“Thanks, Brooke,” he says. “I appreciate it.”
“Uh-huh,” I mumble.
“Okay. Let’s get this over with.”
I watch him attempt to scratch his nose with his hands shackled together. Finally, I ask the question that’s been running through my head since last week: “Why do they do this to you?”
Shane raises his eyebrows. “Do what?”
I nod down at the cuffs on his wrists. “Practically none of the other men get shackled this way. And I assume they’re all just as bad as you here.”
He cracks a lopsided smile. “Oh, I’m the worst.”
I stare at him.
“That’s what you think, isn’t it?” His fingertips dig into the khaki of his prison jumpsuit. “That I’m a monster? That I deserve all this?”
His brown eyes hold mine, and this time I refuse to look away. “Fine—don’t answer the question. That’s your right.”
I expected some nasty retort from Shane, but instead, his shoulders sag. He nods his head toward the closed door separating us from the guard. “You want to know why I’ve always got shackles on? It’s because he hates me.”
“Who?”
“Hunt. He hates my guts.”
“But why?”
He lifts a shoulder. “Who the hell knows? Maybe I remind him of somebody. Sometimes people just don’t like each other. But it sucks if you’re a prisoner and the guy who doesn’t like you is one of the correctional officers. Makes your whole life a living hell. I mean, he has the power to make things really bad for me.”
I hope he does. I consider saying those words, but what’s the point? There was a time when I would have wanted to spit it in his face, but the years have taken some of the fight out of me. After all, Shane is in prison. He’s serving his time for the terrible things he did. Everything that happened is in the past.
I wanted Shane to suffer after what he did, and I got my wish. He’s stuck here, day in, day out, at the mercy of a bunch of guards who think he’s the scum of the earth. Getting beat up, and he can’t even do anything about it or else it will be worse next time. Sleeping in a cell every night.
His life is hell.
“So how have you been?” Shane asks me as I peel open the suture removal kit.
“Fine.” Do not engage in conversation with this man.
“Do you like working here?”
“Yes.” It’s the truth. Even though I’m still a little scared of the prisoners, and I miss my heels, I find it to be rewarding work. And I want Shane to know that his presence here doesn’t intimidate me. “The inmates are nice.”
“Yeah. To you.”
I get as close to Shane as I dare. It’s not my first choice, but you have to get close and personal when you’re removing stitches. “They’re not nice to you?”
“Do you see the stitches on my head?”
I grab the first stitch with the forceps and snip it free. “I thought you walked into a fence.”
“Yeah, well.”
I snap the second stitch. “You know, my son got bullied a lot last year. It was really hard. The other kids even gave him a black eye.”
Shane blinks up at me. “They gave him a black eye in preschool?”
For a second, I am lost for words. I don’t know why I told him any of that. Five minutes ago, I swore to myself I wasn’t going to share any more personal information with this man. Especially not about my son.