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  “All righty. Shoot.”

  “Darling,” Collier began, only loud enough for me to hear. His gaze jumped up to pin mine. “That’s how it should start.”

  Darling, I wrote. My stomach soured, and even I wasn’t deluded enough to pretend I didn’t know why. Fuck me, I was penning a love letter to his frigging . . . who knew what. Wife? Girlfriend? Ex? Stalkee? Fine. If this didn’t get me over my stupid infatuation, nothing would. I eyed his arm, but his sleeve covered the tattoo I’d spotted from the office window. Whose name might be hiding under there . . . ? Get a grip.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “I missed you since your last visit.” He watched my hand as he spoke, as his words took shape, drawn by my fingers with an ease he’d likely never know, himself. The act felt strangely, intensely intimate.

  “A few minutes a week with you is almost more cruel than it’s worth,” he continued. “I miss—”

  “Hang on.” I scribbled, catching up. I sensed his posture tighten with annoyance or impatience, and I couldn’t blame him. I was a stranger, after all, being asked to transcribe his feelings in a place where emotions were as dangerous to bare as pulse points.

  “Okay, go on.”

  “I miss you every minute we’re apart. And I watch the clock every morning when I think I might be seeing you again.” He paused, waiting until my hand did the same. “I miss how you smell. Like spring and grass. There’s not much grass here. I miss your face . . . And the way you smile sometimes. I want to make you smile like that.”

  I ignored my jealousy, that hot snake twisting in my belly as I imagined such things. “Okay.”

  “I miss your voice. The way you talk.”

  I like the way you talk. Where you from?

  The snake slowed. Changed direction, coiling low.

  “I wish I could see you, away from here.” He put his forearms on the desk, leaning closer, speaking even more quietly. “I wish we could be together . . . in ways I haven’t been with a woman in five years. Sometimes, when I see you . . . Sometimes I can’t even listen to what you’re saying. All I can do is watch your mouth. I watch your lips and I think about kissing you, when I’m alone at night. Though I’m never really alone here. But I imagine I am—alone with just you. I think about your mouth, and about kissing you. And other things.”

  . . . other things, my hand echoed. My neck was hot—hot like sunburn. My cheeks stung. My loose clothes bound me.

  “Sometimes I watch your hands,” he went on. Watching my hands. “I watch your hands and imagine them . . . on me.”

  I was trembling, and surely he could see it. His words had turned jagged, pencil pinched between my bloodless fingers.

  “I imagine—”

  “I think we better leave it there,” I breathed.

  “We’ve got three more minutes still.”

  “Yes, but this is getting . . . I’m not sure it’s appropriate that I write this sort of letter for you.” And I’m not sure it’s appropriate how wet it’s making me. Not sure at all.

  “Right. Well, I guess that’s just about what I wanted to say, anyhow.”

  “Good. I . . . I could have it mailed for you. If you have her address.”

  That dark gaze jumped from my hands to my eyes and I flinched, too much heat going too many places. For a moment he just stared—not cold, not mean, just . . . telling.

  “I don’t know her address,” he said quietly.

  I shivered. My hands felt icy, my throat tight. My belly warm and heavy and damning.

  His attention dropped to my hands. “Maybe you could hang on to that for me. Until I can remember.”

  “I can leave it with you.” I tore the page carefully along the perforation, but he was shaking his head.

  “You hang on to it,” he repeated. “It’s real personal stuff. Man doesn’t want just anybody reading those kinds of thoughts.”

  I lowered the page, saw it fluttering in my quaking hand and closed it in the notebook. “Fine.”

  “I didn’t get to sign it.”

  “Oh.”

  He nodded to the pad, raised his eyebrows. I submitted, pushing the page and the pencil across the tabletop. It was my turn to watch his hand as it formed two short, slow, careful words. Then he slid everything back.

  “Thanks . . .” His eyes dropped to my chest, but it was my ID badge he scanned, not my breasts. “Annie.” He said it low, made more of breath than sound, as if he were telling himself a secret.

  Ms. Goodhouse, I should’ve said, but the only correction I managed was, “Anne.” My parents called me Annie, and my aunts and grandparents and a couple of close friends, but that was all. Not strangers. Not this man whose first name I didn’t even know. Whose crimes I didn’t wish to hear about. Whose desires I’d just traced with shaking fingers. “I’ll see you next week.”

  And he was gone, long legs striding for the door. This time he didn’t look back.

  I tucked the letter away in my bag, not daring to see what he’d written.

  I won’t look. I’ll keep it closed in this notebook and not read it, and if next week we speak and he doesn’t have an address, I’ll throw it out. I’ll burn it. I’ll do whatever—anything except read it.

  I read it in my car.

  My butt met the driver’s seat, my hands went to my bag, and I slid the page out, fingers shaking.

  Darling,

  I missed you since our last visit. A few minutes a week with you is almost more cruel than it’s worth.

  I miss you every minute we’re apart, and watch the clock every morning when I think I might be seeing you again. I miss how you smell, like spring and grass. There’s not much grass here.

  I miss your face, and the way you smile sometimes. I want to make you smile like that. I miss your voice. The way you talk. I wish I could see you, away from here.

  I wish we could be together, in ways I haven’t been with a woman in five years. Sometimes, when I see you . . . Sometimes I can’t even listen to what you’re saying. All I can do is watch your mouth. I watch your lips and I think about kissing you when I’m alone at night. Though I’m never really alone, here. But I imagine I am. Alone with just you. I think about your mouth, and about kissing you. And other things. Sometimes I watch your hands. I watch your hands and imagine them on me.

  Yours,

  Eric

  Chapter Four

  I thought about terrible things, that night.

  About a slim iron bed frame, and a man’s long, strong body laying atop threadbare covers in the heat of summer. About the waistband of prison-issue pajamas, pushed down by a big, tanned hand to expose an erection—thick, flushed, ready.

  A fist stroking slowly to start, then quicker. Rougher.

  And that face. Handsome features pained, dark eyes shut.

  For the first time in months, my own hand slid low. Me and my hand in my lonely bed, in my lonely room, on this lonely night . . . wondering if a man was thinking of me and doing the same twenty miles away.

  Though I’m never really alone, here.

  How did that work, I wondered, hitting Pause on the scene. Were convicts discreet, to keep from pissing off their cellmates, or did a man just do what he had to do, and so did everyone else, so who cared? The former, I hoped, preferring the civility of it. Or perhaps the desperation of it. Of Eric Collier stifling his moans and grunts, tensing his body to keep his motions subtle. Of his lips forming two soundless syllables.

  Annie.

  He’d be thinking about things he couldn’t give himself. Ways I haven’t been with a woman in five years. The wet heat of a hungry mouth. The wet heat of my . . . which word would be use? Pussy, probably. Or cunt. Yes, cunt. Blunt and ugly, to match his world. I’d flinch if he said it to me, and wasn’t that what I wanted, really? No candy coating to sweeten the things he said. All burrs and sharp edges
, coming off the smooth slickness of his tongue. His tongue. Did he miss how a woman tasted, after all this time? Would he want to do that, or would he be selfish, concerned only with what I could offer his cock?

  Annie, he’d whisper.

  And I’d murmur, Yes?

  He’d say, he’d say . . . He’d say, Lemme taste you. It’s been so long. Lemme kiss you. Down there. Would he even ask permission? Maybe it would be all needy grasping and bossy hands. No requests, no coy “down there.”

  On your back. I gotta taste your cunt.

  A fever broke out all over my body. I imagined the same happening to him, two towns over in the human kennel he got locked in every night. He’d escape for just a few moments, in thoughts of me. Of us, together.

  The twitching of his hand, the buck of his hips. He’d yank his tee shirt up from his waist, expose the taut, flexed muscles of his abdomen. His fist would race, and—

  I jumped as my phone came to life, shimmying on the glass side table next to my bed. My hand flew out of the boxers I slept in and I fumbled for the device. Mom cell.

  I hit Decline. It wasn’t late enough to be an emergency, and I couldn’t just go from masturbating over a convicted felon to chatting about what was blooming in her and Daddy’s garden. I couldn’t go from imagining my name on Collier’s breath to hearing it in my mother’s chirpy voice.

  Tomorrow, I thought, and shut the thing off. And I went back to my fantasizing, back to gruff words and warm breaths, a starving man’s hungry mouth, approximated by my own fingers. There was nothing else, not tonight. The real world could wait.

  * * *

  I read his letter a hundred times in the next week. I read it so many times, those words in my handwriting, I began to worry it was all a fiction I’d penned. I read it so many times I didn’t need the paper anymore. His voice was in my head, clear as a recording, saying all those things. And his voice was in my head every night, saying whatever I scripted for him. Filthy things, romantic things. He called me tenderly by my name, nuzzling my ear. Called me bitch and forced my thighs apart with his. Called me darling, like in the letter, the word dark and charged and electric as the clouds before a summer storm.

  I could only imagine how he might be, in real life—how he’d treat me if we were alone together. Happily there was no possibility of us, alone together in real life, and so I imagined everything, every possible flavor, relieved to know my hypotheses would never be proven right or wrong. That he’d never get a chance to disappoint me.

  I spent so much time fantasizing about him, it occurred to me on Friday morning that I had no idea how to act toward him, if he approached me again. Play dumb, pretend I really did think that letter had been meant for some other woman? Be stern, shut him down before he grew bolder?

  I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to tell Shonda or any other CO about it, but I also knew I wouldn’t be doing that. Selfishly, I wanted the letter for myself. And recklessly, I even hoped maybe he’d want to tell me more.

  It was insane, of course, but when you’ve not felt sexual hunger for months, for years . . . The idiotic risks people take in the midst of affairs made sense to me, suddenly. Nothing felt as good as this wanting. Logic was impotent. Flaccid. A pitiful, powerless thing.

  I saw Collier as I passed through the dayroom, and it was recognition as I’d never felt it. I’d lived out a thousand imagined intimacies with this man, and when our eyes met it felt as though he must have lived them, too.

  It was muggy and brutal that day, leaving inmates and staff alike punchy. The convicts bickered and baited, but it was for the best—the discord kept me on my toes, kept my mind off Collier through Literacy and Composition, kept my eyes off him for the most part during Book Discussion.

  As always, though, he caught me during the afternoon Resources block. I had to wonder if that was on purpose. If he wanted to be my final memory of the day when I left this place.

  Oh, the meaning I read into every crack and crevice of our encounters.

  Attendance was down. The Resources room wasn’t air-conditioned, and apparently the allure of ogling my breasts and butt wilted some when the temperature flirted with the triple digits. Men still came and went, and most showed up for their computer slots, but for once I had a bit of free time, myself, and I used it to make a list of things I’d need to implement Karen’s unrealized plan of starting a cell-to-cell book cart service. I’d nearly begun to think I could put off choosing my stance toward Collier another week. Or indefinitely. Maybe he pulls that “help me write a letter” shit with every librarian. Maybe he’d never come calling again.

  Foolish me.

  He came for me at twenty minutes to five. I felt him step through the door, a heat wave and a cold front all wrapped inside one man. He strode to where I was sitting, lazy as you please, and I knew it was him without even looking up. He stood across the tabletop from me, behind an empty chair, his big fingers curled over its back. I raised my chin. Played it cool aside from the pink I felt stinging my cheeks.

  “Hi there.”

  “You free?” he asked, in that voice that had whispered the most brilliant, disgusting secrets in the privacy of my head this past week.

  “Sure.” I nodded to the chair and he sat. He pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, and a knot formed in my middle. Another letter?

  “I was hoping you could read something for me,” he said, gaze on my hands. “Something I wrote.”

  “Sure.” I realized in that moment, I knew exactly where the nearest officer stood, and not for my own protection. I knew it the way every one of these cons must. The way a criminal keeps his radar tracked on witnesses and cameras when he knows he’s on the brink of wickedness. I took the paper from him, but he stopped me before I could unfold it.

  “Not now. But maybe you could take it with you. Take your time. It’s real important. I want to make sure I say everything right.”

  Thump thump thump. “Um . . . Yeah. Sure. I can do that.” It was lined paper, and I could see the impression of his handwriting. Lots of it. “Whether it needs rewriting or not, this was good practice, writing it all out,” I offered.

  He nodded. “I used that machine. I wrote it on that, and it fixed my capitals and spelling. Then I copied it down on paper. I didn’t have to rely on my head, to know which way all the letters went.”

  “Smart.”

  Collier’s brown eyes swiveled, seeking the guards. Finding them busy with the now departing inmates, he leaned a bit closer. “I’ll make this real easy for you,” he said.

  I felt my brows rise and my heart tumble into my shoes. “Easy?”

  “I’ve got stuff to say. To you.” He tapped the paper, his voice barely a whisper. “If you want to hear more, next week, you wear red.”

  “Wear red?”

  “You show up next week wearing red, I’ll know what I’ve got to say is okay by you. You wear any other color, I won’t ever bother you again. Not about typing or anything else. I won’t be angry or anything. But if you wanna hear, wear red.”

  “Collier!” The guard shot him a look. “Check your posture, loverboy.”

  Collier sat up straight, drawing his crossed arms away. “Red,” he said. “But only if you want to hear more.”

  I nodded, tucked the folded paper in my notebook along with a couple other convicts’ letters I’d promised to drop in the mail room.

  He watched my hands then stood. “’Preciate that,” he said at a normal volume, and pushed his chair back in.

  “That’s what I’m here for.”

  And he left without a backward glance. The older guard on duty—Jake, I thought his name was—came over.

  “He being a creep?”

  I laughed too quickly, shook my head. “No. Bit of a flirt, that’s all. Harmless.” Yeah, harmless.

  “He’s not whispering anything offensiv
e to you, I hope.”

  “No. He’s just cagey about his writing disorder,” I fibbed. “Doesn’t want it advertised that he needs help, I think.” For the love of God, don’t ask to see the letter.

  But Jake only nodded. “Funny how some of these boys still hang on to their pride, after we take every other damn thing away from them.”

  “Does he . . . Should I be worried about him, in particular? Is he known for being manipulative?” Say no. Say no say no say no. Please don’t take this away from me. It feels too good.

  Jake stood up taller, looking thoughtful as he shifted his belt around his belly. “That one . . . He’s no boy scout, but he keeps his nose clean. Good behavior since he got in, stays out of the race bullshit as much as a man can, in a place like this.”

  “So not too bad.”

  Jake smiled. “Bad enough to get locked up for ten years. So not too great, either. If he gives you the willies, trust your instincts . . . But he’s not a known predator. Probably what you’d even consider one of the good ones, in fact.”

  I nodded, feeling the weirdest mix of shit. Relieved, intrigued, unnerved. It must have shown on my face.

  “Still finding your feet, huh?”

  I blew out a long breath. I could let my anxiety show, now that all the criminal eyes had left the room. “Yeah. I mean, people try to get away with stuff at the library all the time. But here . . . I dunno. I want to help these guys. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, except I know how incredibly stupid a move that is.”

  “Best tool you got in here is your own gut, kid. Listen to it.”

  I smiled and picked up my bag. Inside it was a letter from Eric Collier. Eric Collier, who’d been sentenced to ten years, if Jake hadn’t just been tossing out some ballpark number. Ten years.

  On the one hand, I thought as I walked to my car, ten years was good. Murder wasn’t likely, given that Cousins was medium security, and ten years was probably too little for an especially heinous sexual assault.