Page 15 of Jackson

I shook my head.

He didn’t seem like he was judging me, at least from the tone of his question.

Well, I guessed that was kind of a lie, though. Just because I wasn’t directly involved in the gambling didn’t mean it wasn’t going on and that I wasn’t exactly participating in it. I wasn’t after the prize but I was still slapping down my cards in order to up the pot’s stakes. I personally wasn’t playing to bet on a couple of used up cigarettes, but that didn’t mean the other three weren’t.

By association, I was guilty, too.

The one thing about prison life was that we were an all-for-one society, even if none of us believed in it. Privileges were either given or revoked due to other inmates behavior and when one of us fucked up, the rest suffered.

That was why the violence rates could get pretty bad. If there was one bad apple that was making life unbearable for everyone else, he needed to be taken care of.

By all intents and purposes, whatever happened to McMurphy, Richards, and Tyson in there was going to become my fate, too.

“Gonzalez?” Jackson asked again.”

“Ayen,” I said quietly, mumbling it into the fabric of his jacket.

“What?”

“Ayen.My name.”

His eyes widened briefly.

After tonight, I would never see this man again. Might as well leave him with a little piece of me. Not that he’d really care. All I was to him was a number and a vaguely familiar face.

Before he could say anything back, one of the COs, Stinner, came stomping out the front door of the cabin. “Gonzalez!”

I winced and quickly hid behind Jackson.

To my surprise, the man shifted just enough to block me entirely from the COs view.

“He wasn’t doing anything,” Jackson said. “You know that, right?”

“He was fucking gambling! That’s against the rules.”

“He was cowering in the corner trying not to get hit. My bet is that he was probably asleep when all of that went down.”

My gaze shot up to stare at the back of Jackson’s head.

Why was he defending me?

To a CO no less?

What could he possibly be getting out of it?

“Go look at how messy the bed he was next to was,” Jackson went on. “The sheets were pulled back and everything.”

Stinner let out a loud scoff but didn’t argue. “Whatever. We need to separate all of these guys for the night. The bus won’t be able to get out to us until morning.”

“I’ve got a spare staff cabin. One of them can bunk with me, there’s an extra bed. I’ll take Gonzalez since he had nothing to do with this.”

My jaw dropped open.

Wait, was he serious?

“We’re going to have to discuss that with the other COs,” Stinner was saying, but Jackson was already reaching back to grab my arm.

“That’s fine. I need to go open up the medic station so we can get those other two checked out. Unless you want to call an ambulance?”

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