It wasn’t my first visit to prison and, given that I was in love with an outlaw, I knew it wouldn’t be my last. They were technically called ‘correctional centers’ in British Columbia, but jail was jail no matter what they called it. Although, Ford Mountain Correctional was set between beautiful forest and snow-capped mountains just outside of Chilliwack, a strangely tranquil and stunning setting for a medium security prison. It soothed me slightly to know that King was somewhere like that, at the very least.
I was also well acquainted with the visiting protocols so I made sure I called ahead for an appointment and wore conservative clothing. I knew what it was like to go through the body scanner and a pat down, to wait in the cold, drab visitation room for the correction officers to bring prisoners in to visit their family and friends. I knew it because I’d done it all before with Lysander. Driving my new and improved Betty Sue down from Entrance, I told myself that knowing this, I would be unfazed by the sight of King in a prison jumpsuit.
That was not the case.
The sight of King in a prison jumpsuit eviscerated me.
The orange of the rough fabric was garish and combined with the yellow fluorescent lights that hummed overhead to made him look gaunt and hollow cheeked. All his magnificent hair was scraped back into a ponytail at the base of his neck so, for a moment, I thought they’d cut it all off and I nearly burst into tears.
“King,” I said, my tongue thick in a mouth full of sand.
“Cressida,” he replied cautiously as he took the seat across from me.
His impartiality glanced off my heart like a blow but I absorbed the pain and moved on because I deserved it.
I tried to speak without sobbing, realized that wasn’t an option, then swallowed convulsively a few times until I felt I could try again. King watched me, unsmiling, his face hard. I remembered Lysander’s face growing hard like that after years in prison, petrifying more and more every time I saw him until he seemed made entirely of marble. I couldn’t imagine King like that, my smiling, charismatic, rebel with any cause but me, King rotting away in prison for years of his precious life.
“I can’t believe this,” I breathed shakily. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
He didn’t say anything. I stared at him with everything in my eyes, begging him silently to see my words of apology, the promises of eternal devotion I held for him. He refused. It made me realize how much I’d hurt him when I’d ended things. It seemed like a lifetime ago that I’d been that weak, that cowardly, but I realized with an acute pang that I was being just that pathetic now by not giving him the words, by expecting him to read them the way he normally did, like subtitles beneath my silent lips.
So, I sucked in a deep breath that tasted like prison and tried to write King a verbal apple poem.
“Before you, I lived a boring life without passion or turmoil, just the same quiet existence that so many people spend their entire lives living out. It wasn’t enough for me and I didn’t know why. My only escape was through my books. They made me think that life could be made of cotton candy castles and white knights in shining armor. They told me that love was always good in the end, and relatively easy to obtain as long as you were a good person, which I was. Then I saw you in the parking lot and I fell in love you in a way that I’ve never fallen in love with anything before. You changed my life, catastrophically and fundamentally, like a warm water hurricane, and you didn’t even have to open your mouth to say anything except to laugh.
I’ve learned since then that life is messy. It’s soaked in sweat and steeped in tears. It stinks of sex and beer. It means loving so much it burns you down and hating until you fly into a rage. It’s grotesque but beautiful, a creature you can’t even recognize, can’t even name until you have it for yourself and then, you aren’t ever willing to let it go. You, my eighteen-year-old student, taught me how to live and love until I ached with it all and instead of telling you how terrified that made me, how exhilarated and alive, I let fear rule me and I let you down.”
I licked my lips, looked up at him from under my eyelashes to see him sprawled in the uncomfortable metal chair the way he would in his desk at EBA. For some reason, the sight made me want to cry.
“You are the king of all the fears that ruled my life, a man of ferocity and passion and balls to the wall determination and endless, boyish enthusiasm. You crack the soul of life open in your palms and drink your fill. A man like that needs a Queen by his side,” I murmured, repeating my excuse for our breakup back to him in a way that had his eyes clicking to live like flashlights. “And I’m that Queen. I will match your ferocity. I will exceed your passion and challenge your balls to the wall determination. I will see your boyish enthusiasm and raise you my newborn love for life. I will stand beside my biker King and be his rough and tumble Queen, even if it takes me the next ten years to convince you to take me back.”
When I looked up into his eyes again, I saw a passion so fierce I felt his desire echo through my body right down to my toes.
He leaned forward slowly, almost menacingly, until his forearms rested on the table with a clang as his cuffs settled. “Was never gonna let you go, Cress babe. Knew it that day in the parking lot just like you did. There was never a moment after that day that I doubted it.”
“Despite everything, because of everything, I love you,” I whispered as my hands shot out over the table to clutch his.
I ran my fingers over the cold metal shackles, and then spread his hands palms down, on the metal surface so I could trace them with a tender touch before doing the same on the other side. I remapped the ridges of calluses on the pads and base of each finger, the life lines that bisected each palm and the tender network of periwinkle blue veins that spread from each wrist into his hands like tangled roots. It was such a strange thing to be sentimental over, his hands and their amazing beauty, but I found myself finally crying as I took them in a firm grip and brought them to my tear-painted lips.
He let me kiss them, cupped one against my cheek while the other found its home around the back of my neck.
I closed my eyes to better absorb his touch.
King’s voice was achingly soft, taking my misery into his voice and sucking on it like a candy until it dissolved. “They arrested me before I brought my favorite teacher another apple poem. Was worried I’d have to woo you all over again. Got it with me, you want it?”
“Yes,” I breathed, feeling like a dandelion about to face a strong breeze.
He didn’t move away to reach for a piece of paper because, I realized just before he opened his mouth, they wouldn’t have let him keep any personal effects on him in this horrible place.
So, instead of passing me an apple tied with a poem, he passed me the words written on his tongue.
“Your voice is between the lines, my Queen
Echoed in the white before the black
It is the swell of words that rest
Behind the apex of my throat
Your scent is caught between my teeth
Sinks among the groves there and gives them taste
Of clouds, dew upon my palate,
I hide you under my tongue
Your body walks my lines at night
It warms the skin beneath my arms, settles
Against my chest, a thumb in the hollow of the collar bone
It whispers your breath into mine
Your heart rests in the gaps
Between my ribs it sits and breathes my breath
It webs the links between my toes
And when I swim, my Queen, it is on you I float”
By the time he was finished, I was crying even harder.
He smiled crookedly at me. “Don’t think I ever made a woman cry before.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, playfully hitting him in the arm. “With a face like that? Honey, there are girls still crying in their beds at night over you.”
His grin slipped then fell off his face and his hand tightened around my neck. “Not gonna patch in after school, Cressida. When I get out of here, I’m going to accept at UBC Sauder School of Business.”
Elation and worry tore through my chest. “King… honey, I meant what I said about standing by you. Please, don’t make this decision based on what you think I want you to do.”
I lost my breath at the width of his smile. He was so unbearably handsome, even in an orange jumpsuit and at that moment, I was sure I’d never wanted him more.
“Not about that, Queen, but thanks. It’s the right thing to do for me. I got a brain and I want to get better at usin’ it, so good that when I graduate and we move back to Entrance I can patch in with somethin’ to contribute other than my name.”
I loved that he wanted to make something of himself and I loved that he wasn’t turning his back on a family who would live and die for him.
I told him so and it was his turn to take my hand and kiss it.
“Also, I quit my job so… yeah. I have no idea what I’m going to do with little to no money and no job, but maybe Eugene would let me work at his bar?” I joked somewhat desperately.
King barked out a short, hard laugh that felt as rewarding as a high five. “Love that you did that for me. Wish I could have seen you rip a fuckin’ strip off of Headmaster Adams.”
“How do you know I ripped a strip off him?”
“Babe.”
“Babe is not an acceptable answer!” I reminded him, but I was laughing because even after two days of being without him, I’d missed this.
“I know you tore into the bastard because my girl is fierce, especially when someone does wrong by her man.”
The warmth from his words poured over me like liquid sunshine.
“Okay, I might have yelled at him a little bit,” I admitted.
He laughed.
“But he deserved it.”
He laughed harder, throat exposed, brown and muscled, more beautiful to me than anything else in the world.
When he finished laughing, his eyes cleared and he said sternly, “Cress babe, there’s no way I’m lettin’ you work at Eugene’s or any fuckin’ where else where you gotta wear a skirt. Those legs of yours are exposed to a shit ton of drinkin’ men and I’m not there to clock their fuckin’ heads together when they get the hot idea to hit on my woman. Yeah?”
More sunshine, hot rays that tingled over my skin.
“Yeah, King.”
He nodded curtly. “You said you’ve always wanted to go back to school. Get your shit together and apply.”
“I don’t have the money,” I said softly. “And it’s too late to apply for scholarships.”
“Babe,” King used his hand on the back of my head to bring me closer, then brought his other hand to my chin in a firm hold. “I may be eighteen and I may not be one of those trust fund brats you knew back in Dunbar, but I am a Garro. You think I can’t find the money to send you to school?”
“I would be really uncomfortable with that, King, honey,” I told him. “It’s like I tried to tell you when we fought about the car, I want to be independent. Men have always taken care of me, and through that, manipulated me my whole life.”
“You think I want to fuckin’ manipulate you?”
“No, I absolutely do not. I’m just trying to tell you why the thought of you or your father paying for my schooling makes me uncomfortable.”
“It’s not about where the money comes from?” he challenged, pulling back from me so his hands fell with an empty clatter to the table.
“No,” I said empathetically because truly, it didn’t.
King sighed as he smoothed his hands over his tied back hair and then dropped them with another loud clang. “So, you’ll let two bastards who tried to keep you under their thumb your whole fuckin’ life take away your opportunity to go back to school, a dream you’ve had for fuckin’ ever? You’re gonna let them take away my opportunity to give that to you? That’s what you’re doin’ here, Cress. It isn’t about your independence; think you’ve proven since you left that motherfucker that you’re stronger than any woman I ever met. Taking money from the man who loves you, who would fuckin’ love to give that to you, is not the same exchange you had goin’ with William. I’m not askin’ you for a trade, for your obedience. I want nothin’ back but seein’ the smile you’d wear every day you went to school as the student, and not the teacher.”
“Damn,” I breathed, reaching out to drag his hands back to me. “You really are a biker poet.”
The anger dissolved from his features but he still stared at me wearily.
I sighed, pried open his fist and placed his palm against my cheek. “Fine. If it really means that much to you, I’ll let you pay thousands of dollars to send me back to university.”
His laugh echoed around the room, drawing the attention of the guards, who frowned over at us. When he stopped, he winked at me, “Like winning with you, Cress, but it’s never losin’ so long as you’re the one happy in the end.”
Damn, biker boy sweetness could kill a girl.
I realized then that it was almost time to go, so before I lost my nerve, I pulled away from him. “I got something for you. I think you’ll like it but I want you to know that I got it for me, not even knowing if you’d take me back.”
He nodded, his head cocked in the way that said he was curious and his eyes brighter than star shine with love and interest.
God, a girl could feel like a Queen under the mantle of that gaze.
And I did.
So, I carefully rolled up the left edge of my bookish tee (this one with the cover of 1984 because I felt it was fitting for visiting a prison) and exposed the taped white bandage over the side of my ribs.
I heard King’s sharp intake of breath as I peeled away the protective covering and unveiled the new tattoo.
It took up about five inches, three of them text written in King’s exact handwriting. Above that was a heart and crossbones, below his poem:
Fit to me
Made for me
Bone of my bone
Broken
Lost or freed
You are a state of mine
Eternal
Bone
Of my bone
When I looked up at him, his face was tight with restraint and his eyes blazed.
“If I never get outta here, I got to marry your sweet ass so we can get us some conjugal visits,” he said.
I burst out laughing. It was so him, so inappropriate and boyish and fun that I loved him all the more for it.
“You like it,” I declared.
“Uh, yeah, babe.”
“But no need for conjugal visits, okay? We’re going to get you out of here. Shamble Wood is empty without its King.”
“Won’t be for long, babe. Like I said, never gonna let you go. I’m a smart man so I realize I gotta get out of here to keep all the jealous brothers away.”
I laughed like he meant me to and for the last ten minutes of our visit, I pretended that I was in love with a boy and we were sitting in a cafeteria like a normal couple. I didn’t worry about who had framed him, what the Nightstalkers were planning next, why William kept blowing up my phone or how people were going to react to my affair with a student. I just sat in front of my man and laughed.
