Page 17 of The Sharpest Edges

“No cats.” She shoots back, a tease in her voice. “Keep it up and there won’t be any dessert for you either.”

He hisses through his teeth. “You ain’t playing fair now.”

She’d almost forgotten for a moment where they are. She’s caught in light banter with a handsome man, talking about kittens and dessert dates that aren’t really dates, but when Nick returns, it all washes over her again like a wet blanket.

They aren’t having lunch together, discussing coffee and pie and the pros and cons of pets.

They’re in prison.

Six months isn’t that long, she thinks, as he’s led out of the room. Maybe she should stop worrying about where they are now and start thinking about where they could be in a few months time. At that little cafe together, two friends eating pie and drinking coffee, talking about normal things like normal people. She doesn’t allow herself to think too hard about what makes this man different from all the others who have made her similar offers.

‘Go on a date with me, Ava. I’ll be out soon.’

‘Buy a pretty lady a drink on the outside?’

‘Wanna playdoctor when I get out?’

It’s par for the course in here and she brushes off the requests, never thinking twice, never taking them seriously. In most cases, they repulse or offend her. There has never been a single time when she considered meeting one of these men in the real world and yet here she is, so fucking excited to have dessert with Dean when he’s finally set free.

8

Chapter 8

It’s raining. Dean can hear it outside the window of his cell. This building is old and converted, though he can’t put his finger on its original purpose. It came with extra small, barely there windows now covered in bars, but it’s more than he’d ever get in a new facility.

It allows him to hear a million raindrops blending into a soothing melody, and to see them bouncing off those little flowers growing up the outer fence. He tries to imagine himself out there instead of on the hard bed of his cell with Clyde snoring above him.

He only wishes he could take full advantage of the rain and fall asleep instead of obsessing over his visit with Ava earlier that day. Somehow, against all logical conclusions and common sense, they have a date set up on the outside. It’s not really a date, he reminds himself. It’s a non-date, a friend date. A whatever you call two people platonically having dessert together type of date, because he ran his mouth like an idiot and said they could go as friends.

She would be a good friend as far as he can tell. The problemis he wants more from her than friendship and now he’s shot himself in his other foot by letting his nerves get the best of him. He huffs and the self-deprecating puff of air hangs in the muggy space of his cell. Of course, he fucked this up. He’s never asked a woman out before. Never felt inclined to do so when he’s been perfectly fine alone. Having anyone in his space like that always sounded like torture to him.

He kinda likes the idea of letting Ava invade his space though, and ain’t that some bullshit he has no business wishing for.

Doesn’t matter now, because he told her he wants to be friends and it would be a jerk move to backtrack on that now. She hadn’t seemed bothered by it, which probably meant she only wants to be friends too, and he should take that as a sign. When he’s a free man again, he’ll let her show him that cafe she loves so much. They’ll drink coffee and order pie like normal people doing normal things, and it will be completely platonic. That’s all there is to it.

He tries to appreciate what he does have, a new friend to add to the current list of zero. This is still a win. He’s still coming out ahead here. It doesn’t even seem that long now, either. A few months, maybe sooner if he can get off on good behavior and he’ll be eating dessert with her. It’s something to look forward to, and he hardly knows how to handle the unfamiliar excitement.

She could still change her mind, he reminds himself. He is still some guy in prison asking her to see him on the outside and if she decides that sounds like a stupid idea he can’t fault her for it. Once he’s out they may never speak again, but he’s trying not to fall into a trap of what-ifs. He chooses instead to remember the way she smiled so sweetly when she accepted, and how eager she was to show him pictures of those kittensshe spends too much time with for someone who isn’t taking one.

Dean thinks about how they shared food this time instead of her feeding him so he wouldn’t starve.

It had felt, for only a sliver of a moment, like what he assumed a date might feel like. The two of them in that tiny infirmary making plans and sharing a meal, but it wasn’t a date and it never will be. Friends. They are only friends.

Fuck, Boone would never let him hear the end of this.‘Finally asked a woman out and you ain’t planning to fuck her? What’s the damn point? You get dropped on your head when you was little more than those ten times we know about?’Then he’d laugh and give Dean unsolicited pointers for how to seal the deal.

He’s so lost in thought that takes him a moment to realize what’s happening when the cell door opens and three men rush in, catching him off guard and dragging him by the shirt collar and arms across the main area to the showers.

Shock keeps him from responding at first. His heart slamming against his ribcage is all he can focus on, certain he’s about to have a damn heart attack, but then muscle memory kicks in and he fights back. He swings blindly and connects with soft tissue, kicks out and slams into a random kneecap. Someone wails in pain and then one pair of hands let him go.

He’s pretty fucking sure he re-broke his toe, judging by the white-hot heat spreading like wildfire up his foot and into his leg, stealing his breath. Adrenaline keeps him fighting as he’s dragged to his final destination. He’s unfocused, but he makes contact more than once and prompts colorful cursing from his attackers. For a split second, he is free. His captors fall behind, trying to recover, but Dean can’t take advantage ofthe moment. The sharp corner of the bathroom counter digs into his side as he stumbles back, ripping and tearing until he’s bleeding from an open wound.

The opportunity passes and they’re on him again before he can run. He’s shoved into one of the shower stalls no one uses because it backs up with sewer water every time a toilet flushes. He presses himself into a corner, his exhales flaring his nostrils like an angry dragon. He’s ready to fight off whoever might come in here or die trying.

An obscene creak of the door reveals Jaxson with four others trailing behind him.

“Cozy in here, huh?” Jaxson grins, kneeling in front of Dean like he has no worries about his own safety. “Been enjoying those regular meals again? I hope so. I realized that hey, maybe that tactic doesn’t work for you and that’s cool. I’m a patient guy, got a lotta time to kill, plenty of methods at my disposal, so I had a little chat with my right-hand men here and we devised a new plan for you. Something that might work, might not, but only one way to find out, right? Little trial and error.”

Dean doesn’t answer, and much to his own horror, finds himself unable to keep eye contact for more than a few seconds at most. Too many memories from his childhood surge up at the worst possible time.

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