Page 59 of Jackson

How long would he have gone carrying on the ignorance?

For the rest of our weeks together?

After that, too?

I’d told him—begged him—not to go find Alex. But he’d done so, anyway.

To what, prove to himself that it ‘wasn’t that bad’?

That I wasn’t the type of person who was capable of such a violent act?

Whatever he’d told himself in order to convince himself that he was fine with seeing Alex like that was a complete lie.No onecould handle something like that; no matter how prepared you were going into it.

A bright and charismatic man being reduced down to someone who pissed and shit in a diaper all day wasn’t the kind of thing you simply witnessed and got over while convincing yourself that he deserved it.

The reality was that, eventually, Jackson was going to come to his senses and see just what kind of monster I was to leave someone in that state, regardless on whether or not it was accidental. Soon, he’d see the real reason I was meant to be behind bars and our little fantasy together would come crashing down.

I was sick to my stomach when he’d asked the first time for Alex’s info, knowing that by walking down that road I was essentially letting what we had slip right through my fingers. That’s why I’d begged him to let it go, to just forget it.

But of course, Jackson being Jackson could never do that. He had to see the disgusting mess for himself and try to prove that he wasn’t like everyone else who saw me for the murderer I was.

“All right, everyone!” Mac’s voice snapped me back into reality. “Partner up!”

Blinking a few times to clear my head, I realized that I’d somehow transported myself from the mess hall to a designated training area where there were work stations set out for us to gather around.

Across the way, I caught eyes with Jackson who was watching me with a pinched expression on his face. Roxy stood at his side, wagging her tail while she pranced in place from where Jackson was holding onto her work vest.

Immediately turning away from them, I gathered around the closest workstation where another inmate, James Barker, was already standing.

He glanced over at me when I stood next to him, his arms crossing over his chest.

“You’re my partner for this,” I forced myself to say.

He gave me a weird look before shrugging. “Whatever.”

CHAPTER 25

Ayen

For the next week,everything went the same way—me avoiding Jackson like the plague and him keeping his distance from me.

There were no more midnight rendezvous, no more quiet meetings when no one else was looking, no more subtle brushes of our hands together as we walked back from the training area and parted ways at the mess hall.

I felt the void of him in everything that I did. From sunrise to sunset, my body hurt from how hard I was punishing it in order to keep my feelings tamped down far enough to numb me from the inside.

I kept a rotation of partners during our training, keeping myself preoccupied and not giving it up to fate or chance that I’d be randomly placed with Jackson and Roxy.

Nothing felt right.

My soul ached.

And there was fuck all I could do about it.

“Can you get your fucking head on straight, Gonzalez?” Barker hissed while tossing a large pack at me.

I stumbled back, catching it in the chest.

“You know, when you said you wanted to be my partner, I didn’t know you were going to be fucking useless.”

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