Page 7 of By His Side
I shuffled my chair back to the table and picked up the pen, pleased when my hand didn’t shake. “No name change. I’ll make a note.” Katherine had been right then when she’d said that his acceptance of his incarceration had been about saying what people wanted to hear. Now that his parole date was set, he could revert to type, and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone, including me, could do about it.
“Thank you.” There was bitterness in the way he said it, but then he took a deep breath and seemed to calm himself. “I apologize if I scared you. That wasn’t my intention. I just get a little het up whenthe subject of my guilt comes up. I think any man would be resentful after serving seven years for something he didn’t do.”
I twisted the pen in my fingers, keeping my gaze fixed on the form while I tried to work out the right words to soothe the man sitting opposite me. I was blank, though, my usual breeziness deserting me when I needed it most.
“You don’t believe me.” The words had bite, Felix punctuating them with a sharp laugh. “I should be used to it by now. No one ever believes me. I wonder if it would have been different if I were younger. I was twenty-four at the time, old enough that I was supposed to know what Julian was up to. To know that he wasn’t just cheating on me, that he was apparently capable of murder.”
“And Julian was...?” I knew who he was, but I wanted to hear the details from him.
“My boyfriend. We had something of a tempestuous relationship. I tried to leave him more than once. If only I’d gone through with it, things might have been different.”
An awkward silence followed, neither of us seeming to know where we were supposed to go from here. Eventually, when it had dragged on for long enough, I cleared my throat. “Your history doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
I conceded his point with an inclination of my head. “All I’m saying is that it’s the future we need to think about. You’re still young enough to make something of your life. And on that note, I wish you’d reconsider changing your name.”
“I’m not changing my name.”
Knowing it wasn’t an argument I was going to win, I closed the folder definitively. “We’ve discussed everything we need to today. Thank you for your time… Felix.” His name sounded all kinds of wrong on my lips, making me want to take it back immediately andrevert to Mr. Church, no matter how much mockery I might get from him for doing so.
Felix stood when I did, the action far more controlled than the previous time. “Will you be there next week? When I get out, I mean?”
"Yes." I’d never wanted more to say no, but it had always been my policy to offer support from the first moment of release. And to retract that, would be an admission of how much he threw me off my game. He was like a storm, all wrapped up in a pretty and muscular package. There’d been an edge of vulnerability, though, when he’d talked about the past, and it was that edge that made me agree and say I would be there.
As I made my way out, I barely registered the locking and unlocking of the gates, my mind too consumed by the enigma that was Felix Church, and the equal measures of attraction and intimidation he’d engendered in me. There was no doubt in my mind that he would provide an enormous challenge in more ways than one. I could cope. I was a big boy. And at least from here on in, I’d know what to expect.
Back outside the prison gates, I leaned against my Toyota for a few minutes before getting back behind the wheel, letting the cool breeze blow away the last few strands of my agitation.
Chapter Three
Felix
“Forty-eight,” I counted as I heaved myself up to complete another sit-up, sweat glistening on my bare chest from my exertions. Being upright allowed me a view of Pete, my cellmate. He was sitting on the bottom bunk, chuckling at something he’d just read in his comic. Yeah, that was the level of intellect I got from him. The man was on the wrong side of fifty and still foundThe Beanoas hilarious as he presumably had when he was fourteen. Despite what I’d told my new PO, he couldn’t have been less interested in what I was doing, and there was definitely nothing sexual between us. Pete’s wife and three kids would no doubt thank us for that.
I sank back down to the floor before heaving myself up once more. “Forty-nine.”
“How many yer doing?”
It seemed Pete had at least a passing interest in what I was doing. “Sixty.”
“Jesus, Church. You should chill out a bit. You’re getting out soon.”
“Fifty.” I fixed him with a glare while I was up there. “You should learn to mind your own fucking business.”
Pete shrugged. “Only asked, didn’t I?”
“Well, you got your answer.”
He let out a sigh as he clambered to his feet, tucking his comic under the mattress before wandering out into the corridor. No doubt he was off for a game of pool while it was rec time. Rather him than me. It was a rare inmate in this place that didn’t cheat, and it was for that reason that more fights broke out over the pool table than anywhere else. I did the last ten sit-ups before collapsing back on the cold, stone floor, the events of this afternoon running back through my head, where I’d started with one probation officer and ended with another.
I’d liked Katherine, something about the older woman making me feel like I was in safe hands, which was a rarity for me. It didn’t mean I hadn’t given her shit. I had. Seven years in this place was enough to give anyone a hide like a rhinoceros. If you wanted to survive, you didn’t show weakness. You strutted. You worked out like crazy so you could make an imposing figure. You mouthed off and acted like a crazy bastard, so people would think twice before messing with you.
I’d done it all to the best of my ability, and become so expert at projecting an image of myself that made people give me a wide berth that I barely remembered the Felix Church who’d existed before my life went to shit—before Julian.
The thought of Julian had me surging to my feet and going over to the tiny metal sink to splash cold water on my face. Julian, the man who’d been so achingly sweet when I’d first met him, showering me with compliments and gifts. I knew that for what it was now. Love bombing, the experts called it. He’d kept it up for a year, long afterI’d moved in with him. The mask had eventually slipped, though. That’s when I’d met the real Julian Blackwell. And he’d been both manipulative and abusive in equal measure. And for reasons I still couldn’t understand years later, I’d put up with it, believing him when he insisted it wouldn’t happen again. I’d even left him a few times, but like the stupid, naïve fool I was, I’d always gone back—Julian too persuasive and persistent for me not to.
And then he’d murdered someone and life had never been the same again.
