Page 6 of Little Author

A ll eyes were on me the moment I arrived at the prison. It was weird not feeling invisible. It's weird to be looked at like a stripper. But I put this on myself, and I had to go with it.

Why had I let myself get so caught up in my writing to have waited so long to see his face? I wrote about it constantly, yet I couldn’t get my ass to drive here to see him.

Could he see what I have done? See the secrets I have exposed from his life on my pages?

He was set to die. It was wrong to let a beautiful caged animal not live on, even if it was just in the form of literacy.

The room to the psychiatrist’s office was just a few steps away, and then I would see him again. I could hear voices, and I bent down near the two-sided glass. Strangers gawked at my ass.

But it wasn’t for the strangers.

It was for him .

I knew he’d see it.

No shame.

Just silhouette and submission.

The door to the office opened, and I held my breath in anticipation, feeling the buttons of my blouse practically pop from the strain.

“Oh! Uh, Ms. Tullie? I wasn’t expecting you today. Did you want to shadow our sessions again for your university? I need to ask the inmate for their permission if you want to sit in. Give me a day or so, okay?”

I smiled at the librarian-style psychiatrist. Liz was good-natured, but had no idea how to read people. Not like me.

“Oh, it’s Mr. Patel today, right? I still have his written permissions. Please, I would love to sit in.”

Liz couldn’t hide her emotion at all, and she suddenly looked like a cat that had been thrown in a bathtub.

“Is everything okay, Liz?”

If yanking on her earrings and swaying on her feet wasn’t enough of a red flag, the posturing of the guards around us was.

Something was seriously wrong.

I frowned.

“What the fuck is going on? Did he die? The execution isn’t scheduled for another three months.”

Anger flooded me…for the death of a killer.

That fact wasn’t lost on me, but I couldn’t simmer the rage in my veins, and the black button burning in my pocket.

But then I gasped. “He’s free, isn’t he?”

Liz sighed and finally cleared her throat. “We lost it all, Elodie. Every piece of evidence linking him to those murder cases…is gone. They had no choice but to exonerate him.”

My eyes grew wide. The feeling I had that night at the crime scene, like icy eyes were watching me toy with their playground, grew into a deep, hot center in my stomach.

I was the author of novels that held the deeply rooted secrets, crime scenes, and murders of a free man.

A man who, if he knew about what I had written of his life, would kill me.

I was sweating. A storm of emotions was filtering through me like slide shows. But one feeling welled to the surface, one I didn’t want to feel…excitement.

Deep down, I wanted him to see what I’d written. I wanted him to read me. I wanted him to know.

I was ready.

Ready to play.

Ready to run.

Ready to break him.