Falling For An Inmate

Chapter 16: Secrets

CHAPTER 16

Carter Reynolds

A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.

How is it that the very same secret can be uninteresting gossip for one person and completely destructive for the next?

What does it matter if your mailman overhears that you cheated on your girlfriend. What does it matter if your friend's brother knows you put a dent in your mama's brand new car. It doesn't.

It matters when your girlfriend finds out you cheated and your mama figures out you caused the dent.

It all depends on how much the person and their feelings are worth to you.

So, it didn't matter that practically everyone in the prison knew about my crime. Or knew some twisted version of it. I couldn't be bothered. In fact, it was encouraged so that a sense of fear was instilled.

In prison, everyone knew about everyone's crimes. Some more, some less. Detailed or vague. But the knowledge was common.

I literally didn't give a rat's ass about what the other cons or bulls thought of me. What was it the Don always said?

A lion doesn't concern himself with the opinions of sheep.

I leaned back against the fence separating Gen Pop from the rest of the prison area and threw a sweeping glance over the herds of 'sheep' roaming the yard.

The three people who knew my side of the story were the only ones I actually gave a shit about. The Don, old man Winston and Zack.

Whether they believed me or not was up to them but they were the only ones I had wasted enough breath on to explain how things had actually gone down in regards to my crime. The others only knew what they had heard from the bulls and made up on their own.

For me, what had happened wasn't in the past like for most of the cons in the prison. I thought of it every day. I confronted the situation in my mind every day to see if maybe that day I would come up with an alternate to what I had actually done. But every single day I came to the same decision I had made four years ago. I would do the same thing over and over again regardless of the fact that I knew it would land me in prison. And for that reason, I battled my very own set of demons every day.

But just because I confronted it every day didn't mean I wanted to have a confrontation about it.

So, before Arya came along, my crime wasn't a secret. It wasn't something I casually discussed but I wasn't actively trying to hide it from anyone either. It only became a secret when Arya wanted to know my crime.

I thought about how there are two types of secrets: the kind you want to keep in, and the kind you don't dare to let out.

My secret fell into the latter category. It wasn't as simple as a dent in your mama's new car. I didn't dare to let it out.

I didn't dare to let it out to her. For the first time ever since I was put into prison, I concerned myself with the opinions of sheep.

Not that she was a sheep.

I smiled to myself.

No, she was anything but. She was a wolf in sheep's clothing. She was fierce. She was unlike any other. She was the calm before the storm that promised so much damage, you'd be left breathless. You'd look at hurricanes and be so in awe that you could only name them after women like her.

I grit my teeth in annoyance, as the thought formed in my mind. I was afraid. I was afraid that she would find out and she would look at me how they all looked at me. In fear and with revulsion. I was afraid I would, for the first time ever, want to explain to her my side of the story and actually want her to believe me. I was afraid that she wouldn't listen. I was also afraid that she would listen but wouldn't be convinced. I was afraid.