Page 196 of Broken Pieces
Not after the way he wouldn’t meet my gaze at the courthouse.
So now I’m here. Positioned at one of the cheap-ass tables. Elbows on the surface. Heart in my throat.
Waiting for him.
And praying to every fucking thing out there that he’s still him when he walks through that door.
My knee bounces beneath the table.
I try to stop it but fail.
Every second stretches like a wire pulled too tight.
The door at the far end sounds with a loud metal click that draws everyone’s eyes.
There’s a pause, a thick stretch of silence, and then the inmates file in one by one.
The visitors around me shift.
Two kids sitting at the table closest to the wall gasp when they spot their father—both jump as they want to run to him, but stay locked in place.
The rules are clear here. No one moves until the guards give the order.
A woman at the end of the row clutches her toddler in her lap, pressing kisses to the top of his head while tears slip down her cheeks. She wipes them away quickly and puts on a smile.
It’s a quiet heartbreak in here. The kind no one talks about but everyone wears in their eyes.
I watch it all, heart kicking inside my ribs, but my eyes never leave the doorway.
And before long, I see him.
Zane.
The jumpsuit looks wrong on him.
He doesn’t belong in it.
There’s a fresh cut on his right cheek, skin swollen around the edge, already healing into something that’ll scar—signs of a fight, or perhaps a struggle for survival.
He enters silently, saying nothing. He avoids everyone’s gaze, including mine.
His eyes stay low as he walks forward. He lowers himself into the seat opposite me. Spine straight. Shoulders set. But nothing about him feels steady.
He doesn’t speak.
The boy who once pulled me into his arms, who held my face in his hands and kissed me with the desperation that made it hard to breathe, who whispered he loved me, won’t even lift his eyes to meet mine.
I feel my heart tear in half.
All the hope I carried into this room, all the weight I held onto, is gone.
But I’m still here.
I came, I waited for him. In fact, I haven’t stopped waiting. Every second of every day since they took him.
And now he sits across from me, empty and distant, a wall where there used to be warmth.
They didn’t just take his freedom. They took us too. Everything we were was taken away the second they closed that cell door behind him.
