by James, Marie
“Nope,” I lie. “Clean as a whistle.”
“Good,” she praises without any actual joy. “I’ll wait for you out here.”
I follow the man in the lab coat into a restroom and wait for the door to click shut before turning to him and reaching into my pocket. “All I have is twenty dollars, man,” I bargain. “But I get paid tomorrow. I can bring you more.”
Shaking his head, he hands me a sealed cup. “You have the wrong guy. Barney may do that shit, but I’m not losing my job over twenty goddamn dollars. Piss in the cup and take what’s coming, asshole. I’m late for lunch.”
Two hours later, I’m sitting in a chair in the lab, waiting for my world to come crashing down. My leg bounces as every mistake I’ve made over the last few months comes raging back in full color. I don’t even want to think about Fallyn’s disappointment. If she threw me away after being drugged the first time, she wouldn't tolerate conscious drug abuse. I don’t have a platform of denial behind me, even though a million excuses come to mind.
I did everything I could think of. I stalled, claiming I couldn’t go, drank my weight in water when they refused to let me come back later, and even tried to charm the probation officer when the test came back dirty. None of it worked. Apparently, there are people with morals in Vegas.
Ms. Morgan frowns at my pleading eyes as the officer steps in and cuffs my hands behind my back.
“Please,” I beg.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Porter. There are consequences for your actions.” Turning, she leaves me with the uniformed officer without another word.
My arm screams as the second cuff is clicked in place, and the only thing I’m thinking about as they haul my sorry ass away is how I’m going to score pills in prison.
Chapter 21
Fallyn
Pretending to keep my eyes on my phone, I walk across campus to the coffee shop. It doesn’t prevent the tingle of awareness as people watch me, gossiping when I trudge past. News of Blaze’s arrest spread like wildfire—even faster than after the accident. I’d hoped the summer months and staying off campus would help things die down before the fall semester started, but I wasn’t that lucky.
Expending more effort than I have these days, I tug open the door to a quaint coffee shop and find it almost packed to capacity. The last thing I want is to be around people, but my need for caffeine is greater. Even more important than worrying about the conversational chitchat around me is avoiding the heat outside. Spotting a lone table in the corner, I drop my backpack on the surface, claiming the spot as mine. I head to the counter, hoping for a fraction of luck that it’s not stolen by the time I get back.
I place my order and stare in to the cold case of chicken salad sandwiches and ready-made salads while waiting for my drink, feigning more interest than I actually have.
My phony, placid smile turns down as I approach my reserved table only to find an admittedly handsome guy sitting in my spot. How he had time to commandeer my table, get his laptop open, and begin an assignment in the three minutes it took me to get my drink is a wonder.
I debate just grabbing my bag and heading back out into the oppressive heat, but his brazen disrespect rubs me the wrong way. I already have one man in jail dictating my daily mood, I’ll be damned if I’m idle while another attempts the same liberties.
“This is my table,” I claim as I advance on the seized spot.
Dark, warm eyes rise from the computer screen to mine and a sense of calm manages to tamp down my distress.
“Do you mind sharing?” My mood becomes charitable at the lilt of his Spanish accent. “I won’t bother you, even though your beauty urges me to profess my undying servitude and ask a million questions.”
I huff an indignant laugh. He can’t possibly be serious as I stand with my hair in a messy pile high on my head. “Is it the yoga pants, well-loved LVU t-shirt, or dirty hair that turns you on?”
“All of it,” he reveals as I slide my bag across the table and take the seat opposite him.
“Does that usually work on girls?” I pull my Principles of Marketing text from my backpack and lay it on the table, even though I know I won’t be able to concentrate on the assignment due Monday.
“You tell me.” The charm in his voice oozes with such confidence, it’s too bad it’s lost on me.
Guilt sits low in my stomach as I’m reminded of another alluring man—the one I’m due to visit in just a few hours. Needing to put a quick end to this man’s advances, I hold up my left hand, displaying the thin gold band. “I’m afraid your charisma is wasted on me.”
Rather than shying away as I expected, he clasps my hand in his and brushes his lips against my knuckles. The titter of conversations around me has me pulling my hand from his.
“And where is this lucky husband of yours, Cariño? What man in his right mind would let his gorgeous wife out amongst the wolves unescorted?” He closes his laptop, his line of sight now uninterrupted.
Ignoring his question, I pick up my coffee and glare over the top of the plastic lid, using the action to avoid further conversation. His eyes glint at my avoidance, filling with challenge.
“Julian Stone,” he offers as his hand stretches across the table—just another bid to touch me.
“Fallyn McIntyre,” I mutter, then correct myself, “Porter. Fallyn Porter.”
“Well, Fallyn Porter. I think we’re going to be great friends.” His enigmatic smile lightens my mood and the overwhelming stress always present on Saturdays when I visit Blaze.
“Only if you tone down the roguish charm, would I even consider being your friend, Julian Stone.”
“Please, just Stone,” he says, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “The charm, however, is inherent and uncontrollable. You’ll just have to get used to it.”
***
“Hey,” I say into the phone connected to the wall, my soul drifting somewhere between this moment and the life I should have.
It never gets easier. Visiting Blaze in jail, talking to him through the glass on a filthy phone…three months I’ve been visiting him here. He was given six in jail for violating his probation with a dirty drug test and I refused to speak with him the first month, ready to leave him again after getting the call about his arrest.
It wasn’t until a very heartfelt letter came in the mail explaining why he was on pills and how they were a mistake he couldn’t get out from under. He explained how much he needed them to keep working, to provide for us, even though he knew his meager checks weren’t making much of a difference.
In that letter, I could tell he was a broken man. He voiced his concerns, owned the mistakes he’d made without blaming others or making excuses. The letter had a sense of morbidity to it. I feared for him and his safety with how he felt like he had nothing left to lose. I also made the mistake of binge watching a season of a prison documentary on Netflix with Brittney and now live in fear my husband is going to die before I get to press my lips against his again.
He cried the first time I showed up, promised me the world, told me things were going to be so different when he got out. Then he laughed when I expressed my concern over him getting shanked in the bathroom by gang members. He assured me things weren’t that violent and made me promise not to watch another documentary.
“Hey, beautiful,” he says into the phone.
My fingers glide across the glass, and he obliges me by placing his against mine, but I can’t help but notice the glazed, annoyed look in his eyes—so different from the man I’d met earlier in the coffee shop who hung on every word I spoke.
“Only two more months,” I whisper.
“About that,” he begins, his eyes darting away from mine. “I picked up an extra thirty for getting into a fight.”
My lip twitches at the realization that he’s lying, but I resist the urge to call him on it. I don’t know whether he got more time than he’s telling me or got in trouble for a different reason, but I know his words are lies. I knew it back at the end of the s
pring semester when he wouldn’t make love to me. I refused to verbally acknowledge them then, but I’m not going to do it now.
“How about the truth?” I insist, pulling my hand away from the glass.
His grin is cutting. “There’s my girl. I was wondering when you’d get a backbone.”
His words are challenging, and the sting they create in my heart is something I never thought I’d feel again.
“What really happened, Blaze?”
“It’s not your concern.” His voice is flat with a hint of irritation.
“It is,” I insist. “I’m your wife.”
“Some fucking marriage,” he spits out. “Less than eight months in and look at us.”
“I’ve always heard the first year is the hardest,” I backpedal, giving up on my own emotions at his anger. How quickly he makes me the woman I never wanted to be. Without so much as a blink of an eye, I discredit anything I feel to ensure he’s okay with the situation.
“Kinda hard not to be bad between the car wreck, heroin, arrests, and addiction to pills,” he seethes. “The lack of support on your part…the disappointment on your face every time you show up here—”
“I show up!” I yell, the chair sliding back a few inches when I stand and lean closer to the glass. “How the fuck is that not supporting you!”
“Ma’am?” a voice says behind me. I turn my eyes to see a uniformed officer in the corner glaring at me. “Calm down or I’ll ask you to leave.”
“You didn’t show up last week,” he counters.
I shake my head in disbelief, exhaustion dragging me back into the chair. “School has been super busy.”
“Yeah, school.” His hand is rough as it swipes over the top of his head and down the back of his neck. I don’t miss the wince, the pain filling his eyes as he reaches too far back. “Or the guys you’re fucking.”
“Excuse me?” I’ve allowed so much, ignored his flippant attitude and shitty comments more than once, all because being in jail has to be horrible. I can’t imagine what he struggles with daily, but he’s never once accused me of cheating. The pounding in my head increases and I look away from him, ashamed he would even think such a thing.
“Fucking, Fallyn. Who are you too busy fucking that you can’t visit your husband in jail?”
Shame for my hour-long conversation with Stone weighs on my shoulders, but the anger is stronger. My face heats with rage, remembering the phone calls I made after I chose to see him, figuring conjugal visits would help keep us close.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” the annoyed woman says over the phone for the third time.
“It’s simple. Tell me where my marriage license is.”
“I told you. You have to contact the county to get a copy.”
“And I’m telling you, I called them and they never got the official copy for your establishment.”
“Mistakes happen, lady. We do like thirty ceremonies a day.”
“Mistakes?” I question. “This is my marriage we’re talking about, not forgetting to get milk at the grocery store. Did you even look for it?”
“I told you I looked for it the last time you called. We don’t have it here. Check the copies we gave you. Someone may have accidentally put the original in that envelope.”
This is the same thing she told me last time, and I explained how the paperwork was lost after the car accident.
“How can I get a conjugal visit with my husband without proof we’re married?”
Her laugh makes me want to climb through the phone and beat her with my bare fists, and I’ve never been a violent person.
“Nevada doesn’t allow conjugal visits. There’s no point in worrying about it.”
“No point in worrying?” I shake my head even though she can’t see me. “Are we even married?”
“Kinda.”
“The fuck does kinda mean?” I shriek, exhausted over the back and forth.
“It means you had the ceremony. You said your vows, but according to the state, until that license is filed, it’s like it never happened.”
“Is the list that goddamn long?” Blaze asks, bringing me out of my memory.
“You,” I say with so much venom in my voice, he has the decency to pull his face a couple inches from the glass. “You are the second man I’ve ever been with. I told you about the first asshole. It seems that’s all I attract.”
I don’t know why I don’t mention the fact that we’re not married, that he’s free and clear of me. Maybe because it pains me to even think about us ending. I never lied when I told him I loved him. As much as he’s pulled me down, as much as he’s used me as a verbal whipping boy, I still love him. I know he’s upset, angry he’s in there and I’m out here.
“Hopefully next week you’ll be in a better place mentally and you won’t treat me like shit. I won’t keep coming back to be treated like this,” I threaten.
“Then don’t come back.” Resolve straightens his spine. “You know what? Don’t even try to come back and visit. I never would’ve married you had I known how big of a whore you are.”
I’m speechless as he slams the phone back on the receiver and strides away. He’s always been stubborn, always quick to say things he regrets later, but there is such a finality today, I’m not certain we’ll make it back from this.
The tears are falling freely by the time I make it to Brittney in the parking lot.
“What did that asshole say today?” she asks when I close the door a little too hard. She rolls her lip between her teeth, biting back her opinion.
It’s not the first time I’ve left visitation with tears running down my face. Usually, it’s because I miss him so much, but she can sense the difference in today’s visit.
“He told me not to come back,” I finally manage when we’re halfway home.
“He’s poison, Fallyn. I know you can see that.” She’s not voicing an opinion I haven’t already heard, and she’s not saying it in a way to try to get me to change my mind about him.
“I know,” I agree. And I do. I know my life wasn’t very exciting before he came along. I know when things are good, they’re great, but things haven’t been good since the accident.
I never really had the chance to mentally heal, but Blaze never made it out of that accident alive. The man who came to me after he was released from jail the first time wasn’t the same man who promised me a life and his future. He left that guy on the side of the road among the broken glass and mangled metal.
“He’s just upset. He’s been locked up for months,” I bargain. “Things will be better when he’s home.”
“Oh, Fallyn,” Brittney says. When I look up at her, she silences. “I’m sure things will be better.”
She hugs me on the front step of our apartment, but heads straight to her room without another word.
As I go to the kitchen for a bottle of water, I wonder if her giving into my delusional hope is what I wanted. Defeated, I slump onto the stool near the counter and ignore the urge to call my new friend, a man who’s not tainted with the sordid details of my crumbling relationship.
Twirling the simple band on my finger, I realize I’ve never taken it off. Even knowing we’re not technically married, the vows we said mean everything to me. Until death do us part—those were the words we promised, but I can’t decide if the slow, emotional death I’m suffering counts.
Chapter 22
Blaze
I’m in the worst mood as I’m escorted like cattle back to the cell block I share with dozens of other nameless inmates. Agitation, exhaustion, and my all-around fuck-the-world attitude swims around me like a thunder cloud—and the talk with Fallyn multiplied all that shit tenfold.
Jail sucks more than I could’ve ever imagined. It’s so overcrowded, I’m one of the unlucky bastards stuck on a hard-as-fuck cot in the middle of the recreation area. No privacy, no way to watch your back one hundred percent…I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in months.
I shove m
y still trembling hands under my ass as I fall onto my cot—the only thing that will keep me from punching a concrete wall or one of the other asshole inmates. Paranoid eyes dart around the open area of the cell block, analyzing everyone, calculating my risks—exactly how I spend damn near every second in this shithole.
“Fallyn come to visit?” Grant, the only guy in this place I talk to, sits down on his bunk across from mine.
I nod, not bothering to lift my head from the picture I’m holding in my hands. The cheesy grins on our faces at the humble chapel we got married in should make me smile, but it only serves as a reminder that our bliss only lasted a couple hours.
“I accused her of cheating,” I mutter.
“Fuck, man.” His weight shifts as he leans in closer so he can speak lower. One thing I’ve learned since I got locked up: you don’t let anyone know your weakness, and you sure as fuck don’t talk about your feelings. “She’s stepping out?”
Anger fills my blood, but when I look up into his eyes, all I see is empathy for my situation.
I shake my head. “She wouldn’t, but I couldn’t keep looking at her through that fucking glass. Couldn’t keep seeing how fucked up this has made her without being able to touch or comfort her.”
I keep my eyes open, trained on the scratchy blanket the county provides. If I close them, I’ll see the shadows under hers, hear the weariness in her voice—all signs she’s suffering because of me. I’d picture the defeated slump of her shoulders as she lies and tries to convince me all is right in her world.
“The last thing you need to do is push the people you love away, Blaze. You’ll need her when you get out.”
“She deserves so much better than my sorry ass.” Solid truth. “She’ll be better off without me.”
He chuffs an indignant laugh. “That’s her fucking decision.”
I slide the picture back under my inch-thin pillow and lie down, eyes facing the ceiling. “Well, I made that decision for her. Told her not to come back.”
A familiar heaviness blankets me. I want nothing more than to see her every chance they allow in here. She was asking too many questions. She doesn’t need to know I got extra time for another failed drug test. The only thing that kept me sane when I first got here was the ease in which I was able to score pills in this place.
