Page 31 of Jackson

“Yeah, no worries. I’m not all that interested in his background,” I lied. “I’m here to make sure they all walk out of this program still alive.”

Stinner laughed. “Close call the other night with that fight?”

“Where the fuck did they swipe the cards from, anyway?” Browne asked.

“Who knows and who fucking cares.”

My mind wandered as their conversation deviated from Ayen. My heart squeezed; watching him eating alone by himself as he hunched over his food had me fighting the urge to go over there and claim a spot at his table. His gaze was moving slowly around the hall, taking in the other inmates around him, until he caught sight of me watching him.

A small, quick, smile was flashed my way before he looked back down at his food again.

My entire body relaxed at the sight of it.

Was I forgiven for earlier?

Without any hesitation, my mind was made up. I had to know.

Later tonight, after lights out, I’d sneak over to his cabin to talk to him about what happened during our hike.

I had to make sure we were still good or else it was going to kill me.

CHAPTER 13

Jackson

It wasn’thard to sneak out from my cabin and over to the inmates’ after lights out.

Not many firefighters were eager to be moving around the dark property this late at night unless they were coming back from the city, and as far as I knew, no one had taken off for a night at the bars.

With only one CO on watch for the night, the rest were asleep in their cabins, making it easy for me to avoid the view of the cameras as I reached Ayen’s cabin.

The door was unlocked, unsurprisingly, and opened with barely a creak as I slipped inside. Outside, the world was silent, only broken up by the occasional chirping of a cricket nearby.

Fishing my phone out of my pocket, I unlocked it and shined the light down at the floor.

“Ayen,” I whispered into the dark.

A figure shot up from the bottom right bunk immediately, kicking back until he was pressed flat against the wall. The sound of panicked breathing broke up the silence in the cabin, filling it with an anxious tension.

I kept the light tilted down so that it didn’t flash in the window and catch the attention of whoever was manning cameras as I walked over to the bed. “It’s just me.”

“Jax?” He sounded terrified.

Poor baby.

“Yeah.”

There was the slow sound of him letting out a long and barely controlled breath, the gasp and hitch in his throat at the tail end of it, had my heart sinking in my chest.

A sigh left him as his silhouette finally relaxed. “What are you doing here?”

I wanted to pull him up from his bed and hold him against my chest until he finally relaxed again. The urge burned as I ignored it. “I wanted to talk to you without all the COs around.”

He was quiet when I sat down at the end of his bed. His legs were drawn up to his chest protectively, his arms wrapped around them in a tight hold.

I wanted to reach out and touch him, pull him away from the corner he’d squished himself into. This was the second time I’d seen him have this kind of reaction—to immediately shrink away from whatever perceived danger he thought he was in and try to hide.

My hand tightened around my phone.

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