Found (Captive Heart #2) (5 page)

C
har makes a mean chicken parmigiana
.

I’m a selfish asshole for not even throwing a frozen pizza in the oven when I knew she wasn’t yet home from work, but whatever. She’s survived without me for this long, she can do it now.

And support me.

God, I’m a fucking loser.

So many thoughts were running through my head all day. About my parole, the new job. Our baby. Her advice to take the deal.

That one has been needling me for two and a half years, and yet I never let it out. I never told her that secretly, I blame her.

But it seems that, right now, over this lovely meal she’s cooked us, I’m going to.

“Why did you tell me to take the deal?”

I stare at her across the table as she pauses, a forkful of spaghetti halfway to her lips. She sets it down and looks at me.

“I never told you to take the deal.”

The fury in my veins won’t subside. “I could have walked free, been a free man, if you’d left the chances to trial. But no, you wanted to go the safe route, always the safe route.”

Char’s eyes and mouth turn down in sadness. “I never told you to take the deal, Tucker. I told you that I thought it was less risky, yes, but that I’d stand behind you no matter what you chose.”

I’m not even hearing the words she’s saying. “You’re so selfish! I basically called myself guilty when I took that two and a half year deal. I labeled myself a convict, admitted to the world that I really did all of those horrible things! And for what? So I could serve a quick prison sentence and come home to you?”

A crack from across the table finally snaps me from my blind rage.

Char’s cracked her plate in half from slamming it down. Holy shit.

“YOU DID! YOU DID DO ALL OF THOSE HORRIBLE THINGS! You stole money, you kidnapped me, we destroyed Camp Marsh when that coyote came! Don’t act like you should have walked free, because you did all of those things! And don’t you dare blame it on me!”

I’ve finally hit that nerve inside of her that I’ve been waiting for, and it feels good. I want to push it, aggravate it more.

“So really, all this time, you wanted me to be punished? To pay for what I’ve done! I must really be a loser in your eyes. I don’t know why you even fucking married me!”

“What the hell, Tucker?! I never, ever wanted you to be punished! I drove an hour and a half both ways every weekend for three years to come see you. What you did does not constitute who you are as a person! You’re not a loser to me at all, you were just down on your luck. And I married you because I loved you!”

“Oh so you loved me! But you don’t anymore right?” My rage is ignorant to anything she says.

“Will you shut up? Please!? I love you. I love you so much that I’ve been willing to go through every mood swing you’ve had since you’ve been home with a smile on my face.”

“Well maybe I’ll just take my ring off, then. Maybe I don’t want you to have to put up with me anymore.”

I’ve gone too far. I can see from the devastated look on her face that I shouldn’t have said that.

“If that’s what you really want …” Silent tears fall into her cracked plate, salting her chicken.

“Char … I didn’t mean that. Sorry.” My apology is brisk and doesn’t sound sincere whatsoever.

“It’s fine.” She clears her throat and stands, starts to clear the ruined dinnerware off the table.

Suddenly my heart starts to thump with panic. This robot, Stepford Wife version of Char is coming back. Even though it hurts, I like it when she’s raw like she was only moments ago.

I don’t want to see that go away. I have to give her something. “My parole officer got me a job. A gut job, doing construction on a crew for one of her friends.”

Her eyes peek at me with shock at the sudden confession. She sets down the plate.

“That’s great, Tuck. I know you’ll do well at that.”

I nod. “And she’s found me a local Narcotics Anonymous chapter. I’m going to my first meeting tomorrow, will hopefully get a sponsor.”

She sits, thinking that maybe, finally I’m opening up. I can see the hope in her chocolate eyes. “That’s really great. It will be nice for you to have someone to talk to. Other than me. Have you thought about calling Mr. Marsh?”

I’m not ready to reach out to the old man just yet. It was easier behind bars, where I didn’t ruin and scandalize his business. Out here, in the real world, it’s harder.

“Not yet. But Jane, my parole officer, she wants me to try and find a therapist. One like the guy I talked to when I was locked up.”

Char nods, and my heart flips over. I haven’t really looked at her. Truly observed her since I’ve been back. In her dark gray lounge sweater and simple black leggings, she looks comfortable but gorgeous. She’s wiped away her makeup from the day, which she didn’t need anyway, and swept her hair back in a long ponytail. I want to gather her up in my arms, but I restrain myself.

“Maybe we could go together. To talk to someone. It might … help.”

Char looks so small when she says this. And I can see it in her body language that she doesn’t know what else to do.

I’ve done this to her. Made her feel like this.

“I’ve been really angry since getting out. Even before then. Maybe it will. Help, I mean.”

She nods and we sit in silence for a while.

“This was really good, by the way. Thanks.” I point to her chicken parmigiana.

She smiles, her real, beautiful smile. My body warms from being the one to put it there.

“Thank you. It’s amazing what you can do with the use of a grocery store and a working oven. It’s definitely better than SpaghettiO’s and refried beans.”

“You’re telling this to the guy who’s been eating prison food for the last three years.”

My wife stalls, her face dropping at my statement.

“Char, it was a joke.”

“Oh!”

We both start to laugh, and I internally sigh. Laughing with Char. This is something I could get used to again.

N
ine days go
by and Tucker gets swept up in a life that is all his own. While I get up and go to work each day, he follows me until I turn off for my building, and he continues on to the job site.

He gets home each night, dirty and exhausted. But he seems … lighter. Like he has more of a purpose.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he quickly changes into casual clothes and runs out the door for his NA meetings. And when he gets home from those, I can feel the sweet relief pouring off of him. While I’m jealous that he’s spending time with people who understand him more than I do, I’m also glad. Glad he feels he has someone, or someone’s, he can rely on and trust with his thoughts.

We eat dinner together, maybe throw a baseball game or one of my shows on the TV, and then I head up to bed. And he stays on the couch.

It’s an unspoken thing, a subject we have yet to broach after the explosion at the dinner table nine days ago. That felt like headway, like maybe he’d open up more after that. But if anything, it’s done the opposite. Aside from the few
it was good
’s and
not much
’s in response to how his day was, he hasn’t spilled his guts on anything else.

And aside from two hugs, forced by me and initiated by me, he hasn’t touched me.

I’m going crazy here. I went three years with no sex, and now … to have him dangled in front of me, sleeping a mere staircase away. It’s a tease. A girl has needs. I’ve gone without for so long … I’m going to scream if he doesn’t get me naked soon.

Which is why I’m relieved we’re going to therapy today. Tucker has gone once to this new shrink by himself, and let me know three days ago that Dr. Taylor would like me to come with him.

So here we sit, in awkward silence outside the good doctor’s office, waiting for our four o’clock appointment. I had to leave work early for this, and not to be a bitch, but inside I hope it’s worth it. I want to get back to where we were. I want Tucker to love me again.

The setup is very different than one of the last shrink’s office I’d been to. The other office was sterile, with a doctor whose platinum blond hair and high heels scared me more than comforted me. It felt like she was judging me the entire time.

Of course, I still hadn’t discussed with Tucker why I’d gone to see a therapist.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lynch, I’m ready for you.”

A kind looking woman with dirty-blond hair meets us in the doorway. She’s not how I pictured a therapist, looking more motherly and homely than I imagined. I always picture shrinks with expensive glasses sitting on their noses and degrees lining the walls. Dr. Taylor’s office is more like a beautiful sitting room that no one ever uses in their home.

“Thanks for coming in today.” She gestures for us to sit in the chairs across from her armchair.

Tucker and I sit, and he doesn’t say anything. Per usual.

“Thank you so much for letting us come in.” I smile at her.

“I’m glad Tucker brought you along today, as I think there are many issues he needs to resolve with you. And that you two might need to resolve together. So, let’s jump right on in, shall we?”

I suck in a breath quietly. I realize this woman knows intimate things about our relationship, but I hadn’t thought so much about the things Tucker has told her about me. Now, I’m scared.

“Tucker, last time you were here you talked about feeling distant and closed off from Charlotte. Charlotte, do you feel that way too?”

He told her that? “Well … I guess so. But it’s not for lack of trying, I am trying to get close to him.”

Tucker grunts. I have no idea what that means.

“I think some of what is blocking Tucker from that is his experience in prison. Have you two discussed what he went through in there?”

Tucker was always very mum when it came to his experience in jail. “Um … not really. Whenever I visited, he didn’t really want to talk about it. So I didn’t push.”

“So you mainly talked about your life?”

She’s making me sound selfish.

“Tucker, do you want to address this? Let’s get some dialogue going here.”

“Fine.” Tucker says to Dr. Taylor.

“Tucker, talk to Charlotte, not to me.”

He turns to face me, and the silver scar running across his rugged jaw glints in the sunlight coming from her windows.

“For two years, we talked about everything that was going on in your life. Your new job, your new friends. But you never asked about what my life was like.”

He’s accusing me. Again. “Tucker, you didn’t want to talk about it. I asked you several times at the beginning, and you didn’t want to share. So at some point, I just stopped trying.”

He sighs and turns to look at Dr. Taylor, who prompts him to look back to me. What, he needs her to coach him to talk to me?

“You were the one person I had. The only person I could talk to, vent to. I needed that. The fact that you gave up on that, it hurt. And I wasn’t going to bring it up myself, wasn’t going to tell you about the beatings I was receiving or how scary it was in there sometimes.”

I rear back, appalled. “Someone beat you?”

He looks down into his lap. “That’s something you would have known if you bothered asking.”

Emotion clogs my throat. “I’m … I’m sorry. I just thought that you didn’t want to talk to me about it. I wanted to make our visits positive and happy. And we talked about your college, and the books you were reading—”

Dr. Taylor interrupts us. “I think what Tucker is saying is that you focus a lot on the positive. That he feels you don’t want to delve deep into the negative. Why is that, Charlotte?”

I want to punch this woman. But in a corner of my brain, and my heart, I know she’s only speaking the truth. A dark truth about me that I don’t want to uncover.

“Our life was shitty. Fuck, our life now is shitty. But you go around pretending that everything is perfect. Like fairies are coming out of your fucking ass!”

Tucker is getting riled up now.

“Tucker, let’s not use that kind of language towards each other. It’s not conducive to an open environment.”

He mutters an “I’m sorry” after Dr. Taylor admonishes him.

“You had enough bad stuff going on in there, all right? I thought I could be a shining light or something for you. That I could brighten up your weekends and put you in a good mood. I know it was hard. I know it’s hard now. But why do we have to dwell on it? We could be making each other happy right now, but instead you’re choosing to focus on the negative.”

Tucker stares into my eyes. “Because you want to ignore the big fat elephant in the room that’s practically sitting on both of us. We’re not perfect, so can we please stop pretending to be? I’m a convict. A felon. I’m going to work a construction job until the day I die. And I think … maybe you regret getting involved with me. Deep down, I think you’re still trying to aspire to this perfect little wife and woman picture your mother put in your head years ago. You don’t have to be that person, Char.”

His words sting deep and hard. It’s like pouring salt in a bloody gash. His words nearly knock my breath from my lungs.

I can’t help being childish. “Well, sorry you don’t like the woman you married.”

Tucker’s voice is quiet when he responds. “I love the woman I married. The one from the woods. But this person, right now? I don’t really like her. I’m not thrilled with this version of the person I married.”

I look right at him. “I guess that makes two of us then.”

T
his is
what hell looks like.

When they show you that stupid reality show about bad kids going to prison to see what their lives could turn into to … it isn’t all that stupid. And I’ve only seen the show because they play it on the TVs here, which is asinine because we’re already here. But yeah, irony.

The depiction is pretty correct though. Prison is scary when you’re a sixteen-year-old shithead, as well as when you’re a twenty-six year old convict.

After I took the two and a half year deal, I got transferred to a prison about half an hour away from the one I was being held at until my arraignment. Which meant further drive time for Char. And scarier inmates for me.

SCI Mahoney was an all-male facility within the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. It housed murderers, crooks, child molesters and the worst scum of The State of Independence.

And now I was one of them.

But I was also a
new
one of them. Which meant I got fucked with.

Not physically, no … I would kill someone before I ever let them rape me. But I’d been threatened with it when I first got here a year ago. I’d been held up against the wall, or to my bed, and beaten until my ribs cracked.

“Watch those books, Lynch. Getting in my way and shit.”

Mike Raxon, or Rax as they call him in here, throws the books I was studying from to the floor. In the library. Where you’re meant to have books all over the table.

The guy is a thug, a lifer as they say. Has been in and out of prisons since he was a juvenile. Assault, robbery, attempted murder. You name it, he’s probably done it.

And he gets off on picking on the straight-laced crowd in here.

I’ve done some shit. Seen some shit. But compared to the lifers and crooks in here, I’m a saint. When I got locked up, I made a promise to myself that I’d stop being a screw up. That I’d clean up my act so I could be the best person I could be when I got out. For Charlotte.

And now I’m days away from graduating with my college degree. But this place has a way of beating you down. Breaking your spirit. I’m not as gung ho as I once was. And that depression comes from guys like Rax. He’s not the first to rag on me, and I’m sure he won’t be the last.

Lifers hate seeing other people succeed. Try to build something or make something of themselves. He must have gotten word that I’ll be getting my degree in a few days, and has come to mess with me.

His little minions hang in the background, and I notice the library is eerily silent. As in, no one is in here but the five of us.

“Sorry about that, Rax. Let me just clean that up.”

I stand and then bend to retrieve the, at least seven, textbooks he’s scattered to the floor. But before I can reach the first one, a sneaker crushes my hand.

I want to twist in pain, but fight the urge to. Giving them what they want will only make this worse.

“Think you’re so fucking smart, you stupid little bitch? Want to show us all up? Don’t give me lip like that. I know what fucking sarcasm sounds like.” Rax whispers in my ear like some macho man.

I have to fight the urge to roll my eyes. Guys like this were wimps, too soft for the outside world and so they had to assert their dominance in an environment like this.

“Didn’t mean anything by it, I’m just trying to study for my finals.”

That answer doesn’t satisfy them, because I get one of his minion’s foot to my stomach.

He kicks the wind out of me, and the pain is blinding because I think for a second I might blackout.

“Awww, the little white boy can’t take us messing with him. It’s just a little kick, bitch. Give him another.”

I know this one is coming, so I tense my body. The blow hurts twice as hard. Fear personifies everything in here. If you let yourself feel it, everything will be twice as bad.

And that’s exactly what they’re doing to me.

They jump me all at once, pummeling my face and my stomach and my legs. I think Rax breaks one of my fingers on my writing hands, and that makes me howl.

Not because of the pain, but because I have finals in three days and I won’t be able to take the test.

They get bored with me after a while, and wander out of the library.

My body is in agony, and I don’t have the energy to pull myself up. I’ll have to lay here until someone finds me, bruised and bleeding on the library carpet. I pray to God they come soon.

It’s taking a long time for someone to find me. I know this because the blood is clotting, drying into the carpet.

And I’m hallucinating. I see Charlotte bending down and kissing each one of my broken body parts. I can feel her soft lips caressing me. I want to tell her, to talk to her about the ugliness that goes on here. But she doesn’t want to hear it. She never wants to hear it.

In the end, it took someone two hours to discover me unconscious in the library.

And I had to postpone my college finals and graduation by three months to let my hand heal so I could properly hold a pen.