Abruptly, Miss Lane stood from her seat, scraping it hard against the floor before it fell back with a loud clatter. She looked at it, not moving to pick it back up and, instead, grabbed at her bag, dropping it twice before she got a secure hold on it.
Jack stood with her while she struggled. “Miss Lane?”
“Forget it,” she snapped. “I’m not wasting my time. It’s obvious you’re incapable of being anything other than ungrateful when someone offers to help.” She pulled her bag onto her shoulder. “But I get it. I get that accepting my offer wouldn’t help the totally-cool-badass persona you’ve got going on here, and I get that you’re terrified someone might see you for the intelligent person you actually are. I’m sure Mr. Ward will be thrilled that you’ll be seeing out the rest of your sentence, but who cares, right?” She spun on her heel.
Well, fuck.
Seeing the fire and challenge in her eyes and hearing the truth in her words, Carter suddenly realized the lifeline she was offering, a way of getting the parole he so desperately wanted, and his childish behavior was going to make her walk out of the room, leaving him with nothing. As infuriating as he found Miss Lane to be, he couldn’t deny he was touched that she’d agreed to help him.
He cleared his throat. “Miss Lane?”
She stopped marching toward the door. Her shoulders rose as she turned to him with an impatient expression.
“I, um,” he began, tapping his fingertips along the edge of the table, unused to showing gratitude, let alone feeling it. “Look I—I appreciate that,” Carter stammered, his eyes flitting around the room.
Miss Lane glanced at Jack, who appeared equally speechless. “Don’t worry about it. It was stupid of me to—”
“No,” he interrupted. “It wasn’t stupid. It was a good idea. I think . . .” Carter glanced at Jack for assistance.
“Wes,” Jack coaxed. “Are you saying you want Miss Lane to tutor you?”
Carter dropped his eyes to the table, reaching for the cigarettes.
“Well, okay,” Jack whispered. “Miss Lane?”
“So,” she said, taking a slow step toward the table. “We’re going to do this?”
“I said so, didn’t I?” Carter growled through a fog of smoke that curled into the air around him. A bemused look crossed Miss Lane’s face before she retook her seat.
Twenty minutes later and with her diary filled with the times and dates she and Carter were meeting, Miss Lane stood once again from the table and held her hand out to Jack.
He shook it enthusiastically. “Thank you, Katherine. We’ll talk more, I’m sure.”
“Absolutely,” she replied with a smile. “And call me Kat.” She glanced at Carter. “See you Monday.”
But Carter remained mute, unmoving. Still as a statue, he kept his eyes fixed on the door as it closed behind her. His pulse thundered in his ears while the sound of her name reverberated through his skull with each ferocious beat of his heart.
Katherine. Katherine. Katherine.
Once they were alone, Jack turned to him with a huge-ass smile on his face. “Wes, this is great!” He clapped his hands together. “This is really great, right? Wes?” Jack repeated, sliding his hands into his pockets. “Wes, are you—?”
“What did you call her?” Carter croaked. His airway squeezed, making him gasp. He pushed a slow hand to his chest where a tightness, the likes of which he’d never encountered, pulled taut and unforgiving.
“What?” Jack asked in confusion.
Carter’s eyes closed. He swallowed. “What did you call Miss Lane?”
Jack frowned. “I called her Katherine. Why?”
Katherine Lane. Katherine fucking Lane.
As the world around him tilted, making the room swim horrifically, Carter dropped his head like a lead weight to his knees. His breath hitched and tripped over itself as it fought to get to his lungs.
It couldn’t be. There was no way.
No.
What were the odds?
The chance was minute.
He grabbed at his scalp in disbelief.
“It can’t be her.”
He pulled in as much air as he could, but it was useless. The walls were closing in while panic and disbelief gripped him mercilessly by the throat. He was choking.
Jack dropped to his knees in front of him. “Who, Wes?” he urged. “Wes, talk to me. Who are you talking about?” He grasped Carter’s shoulder.
“It can’t be,” Carter mumbled.
“Who? Miss Lane?”
“No,” Carter replied, vaguely aware of the alarm creeping into Jack’s voice. “She’s not Miss Lane, she’s— Oh fuck.”
“Who?” Jack asked, tightening his grip on Carter’s shoulder.
Carter finally looked at his counselor through eyes that could barely see, his vision fogged with memories so thick he could almost touch them.
Thick, wavy hair. A blue dress. Gunshots. Screams.
He grabbed for Jack’s arm and squeezed, clinging for his life, needing to be grounded, needing something to keep him from falling apart completely. He choked back a sob.
Long gone was the strong, arrogant twenty-seven-year-old man. Once again, he was a scared shitless eleven-year-old, desperate for someone to love him, frantically trying to save the life of a tiny, petrified girl.
He tried to answer Jack. Fuck, he tried. He wanted to tell him everything. He wanted to beg him to get him out of the room before he lost his shit altogether. He was losing his shit. Was this what dying felt like?
Like a broken dam, Carter’s memory burst wide fucking open, each image like a firework exploding in his vision, whizzing around his brain, squealing in his ears. He dropped his head, squeezing his eyes shut and clutching the lapel of Jack’s jacket, scrunching the wool in his palm, willing his whole body to calm, to relax and back the fuck up. Infuriatingly, the more he tried to slow his breathing, the more his body closed up.
He grunted in terror when his throat shrank more and more, and slumped his sweating forehead heavily against his counselor’s shoulder, speaking the words he never thought he’d utter since that horrific night sixteen years before.
“Jack,” he whispered. “She’s my Peaches.”
7
“I have to get to my daddy!”
“Keep moving! We have to get away from them. They’ll kill you! Move!”
“Wes?”
“No! He needs me!”
“Wes. Can you open your eyes for me?”
“Stay still!”
“Wesley. You’re all right.”
Carter lunged up from the clinic bed into a sitting position, wide-eyed and gasping. He glanced around, almost frantic, and jumped when a hand touched his arm. He turned to see Jack standing next to the bed, his face creased with concern. He swallowed hard, trying like hell to coat his sandpaper throat. The fuzziness in his head was still front and center. Fuck, he felt like death.
“Where am I?” He blinked and looked around the room at the whitewashed walls and the surprised expressions of a doctor and two guards.
“You’re in the facility clinic, Wesley,” the doctor answered.
“It’s Carter, and who the hell was talking to you, Doc?” he snapped. The doctor flinched and took a step backward.
“Wes,” Jack said softly. “You had a panic attack.”
He coughed a laugh, ignoring the heat of embarrassment that crept up the center of his body. “Says who?”
“Says me,” the doctor interjected.
Carter stared at him for a beat. “I’m outta here.” He swung his legs to the right so they were hanging off the bed. “Where are my shoes?”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the doctor began.
“I wasn’t asking!” Carter yelled.
His head pounded from deep inside his skull. His eardrums had pulled tight enough to split, and, oh, look at that, little black dots were hovering and dancing in his periphery. Fantastic. He scrunched his eyes shut for one split second to gain hi
s bearings, listing forward.
Jack placed his hands on his shoulders to keep him upright. “You need to calm down,” he murmured. “Just relax. You’ve been out for a while. You need to take it easy.”
Carter grasped the bridge of his nose to try to ease the throbbing behind his eyes. He’d never felt anything like it. It was like a goddamn circus had taken up residence in between his ears, and dammit all to hell if he didn’t feel completely drained. He couldn’t even fight Jack when he pushed him back against the pillows on the bed. He exhaled and frowned at the crowd standing and staring at him, as though waiting for him to explode.
“Does your head hurt?” the doctor asked.
Carter glared hard at the man, too damned exhausted to come up with any witty shit.
“I’ll go and get some painkillers,” the doctor muttered and scurried out of the room.
Carter was surprised to see the two guards also leave, glancing nervously at Jack as they did.
“Well, hell, at least I can still clear a room,” Carter muttered.
Jack pushed his hands into his pockets. “We need to talk.”
“About what?”
Jack fixed Carter with a penetrating stare. “You know what.”
Carter’s head dropped back against the bed.
He was entirely too confused and still in a state of complete shock to talk about . . . well, fucking anything, least of all the huge revelation that had hit him in the head like a damn brick.
It was her. Peaches. The girl he’d dreamed about for sixteen years.
The girl he’d saved—
“Wes,” Jack pushed. “It’s confidential, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
“I’m not worried about anything, Jack. I just have nothing to say. Goddammit!” Carter fisted the bedsheets, wanting to tear them into small strips so they matched the tumultuous sensation vibrating through him.
The sound of a chair being pulled across the floor toward his bed reminded Carter that Jack was a stubborn and persistent son of a bitch who wasn’t about to let him off lightly without some kind of explanation.
Jack leaned his elbows on the side of the bed. “Wes, we’ve known each other a lot of years. We’ve talked, we’ve argued, we’ve sat in silence—but I swear to God, boy, you’ve never scared me as much as you did yesterday.”
Carter’s eyes flew to Jack’s tired ones to see only truth behind his words. His confession made Carter feel strange. He didn’t give a shit about other people’s thoughts or sensitivities usually, but knowing that Jack had been worried made Carter feel . . . something.
“Yeah, well,” he murmured with a shrug while looking at the ceiling, “I’m fine.”
“What’s Peaches?”
A tremor of anxiety swept up Carter’s spine, causing a wave of nausea to crash through him.
“No one important.” The words were forced, whispered.
“So Peaches is a person?”
Carter pushed his fingertips to his temples and closed his eyes. “Jack, please,” he groaned. “Leave it.”
He hoped that the desperation lacing his voice was enough to stop Jack’s persistence. Surprise crossed Jack’s eyes and Carter knew he’d dodged the bullet for the time being. He just didn’t have the energy or the inclination to try to explain something or someone he’d thought about every day since he was eleven years old.
He had to get his own head out of his ass before he could do that.
He had to get his own head out of his ass before Monday, when he had his English Literature session.
A one-to-one session with her.
With Miss Lane.
With Peaches.
· · ·
Carter was sitting behind a wooden table when his Peaches entered with a wide smile at the guard. It dropped minutely when she registered Carter’s purposefully listless appearance, though her confident gait never wavered.
“Good afternoon,” she said, pulling books and papers from her mammoth bag.
Carter kept his eyes trained to the floor while his thumbs spun around each other on his lap. Fuck, he was sweating. She cleared her throat.
Carter lifted his head, praying his voice would work. “Good afternoon, Miss Lane.”
Her green eyes flickered with surprise at his uncharacteristically amenable greeting. He gave a small smile, trying to appear blasé. On the inside, Carter wanted nothing more than to hightail it out of the room like a pussy. He was sure she could hear his heart pounding painfully in his chest.
She pulled up a chair. “We’re going to do exactly what the class has been doing so you don’t fall behind.”
He kept his eyes on her, taking all of her in. He watched her movements and the expressions rippling over her face, trying to see the young girl he remembered like a crumpled photograph in the depths of his memory. Jesus. After sixteen years, she was sitting across from him, oblivious to their connection. Nevertheless, he knew she could feel his stare. He wondered if she felt the same way he did when she looked at him.
“This is the poem we’ll be looking at.” She placed a piece of paper in front of him.
He sat forward reading the title on the top of the page. “ ‘Tichborne’s Elegy’?”
“Yes,” Peaches said. “What of it?”
“Do those idiots in that class of yours even know who Chidiock Tichborne is?”
“They do now,” she answered evenly while she pulled the lid off her pen. “And what do you know about him or his poetry?”
Carter heard the challenge in her voice. He focused on that and not the sensation of the heat coming from her knee near his, under the table.
“I know enough,” he replied, crossing his arms.
“Please,” she offered with an open palm, “regale me.”
“Regale you?” he mocked. He rubbed his chin. “He was born in Southampton, England, in 1558,” he started. “In 1586 he took part in the Babington Plot to murder Queen Elizabeth and replace her with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. But they were shit out of luck. He was arrested and eventually hanged, drawn, and quartered.”
Stifling a laugh at her shock, he said, “This poem is the one he wrote while he was awaiting his execution. Kind of inappropriate to be studying this in a prison, don’t you think, Miss Lane?”
“You like history.”
Carter shrugged. “It’s okay. I prefer English literature.” He allowed his loaded answer to settle between them.
She wet her lips. “So, tell me about the poem.”
“He uses paradox and antithesis.” He trailed his finger across the page in front of him. “Opposites and contradictions. He does it to highlight the tragedy of what he’s going through, which, when you think about it, is pretty stupid.”
“Why would you say that?”
Carter laughed. “He made his mistakes, so he has to pay the price. His debt.”
“You sound like you know something about that.”
Carter raised his eyebrows and glanced around the room with large, obvious eyes.
“I know you’re paying for your mistakes. But he was so young, too young to die. Don’t you sympathize with Tichborne in some way?”
“Sympathize? No,” he answered firmly. “Envy? Yes.”
“Why do you envy him?”
Carter kept his eyes on the table between them. “The fact he’s about to die,” he muttered. “He begins to see things much more clearly. He has focus, clarity. I envy him that.”
“You want clarity?”
Carter smiled. “Wanting and needing are two very different things, Miss Lane,” he answered. “I need clarity. I need focus.”
Then he stared at her, because Jesus if there was anything else he could do or say at that moment. Carter knew that finding out who she was was the first step to him having any kind of focus in his life for years. And even though he spoke about Tichborne like he knew what the fuck he was talking about, it was only with his Peaches sitting in front of him that he truly understood his own need fo
r it.
“Peaches,” he whispered, taking in every inch of her face: the red hair that had engulfed him when he threw her to the ground and she’d fought against him to get back to her father, and the eyes that had cried heartbroken, terrified tears.
“What?” she asked quietly. “What did you say, Carter?”
And, just like that, the moment was gone.
As if he’d woken from a dream, Carter sat up straight, glaring at the guard before he slumped back in his seat.
“But, you know,” he mumbled, grabbing the cigarette Jack had given him out of his pocket, his barrier snapping right back up. “What the hell do I know, right? You’re the genius teacher.”
A small voice in the back of his head screamed and shouted at him for being such a dick as her face changed from calm to furious. But it was okay, he told himself. He could cope with her anger. It was hot. Her anger turned him on. It was all the other shit that scared him to death.
“Yeah,” she snapped in response. “I am, and I want you to do these activities.” She slammed another piece of paper in front of him covered in questions and tasks. “I’m sure with all your worldly knowledge you won’t have a problem, right?”
She flashed him a look that dared him to say something back, to refuse. He didn’t.
Instead he picked up the pen she’d dropped on the table between them and began doing what she’d asked because, as she sat staring at him in all her rage and loveliness, Carter knew he’d have done anything she’d asked of him.
Anything at all.
8
Kat set the collected notebooks and pens in neat little piles on her desk, glancing at her students as they were escorted out of the room back to their cells.
“Good work today,” Kat praised Riley as he approached with a timid smile. “Who knew Shakespeare would increase your enthusiasm for the written word?”
She was bursting with pride at the effort Riley had put into his writing. He was trying so hard and, although his dyslexia frustrated him, it was obvious that he was very smart.
Riley smirked, rocking back on his heels. “Yeah.” He shrugged as his index finger touched Kat’s copy of The Merchant of Venice. “I don’t care for that poetry bullshit, but I kinda like this Bill dude.”
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