escaped as she dropped to her heels. “You need to relax. I’m not trying to marry you, Ramsey. You’re a felon without a job. Even I have higher standards than that.”

  Yeah. It stung, but at least she recognized the truth.

  She strolled past me into the
room, and fuck my life, I was right about the way those jeans hugged her ass.

  “What are you doing?” I rumbled.

  She pointed to the picture of us hanging on the wall. “I’m surprised you left it up.”

  I’d wanted to rip that damn thing down as soon as I’d seen it. Serious as a heart attack, Nora had threatened to tell my parole officer she found a bag of weed in my stuff if I took it down. I didn’t believe she’d send me back to prison, but Nora could be crazy as shit sometimes, so I’d opted to hang a T-shirt over it while I slept instead.

  “Do you remember when this was taken?” Thea asked.

  Last week of tenth grade. After Nora’s middle school graduation. We had gone out to grab burgers. Nora ditched us halfway through dinner to hang out with some of her friends, so we went home early. I snuck in Thea’s window. We made out for over an hour and then I finger-fucked her until she came on my hand. I left with blue balls and a shit-eating grin.

  “Nope.”

  “It was after Nora’s middle school graduation. You didn’t ask me to go that night. You didn’t have to. I went because the three of us were a family. We did everything together and that wasn’t because you were in love with me. Long before there was love, there was friendship, Ramsey. We relied on each other. Trusted each other. Cared about each other in ways that had nothing to do with holding hands or kissing.” She sucked in a shaky breath that felt like sandpaper to my soul. “I don’t care if you don’t want to be with me, Ramsey. I’m pissed as hell that you cut me out of your life the way you did. I’m angry that you would do that to me at a time when I was dealing with a lot of shit. You killed a kid because he hurt me. But what you did, the way you did it, it hurt worse than anything Josh ever did to me.”

  Bile clawed up the back of my throat. She was wrong. So fucking wrong. I’d given her a gift. One she couldn’t understand because she was so damn stubborn she refused to accept it.

  I bit the inside of my cheek and distracted myself with the metallic taste of blood. “I don’t love you, and I never did. I was a teenage boy trying to get in your pants. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t say.”

  “You fucking liar,” she hissed.

  “I’m sorry if that hurts you. But you weren’t the only one with a lot of shit going on in your life. I’d just stared down the possibility of the death penalty before being sentenced to sixteen years in prison. Do you have any concept of how fucking scary that is? ’Cause it’s terrifying.” I stabbed a finger in her direction, praying she couldn’t see it tremble.

  She needed to understand. I had to make her understand. Even if it meant breaking her again in the process. It was better that way.

  My voice rose with every sentence. “I wasn’t cruel when I wrote you that letter. I didn’t tell you I hated you. I didn’t tell you to fuck off. I let you go. That’s it. But you wouldn’t fucking stop. All the letters and trying to get Nora involved. That’s what made me hate you. So if you want to sit here and have a bitchfest about what happened to us, maybe go look in the mirror. Your high school boyfriend broke up with you, and you’ve spent the last twelve years being pissed about it.” I threw my hands out to the sides. “Get over it, Thea. There are real-world problems happening right now and this is not one of them.”

  I waited for the fallout. The screaming. The fighting. The insults. A sinkhole to swallow me. Anything.

  She just…stood there. Arms limp at her sides. Disappointment sparkling in her eyes. Lips pursed so tight, as if they were furious and still begging to be kissed.

  And I just…stood there, withering into nothingness and silently imploring her to believe me.

  It was all a lie. Every single word. There had never been a point in my life that I hadn’t been in love with Thea Hull. It was exactly why I let her go.

  And because Karma was hell-bent on destroying me, Thea knew it too.

  “Where’s the gum?”

  “What?”

  She pointed to the trash can. “Where’s the gum I gave you last night?”

  Chewed up and flushed down the toilet, every goddamn piece. “I don’t fucking know. Maybe Nora took the trash out.”

  A slow, victorious smile crept across her plump lips. “Insult me. Lie to me. Try to paint me as a crazy woman. I don’t give a shit how you have to spin this in your head to make yourself feel better.” She prowled toward me like a lion hunting its prey. Stopping only inches away, she craned her head back and peered up at me. “You don’t have to love me, Ramsey. But just so you know, I do love you. I always have and I always will. But right now, I really just want my best friend back.” She tapped my pec. “He’s in there. I know he is. And you are seriously underestimating me if you think your petty lies are going to stop me.”

  My throat closed and a tidal wave of heat roared through me as she trailed her finger down my chest, stopping above the button on my jeans.

  “We’ll worry about the rest later.” She walked to the door, calling out over her shoulder, “So…breakfast?”

  Yeah, I’d been right to be scared of running into Thea in the hall. Less than twenty-four hours after release and I was out of the frying pan and into the fire.

  Eight years earlier…

  “Hey, you,” I whispered, wrapping Nora in my arms.

  She buried her face in my chest, a sob shaking her shoulders.

  My stomach knotted as my mind raced, frantically trying to figure out what the hell had her so upset. She’d cried a lot the first two years. Pretty much every time I saw her, she spent the entire visit in tears. I smiled and reassured her that I was fine. She never believed me, which only proved she was as smart as I thought she was. At year three, she only cried when she hugged me. And as of six months ago, we’d made it through almost all the bi-monthly visits without tears.

  So when she promptly burst into tears as she walked through the door, I knew something was seriously wrong.

  And it was the worst kind of wrong, because I could feel it in my soul that it had something to do with Thea.

  It had been ten weeks since she’d mailed me a letter. I didn’t read them. I wouldn’t allow myself that kind of reprieve. My life was already hard enough without being reminded of what I was missing—who I was missing. But it had been radio silence recently.

  Nora loved to torture me with all things Thea. We didn’t go a single visitation without her filling my ears with some kind of bullshit, which I pretended to ignore while staring at the table and drinking in every syllable about my Sparrow.

  Not anymore though. Nora hadn’t brought her up in the last two months. It was crazy. She lived with the Hulls, so how was it possible that she never had anything to say about Thea?

  She had to have been dating someone and Nora didn’t want to tell me. I would have been happy for Thea. God knew it had taken long enough for her to finally give up on me. Fuck, why did it feel like I’d been filleted open to think she’d given up on me?

  It was what I’d wanted.

  It was what I’d told her to do.

  It was the inevitable.

  But what if something else had happened?

  “What’s going on?” I whispered into the top of her hair.

  “That’s enough, lover boy. Break it up,” the guard overseeing visitation droned from his perch in the corner.

  I gritted my teeth. “She’s my sister.”

  He cocked his head to the side with a challenge. “I don’t care if she’s Mother Teresa. I said break it up.”

  A low growl rumbled in my chest. I wanted to punch that motherfucker in his throat, but it only would have bought me more time. I had no interest in spending even one second longer than I had to in that hellhole. I minded my Ps and Qs. Kept my head down. And avoided trouble like I was Keanu Reeves in the Matrix.

  But this guy—this asshole—had it coming. It would have given me great pleasure to turn his ass in for the amount of contraband he smuggled in. Everything from heroin to women’s dirty panties, this fucker had it. But being a good person
in lockup was a lot like being a bad one on the outside. And I did not have the time or desire to watch my back for getting the unit’s main supplier canned.

  I glared at him as I continued to hold Nora. Toeing the line did not mean being a pushover. My sister was sobbing. It wasn’t going to hurt anyone for me to have an extra ten damn seconds to console her.

  “Stewart!” he barked, rising to his feet.

  It took everything I had to let my arms fall away from her.

  Nora sniffled as she backed up. “It’s okay. Don’t get in trouble. I’m fine.”

  We settled across from each other at a small table while the other inmates scattered across the open room with their loved ones.

  “What’s going on? Why are you so upset?” I asked.

  “I just really missed you.” She started to reach across the table to take my hand, stopping when she remembered touching wasn’t allowed.

  “Is everything okay at home?”

  “Yeah. It’s good.”

  I searched her face for clues. She’d been fine two days ago when we’d talked on the phone. “You seen your therapist recently?”

  She laughed and swept the tears from under her eyes. “Every two weeks, alternating schedule from the days I come here.”

  She traveled two hours every other Saturday, and it was rare for her to miss a visit. Thea or Joe had been driving her before she got her license. I refused to think about Thea being that close. Nora liked to rub it in though.

  Yet two months and not one fucking peep about the woman who haunted my dreams and lived in my fantasies. I couldn’t ask. She’d read into it. Tell Thea. Then she would read into it too. I couldn’t give her that kind of hope. Not when I needed her to forget.

  “Nora, come on. You’re killing me here. What’s going on? Why are you crying?”

  She stretched her long legs out under the table, leaving the toe of her shoe resting against mine. “Did I tell you Joe started dating Misty Martin?”