Damn, what’s wrong with you?
There were too many answers to that question, most of which began and ended with my reprobate brother, but it was a stretch to blame Damon for my overactive imagination. No, that was all me. “You’re right,” I admitted. “I’d find some way to be here.”
Fen grinned again, but it was softer this time and did nothing to tame the lick of arousal warming my blood. “See? Committed.”
“And you’re not? Pretty sure you’ve been here all night and your shift ended two hours ago.”
“Keeping tabs on me, Stone?”
Yes. “No. Just hard to miss the fact that you haven’t slept any time in recent memory.” Of course it was hard to miss when a person was as transfixed by Fen’s face as I was. The shadows beneath his eyes seemed to jump out at me, and I found myself wanting to smooth them away with the pad of my thumb.
Among other things. Lord, I was on fire today. A wild blaze I didn’t have time for, if I was going to leave the prison on time. With immeasurable reluctance, I stepped back from the cage Fen had somehow made around me. “Anyway, I need to get grinding. Enjoy your day, Hawthorne. Get some sleep, yeah?”
I began to move away, expecting to face Fen’s blinding grin one more time and spend the rest of the day dreaming of it.
His hand on my arm caught me off guard. Hisstronghand, clamped like a vice around my wrist. “Listen—”
Noise from the nearest wing cut him off.Loudnoise, shouting, hollering, crashing, and the radio attached to his belt crackled to life, calls for assistance piercing the air as the alarms in the prison began to ring out.
“Damn it,” Fen cursed, still holding my wrist. “Can’t a dude ask a dude out without getting interrupted by a riot?”
I blinked, half hypnotised by the sensation of him touching me, half blindsided by his sudden contribution to the wicked fantasies I’d incubated since we’d met in this utilitarian hell hole last year. “What?”
“You heard me.” Fen tipped me a wink, then turned his attention to whatever was going on somewhere behind him. He released my arm and walked backwards, talking into his radio, before he found my gaze again. “Hold that thought?”
“For how long?”
“All day by the sounds of the ruckus back there. If I don’t catch you later, when are you back here again?”
“Wednesday. Pope was my last release, so I’ll be picking up some new cases.”
“They’re lucky to have you.” Fen winked again. “Like me, maybe…find me on Wednesday? Unless you don’t want to go out with me, in which case I’ll accept a flustered middle finger right now.”
Flustered didn’t even come close, and I only had a split second to react, but there was no way in hell I was ever hitting the reject button for Fen Hawthorne. “I’ll find you.”
“Wednesday?”
“Wednesday.”
Then he was gone, leaving me alone with the abrupt and welcome turn our encounter had taken. For a moment, I stared at the locked gate he’d disappeared through, heart thudding like an overexcited metronome. Then an appointment on my iPad dinged and real life called me home.
Wednesday. It was five days away, and it couldn’t come soon enough.
I held onto that thought as the rest of my day played out, and all weekend long, but by the time Monday morning rolled around I knew I wasn’t going to make it back to HMP Manchester on Wednesday.
In fact, it was six hellish months before I made it back, and by then everything had changed. My brother was dead and I had part-time custody of his baby son. And Fen?
He was long gone too.
2
Rami
Now
I was an educated professional. I had a first-class degree in criminology and a goddamn-fucking masters on top of the diploma I’d earned while working in the probation service. And yet here I was, scraping jam off my kitchen floor while my nephew screamed blue murder because he was as fed up with me as I was with him.
“I know, mate. I know.” I swiped at the sticky mess with a wad of kitchen paper, then decided I didn’t care enough to carry on and left it to fester. “Your mum will be here soon. She’ll make it all better.”