Back against the wall, cigarette in hand, I watched the parking lot for Tiffany’s car. I’d stood like this lots of times on the other side of these walls, but today I didn’t see any orange jumpsuits, fried grass, or cracked concrete slabs. Just freedom.

I had a plastic bag with the contents of my life. Wallet, a check for what was left in my store account, and two-hundred dollars gate money. I’d filed Lake’s unread letters away within my paperwork. Everything else I either left behind for Wills or trashed—except my dad’s confession. The paper was worn from the number of times I’d read his letter. I wanted to memorize it. There was no worse thing in my life than what was in those pages—but also no better motivation for me to work toward becoming the opposite of my dad.

Tiffany was late. Maybe she wouldn’t show at all. I closed my eyes, rested the back of my head on the brick, and tried to imagine what I’d do, where I’d go, but all I saw was Lake. Waiting for me at the curb. Opening her arms to make it all better. In the back of my mind, I knew there was a small chance she’d show up today. She’d always shown her youth in her persistence to get what she wanted, at least when it came to me.

I heard Tiffany’s car before I saw it. I lifted my head as she came speeding around the corner, her BMW thumping as she flew right over a speedbump and then slammed on her brakes.

She parked in a loading zone and hopped out. “Babe, you’re free!”

Before I could think, she was running at me, all blonde hair, her skirt flapping up. She jumped, and I caught her with an ooph, my arms locking around her. I moved her hair aside so it wouldn’t catch on my cigarette. As soon as I got a whiff of her shampoo, I buried my nose in her neck and surprised myself with a long, fat sigh of relief.

Babe, you’re free.

This nightmare was over.

She pulled back to look me in the face. “There must be so many things you want to do.”

With her skirt up around her hips, and her pussy pressing warmly on my crotch, the first thing that came to mind was sex, but I couldn’t let myself think too hard about it without getting us into trouble. For fuck’s sake, she could probably wiggle a little harder and I’d come in my pants. “Yeah.” I patted her ass. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

She slid down and led me over to the car.

I held open my hand. “Keys.”

“You want to drive?” she asked nervously. “Do you remember how?”

The thought of getting into the passenger’s seat made the collar of my starchy, puke-green release-shirt feel tight. I’d had enough of other people having power over me. There was no way in hell I wasn’t driving us out of here. “Keys,” I repeated, and she handed them over.

The car was already muggy just from sitting idle a few minutes. I had to push the seat all the way back before I got in, and my head still touched the roof. Immediately, I rolled down all the windows, turned on the A/C, and got to adjusting all the mirrors.

Before long, air blew ice cold on my face. I’d showered before leaving the facility, but I was already hot, horny, and sweating. I needed things—a cold beer, a monster burrito, and a good, solid, knock-me-out-cold fuck.

I shifted the rearview mirror again, envisioning Lake in the backseat, pretending she’d come to greet me at the gates. She hadn’t, though. Knowing how persistent she could be, maybe that meant she’d accepted the way things were between us. I was glad. She was too fragile, like a little bird. My little bird. I didn’t want her anywhere near here. Even so, I couldn’t stop thinking it—she hadn’t come.

“Manning,” Tiffany said gently.

I snapped out of it, looking over at her. “Yeah?”

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive? You’ve been sitting there staring out the windshield for five minutes.”

“Yeah.” Don’t think about Lake. Not like this, when I was feeling a little strung out. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “It’s a long drive.”

“I know. I’ve made it lots of times.” She wrinkled her nose. “Are you sure you’re okay? Should we stop for anything? Are you hungry? I’d want sushi first thing. Have you ever had sushi?” She paused. “Are you listening?”

“Yeah. I don’t want sushi. I think—I’m feeling a little zoned out.”

“You’re probably, like, overwhelmed. Let’s just go home. We shouldn’t eat anyway. We’re going to my parents’ for dinner, and we might spoil our appetites.”

It took a moment for her words to register. Sleep, food, sex. That was all I wanted. The necessities. I turned my head to Tiffany. “What?”

“My mom’s making ribeye for you. She wanted to welcome you home.”

If I knew Lake, she’d have a hand in that. My first meal as a free man, and Lake would be the one to make it. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It was almost too much to take. “I don’t know. I have to meet with my parole officer tomorrow, and I’m exhausted.”

“I know. That’s why we’re eating early.”

“What about your dad?”

“He’ll be there,” was all she said.

“I could eat right up until the steak was served and not spoil my appetite,” I said.

“Then should we stop for food?” Tiffany asked, sounding confused.

“No. You have some of my stuff at your place?”

“Mostly what I could move in by myself, like clothing.” She reached over to squeeze my bicep with a wink. “But I’m not sure it’ll fit anymore.”

After a three-hour drive, we hit a Target for the essentials, and then Tiffany directed me to her place. Palm trees lined the entrance to a complex of bi-level, standalone apartment buildings. Each cluster of beige stucco buildings had covered parking and access to a gated pool.

Tiffany’s place was on the ground floor, underneath an outdoor staircase for the neighbor above her. Reddish-pink bougainvillea grew around the entrance and over the brick wall of her back patio.

She let us into the apartment. From the doorway, I looked around my new home. Or, at least, the place I’d be staying until I figured out my next move.

“It’s nice, right?” she said, dropping her keys on the breakfast counter. “I mean, it’s nothing special now, but we’ll fix it up.” I stepped inside with my plastic Target bags of boxers, undershirts, some new clothes, and toiletries. She brushed the arm of a couch in the center of the room, the same dark brown as the front door, then fluffed some blue throw pillows. Her TV sat on the ground. “I can make a few dollars go a long way. I wanted to wait for you anyway, to see what you like.”

There was nothing too personal about the apartment, but it was bigger and nicer than mine had been before I’d gone away. For fuck’s sake, it had a second room. Even growing up, there’d been no spare space.

In any case, I had more pressing things on my mind. I set the bags on a glass-top kitchen table and turned to Tiffany. The last thing I’d wanted to do was a Target run, but now that it was out of the way, the first and only thing I wanted to do was sink myself into a woman. “Show me the bedroom.”

“Come.” She motioned for me to follow her across the apartment to a door at the end of the hall. The bed was good, white and fluffy, twice as large as the twin I’d had at my place, and flanked by light-wood nightstands. Compared to a jail cell, it was the Taj Mahal. My limbs wouldn’t hang off the edges of this one.

“I picked white for now,” she said, “but I figured we could get some blue in here. Think beachy but masculine. Maybe even an ocean theme with turquoise—you know about Tiffany blue, right? The color of a Tiffany’s box? That would be funny. Or if that’s too girly, there’s nautical with sailboats . . .”

Not blue. I couldn’t do blue. It reminded me too much of endless skies, crystal-clear water, Lake’s eyes . . . “Anything but blue.”

She turned to me. “Sailboats are for like a kid’s room, huh? I’m rambling. I’m a little nervous. This is weird.”

“Yeah, it is.” I came into the room, tilting her chin up for a kiss. “Don’t worry. This part won’t be.”

She softened but took my hand. “I’m sure you’re dying to, you know, which is why I told my mom we’d do an early dinner. I figured we could come home and spend all night catching up.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Seventeen months inside, and you’re asking me to wait? You think I’m superhuman?”

She pouted playfully. “Just a few hours. I guess I could call and tell them we’ll be late, but they probably already started—”

They. Lake’s cooking. If there was something worth postponing sex for, it was that. I imagined her moving around the kitchen like she had that first day we’d met, slicing avocado a little too carelessly because she couldn’t keep her eyes off me. Telling me, an adult man seven years older than her, that I shouldn’t drink beer and operate heavy machinery.

I planted a kiss on Tiffany’s mouth. “No, don’t call. I can wait.”

“Okay. We’re supposed to be over there soon, and we should probably shower.”

By we, she meant me. I’d been sweating since I got out. No, I’d been sweating since I’d been taken in. Since I’d left that courtroom at the dead of summer, I’d been perpetually hot, inside or outside, even in winter.

Tiffany left me alone to change and clean up, which was good, because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep my hands to myself otherwise. Need burned through me, a heat I’d never felt, even as I turned the water stark cold. I had to be skin to skin with someone. I wanted to see how Tiffany and I got on after we’d been circling this for so long. Even if she wanted romance, I could do that, I just had to fuck before my head exploded.

I wouldn’t be able to wait much longer.