“Should we…” she asked, gesturing toward the seats, and Danny cleared his throat.

“Yeah,” he managed softly.

They both sat across from each other, and Leah shifted in her seat before she smiled tentatively at him.

God, she was so beautiful.

“So…how are you?” she asked.

Such a simple question.

But as the seconds ticked by, he couldn’t even begin to formulate a response. What was he supposed to say? That he was completely miserable? That he spent the first night here heaving over the toilet after eating the slop at the dining hall? That every day the guards spoke to him with vitriol, and he was expected to take it or suffer the consequences? That he used the bathroom in a room with six toilets separated by plastic dividers without doors, so even his most basic human privacies had been stripped from him? That on his sixth night in this place, he saw another inmate cry and couldn’t decide if he wanted to console him or tell him his weakness was disgusting, because it mirrored his own?

He watched Leah waiting for his answer, and when her smile began to falter, she dropped her eyes and took a small breath. When she looked back up, her face was once again composed.

“How are your classes?” she asked, trying her luck with a different question.

“They’re good,” Danny said. “Keep me occupied in the mornings.”

Her smile broadened now that he seemed to be responding. “I would have taken you for more of a night class kind of guy.”

Danny smiled softly. “No classes offered at night because of all-call.”

“What’s all-call?”

“When we line up so they can make sure we’re all behaving and accounted for, and that no one made a run for it.”

Something flashed behind her eyes before a contrived smile curved her lips, and then she looked down at her lap. After a few seconds, she lifted the sandwich bag that held her ID and her money.

“I’m gonna go get a snack. You want anything?”

Danny shook his head. “I’m okay.”

“Okay,” she said softly as she stood and made her way over to the vending machine on the far wall. Danny watched as she stopped just before it and lowered her head, taking a slow breath before she looked up and began putting money in the machine.

She obviously needed a minute or she wouldn’t have gotten up so soon. In hindsight, he could see how the idea of an all-call might upset her. The thought of him having to line up and be scrutinized was a reminder of his status as a criminal—but there was nothing he could tell her about his life in there that wouldn’t generate the same type of reaction.

The absolute last thing he wanted to do was make her worry about him. He needed to be more thoughtful about what he said. This visit was supposed to be a little pocket of perfect inside a mess of shit, and it would never be that if he wasted their time together by upsetting her.

He needed to be the one asking the questions, and she needed to be the one talking. Stories from home would be safe topics of conversation. Funny stories. Normal stories.

Leah walked back to her chair with a bottle of water and a bag of M&M’s. “Want some?” she asked, holding it out.

“Can’t,” Danny said, nodding toward the wall where two guards stood watching.

“Oh, right,” she mumbled, glancing over her shoulder. “Sorry.”

“So, how’s Gram doing?” he asked, and Leah focused all her attention on opening her bag of candy.

“She’s good. Keeping busy, you know.”

Danny stared at her as she avoided eye contact, sifting through the bag before popping a few in her mouth.

Apparently, he wasn’t the only one trying to censor the conversation.

An awkward silence fell over them, and Leah twisted the bag between her fingertips.

“Tell me a story,” he said. “Something good.”

She lifted her eyes. “Something good?”

Danny nodded.

“Um…let’s see. I met Tommy’s new girlfriend the other day.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mm-hm.”

“What’s she like?” Danny asked.

This was safe. Pleasant.

“She’s adorable,” Leah said with a smile. “Really nice. And so smart. She’s going to school for forensic science. Like one of those CSI people.”

“No shit?”

Leah nodded. “It was so cool talking to her. She’s definitely a keeper. Gram loves her too.”

Something flickered in Danny’s chest. “Gram met her?”

“Yeah. Tommy brought her by one afternoon while I was visiting. We all ended up staying for dinner.”

Danny nodded slowly as he pressed his palms into the tops of his thighs.

The thought of them all sitting at Gram’s together should have made him smile, but the flickering in his chest tightened further until there was no mistaking what it was.

Jealousy.

What the fuck was wrong with him? He had no idea he was capable of such repulsiveness. How selfish was it to resent the people he cared about for living their lives? What would he have preferred to hear? That they were all sitting alone in their living rooms with the curtains drawn, crying into a box of tissues?

“Are you okay?”

No. He wasn’t okay. He was the furthest thing from okay. He was spiraling into something ugly and he didn’t know how to stop, because hearing about home was supposed to be the one thing that helped him.

“Danny?”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he dropped his forehead to his clasped hands.

Tell her, he thought. Tell her you just realized you’re so far gone that other people’s happiness makes you angry.

“Danny…it’s okay,” she said. “Whatever it is, you can talk to me.”

But he didn’t know what he was supposed to say anymore.

He didn’t know how to be this version of himself with her. Trying to figure out the right words to use, what information to leave out of stories. Struggling to hide his reactions to things. She was one of the few people he could always be himself with, and having his guard up around her felt awkward and unnatural and wrong.

He couldn’t do this.

“This isn’t working, Leah,” he said, his forehead still resting on his fists.

“What isn’t working?”

“This,” he said finally, lifting his head. “Us.”

Leah blinked at him like he had just said something in a foreign language. “What are you talking about?”

The words were all there, just waiting to be said: that he couldn’t be around her until he figured out how to be himself again. That he didn’t want what they had to be dragged through shit in the process. That he needed to end their relationship now, because it was the only way to preserve it. And they could both remember it the way it had truly been—powerful and unblemished and real, not bruised and broken and so sullied it was impossible to remember it was ever beautiful in the first place.

Yes, the words were all there. But instead, he said, “I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, Leah. I’m realizing that now. And thinking we could make this work was one of them.”

“Danny,” she said, a hint of dread in her tone. The confusion on her face was slowly giving way to realization.

“It just doesn’t make sense anymore,” he continued. “For either one of us.”

She shook her head. “Stop. Don’t do this.”

“No, you don’t do this,” he said. “Don’t make this hard, Leah. I’m trying to tell you what I want.”

She stared at him for several seconds before she spoke. “And you’re saying you don’t want this?” Her expression was smooth, but her voice quavered slightly, betraying her. “You don’t want us?”

It took every ounce of strength in his body to keep the emotion out of his next words—the most despicable lie to ever leave his lips. “Not anymore.”

Leah kept her eyes on him, and he could see the rise and fall of her chest gradually increase in speed. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

He needed to end this conversation. Her suffering would be the last straw—the thing that demolished him and caused his illusion of strength to burst apart and scatter to the floor like the house of cards it was.