Sinnerman

Chapter 13 Closure & Partings

Her body felt leaden. She can't believe her weak legs have sustained her for this far. When the whole way here it felt like they'd snap like feeble scorched matchsticks. Matter of fact, her whole body feels just weak. Bubbling with horrible sad grey nerves that sit like heavy tonne weights dragging down her chest.

It wasn't easy for Evie to function in this world knowing she's caused someone upset. Or to think ill of her. Never mind that someone was a man who could snap her neck like a dry twig if he so chose.

Today it was as if she were a paper doll that had been torched. Liable to crumple at any second. That's how anxious she's sure she felt and looked, stepping along the hallway that's so familiar to her, she's even started to see it in her dreams of late. In odes to the intimate nature of her more recent reverie about this place - and some of its more intense, tattooed occupants.

Knows the feel of the cracked and bumpy lino underfoot as she trod along. Knows the awful scent of the muggy air and clinical bleach, pasted into the floor, that lingers and burns at the back of her nose. She's become so used to the sounds and clamouring of Silver Pine Penitentiary by now, she wonders if she'll miss it.

She's deliberately chosen a day that Finch is off rota to be here. She has an awful sinking suspicion the man wouldn't even let her near the interview room - let alone into it to talk to her inmate associate.

The guard steps up to that white cell bar door in front of her and swipes it open. She gulps. Her mouth sticky. She thanks him with a wobbly nod and a smile. Stepping into the room, seeing its occupant was already inside.

His enormous frame dwarfs one side of their usual table. He may aswell have filled up half the air and space in the room. That hulking, orange clad body sat shoulders curled forwards to rest his inked up, trunk-like forearms on the table.

She'd never noticed before that he had a glyph of text running right up along the outer side of his left arm.

Or the way his hair caught the light. She'd always assumed it was just black. But it wasn't. As the light shone off it, she could make out the russet tinge to the darkness. All the brown colours that tipped his waving mane. Colours of rich hickory, deep walnut, cinnamon, cedar, and burnt umber stroking through those soft locks.

She can see the small raised track of a bumpy scar swiped down his neck on the left side too. Rolling under the wave of a tattoo. Scent his cologne, the aura of his fragrance, lilting the air. Sweat, musky, soap and something distantly spicy like cologne. Perhaps it was the balm he patted on his cheeks after he shaved.

She admires for a second his side profile that she's sure is one of the most unusual - but most striking faces she's ever seen.

His jaw was grit tight. Cause he's known who'd been coming down that corridor from the second he heard the gentle footsteps - like a baby deers treads. Fragile and cautious. He didn't need to know it was her, because he could smell that geranium honeysuckle perfume ebb into the room on the air she moved in.

Her stomach withers and curls up with dread when Kylo turns his dark head and eyes toward her in a stone cold glare. No quips. No flirting. Stoic hate is what is sent her way today.

"Hello Kylo." She splutters feebly like a little mouse.

She feels herself stagger back, faltering in a step when she comes on the receiving end of his hardened stare. It's making clammy dread spike along her spine. Letting her feel the full force of his disappointment and anger.

She'd never seen those sable eyes look so glittering and dark. Hatred lingering in his gaze. Daggering into her like a piercing tip of a hot arrow.