Page 22 of Cain
But the sleazebags? The ones with bad habits and worse reputations? They’re the ones helping me survive.
Funny, how rock bottom turns out to be the first real place I’ve stood on solid ground in a long freaking time.
10
WHAT THEY SAY, WHAT I KNOW
CAIN
Ihave another shit night. Like I’ve had since that beautiful one with Faith turned ugly.
I’m having nightmares. Loud ones.
It starts in silence—but it’s the wrong kind, the one where a storm’s sucked the air from the world.
I stand in a hallway that smells like bleach and iron.
Jail. I knew it before I saw the bars. Before I hear her voice.
“Cain, baby?”
It’s a whisper. Fragile. Uncertain.
I follow the sound, boots heavy on tile. The corridor is endless, stretching like some hell-loop, doors on either side, like mouths sealed shut. But I know which one is hers.
When I reach it, she’s sitting on the floor in the corner of the cell, arms wrapped around her knees, hair hanging in damp strands over her face. The jumpsuit they’ve put her in is too big. Her wrists are bruised where the cuffs must’ve bit down.
She looks up.
Her eyes find mine. But there’s nothing there but grief. Immeasurable. Immense. Unending.
“I didn’t do it,” she says, voice cracking. “Please, baby. You know me. You said you knew me.”
I press my hands to the bars.
I try to say her name, to tell her I’m sorry, that I was wrong, that I never stopped believing her—except I did, didn’t I?
I let doubt crawl in through the cracks and take root.
I looked her in the eyes and still chose everyone else.
“You stole,” I whisper to protect myself. She did.
But I remember even in the dream what Lo said, “No evidence.”
Faith reaches for me, fingers trembling through the gap in the bars.
“Help me,” she whispers. “Please, Cain. Help me.”
I try to move. Try to reach her. But I can’t. I’m stuck. Paralyzed.
I scream, but no sound comes out. My feet won’t budge. I’m cemented to the floor of a cage I made for her—andmyself.
Then she starts to cry.
Not just tears. But sobs that shake her whole body.
She breaks right in front of me. Her shoulders hunch, her breath comes in stuttering gasps, and she folds in on herself like she’s trying to disappear into the concrete.
