He took a healthy swig then poured the rest of it down the sink. “I’ll get you another one sometime.”
“I don’t want it. I want you to be okay.”
“I am.”
“But you weren’t?”
“Not for a while.” Fen wiped his mouth on his sleeve and took my hand. “Can we do this somewhere else? I’ve never liked looking at that place. It’s like an evil death castle.”
It shouldn’t have been funny, but his word choice was golden. A laugh escaped me and I tugged on his hand. “Come on. I’ll show you my bedroom.”
“Finally. I’ve only been asking a couple of years.”
“Ha ha.” I took him to my room. It was remarkably tidy, probably because I’d spent most of the last few months passing out on the couch or sleeping with Charlie.
The bed was made. I sat on the edge and coaxed Fen to do the same, but he went one step further and flopped back, staring at the ceiling.
There were no words for how gorgeous he was splayed out on my bed. God, I wanted to climb on top of him and fucking worship him, but this wasn’t the time, more so than ever.
I lay next to him, stretched out on my side, facing him.
Fen didn’t look at me, but I felt it when he made the decision to start talking, even though it took a moment for him to take a breath and start.
“I got jumped in the lifer’s wing,” he said. “I didn’t usually spend much time up there, but they were short-staffed, and I took some extra shifts that month.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Why not? I didn’t have much going on down here except work, obsessing over the gym, and living to catch a glimpse of this hot probation officer I happened to know.”
“He sounds like a wanker already.”
Fen chuckled, but his humour faded as fast as it had arrived. “There was a rookie up there. One of the old-timers was supervising her, but they knocked off on a two-hour tea break. She left a gate open. It wasn’t her fault, but someone got through it who shouldn’t have and they stabbed me in the neck before anyone realised they were gone.”
“Fuck.” A shuddery breath escaped me. “How bad was the injury?”
“Bad enough that I nearly bled out in the two hours it took them to get to me. The offender dragged me into his cell and barricaded us inside. I had to lie on the floor and listen to him tell them what he’d do to me if they kicked the door in.”
Shock filled me. I’d always known there was more to what had happened to Fen than the horrific details I’d picked up, but a fucking hostage-taking? Damn. No wonder he hadn’t come back. “How close was it?”
Fen finally looked at me and he didn’t ask me to clarify my question. Heknewwhat I was asking him. “I fought him off in the end. Don’t know how, I was so far gone with blood loss, and I don’t really remember it. All I know is if I’d left it ten minutes longer, I’d have been too dead to haul myself from the floor and clatter him with the kettle. I got a TV in my face for my trouble—” he pointed at a small scar I’d never noticed bisecting his eyebrow—“but it gave them enough time to get in.”
After so long knowing the bare minimum, the sudden influx of details was overwhelming. Perhaps for Fen too. He closed his eyes, his chest rising and falling too fast.
I waited.
When he looked at me again, his eyes were red. “It’s the waiting that haunted me. I woke up on that floor every night for six months. It was…messed-up. Your sister and her crazy brood were the only thing I had that made me feel good. Makes sense now I know they’re part of you.”
“Are you okay now?”
For the first time in what felt like forever, though it had only been an hour or so, Fen smiled. “Most days. It creeps up on me sometimes, but it happens less and less. I’m sorry it took me so long to talk about it, I just—I don’t know. Whenever I’ve had to for the investigation and stuff, it’s set me back, and I don’t want to be that guy who wallows in the past.”
“How far along is the investigation? Do you have to give evidence in person?”
“My GP wrote a letter saying it would cause me serious harm. I wrote a report and read it out on a video link a while back. And I don’t care about where it’s at or the outcome. You know what the prison system is—whatever happens to Officer Tea Break isn’t going to change that.”
He was wrong. Maybe. Sometime it took a thousand tiny shifts to move a mountain. But if Fen was okay, nothing else mattered.
We lay quietly for a little while. Fen’s breathing slowed. The goosebumps on his arms faded and I wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Stress was like that—it kept you awake for days at a time, or knocked you out as a defence mechanism. I’d always danced the insomniac’s dance, but maybe Fen was the opposite.