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Blue
Keegan throws herself into my arms the minute I step out of the van that’s dropping me off outside the gates of the Disciplinary Barracks.
She wraps her legs around my waist, and I pull her into me, feeling her fantastic ass for the first time in three hellishly long years.
God she feels so good.
“I can’t even believe it,” she whispers in my ear. “I can’t believe I finally have you back.”
She slides down my legs as my hands find her face, and I kiss her fully, deeply, for the first time in so long.
We were only allowed a chaste peck whenever she came to visit me at the prison.
Now, I intend to make up for lost time.
“I’ve missed your lips so much,” I murmur. “I’ve missed every part of your body.”
My hands find her ass again, and I smile. “Some parts more than others.”
Keegan laughs and cups my face with her hands. I must look kind of scary to her with my shaved head and the butt-ugly orange prison jumpsuit I’m wearing.
“I brought you a change of clothes,” she says, her eyes searching my face. “It’s in the car.”
I glance in the direction she’s pointing and see my Coupe parked there.
“Your mom brought it to the ranch.” Keegan answers my unspoken question with a soft smile as she pulls me toward the car.
I pause for a moment, looking first at the car and then at Keegan. I tilt my face up into the sun, soaking it up, enjoying the way the light spring wind is making my skin tingle.
The only thing I’ve seen for the past three years is concrete, a little bit of grass, fence and razor wire. Standing in the sun and wind as a free man is enough to make me almost start blubbering like a baby.
I bury my face in Keegan’s shoulder. She stands there, hugging me tightly. I hear her take a ragged breath.
It takes me a few minutes to pull myself together.
“Let’s go home,” I finally say.
Keegan hands me the keys and walks around to the passenger side of the Coupe.
“There’s a gas station up ahead,” she says with a smirk, nodding toward the nearby highway, “where you can get out of that hideous orange thing.”
I get into the driver’s seat and run my fingers over the steering wheel. “So weird not to have driven for three years.”
“You remember how? Want me to drive?”
“Hell no.” I answer her grin with one of my own and switch into Drive. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
Once I’ve ditched the hideous orange thing in the gas station restroom trash and we’re on the road, Keegan pulls something out of her purse. “I brought this. I figured you’d want it.”
She turns her hand over, and there’s another thing I haven’t seen in three years: my cell phone.
Just for a second, I close my eyes, again having to get myself under control. Seeing everyday things from normal life is turning me into a weepy, emotional mess.
Keegan plugs my phone into the auxiliary and turns up the volume.
And then my ears are doing a happy dance. Or they would be, if they weren’t attached to the sides of my head.
I had no idea how much I would miss even simple pleasures like listening to the music I love.
It wasn’t terrible in Leavenworth. I mean, it was . I was locked up, away from everybody that I loved. I had to sit there for hours on end and think about what I’d done.
But I wasn’t mistreated, at least not by anybody official. I got my ass kicked a couple of times by other inmates. But I probably deserved that.
I had a job, of sorts, in the kitchen. And after a few months, they also had me teaching music classes, using donated instruments. That part wasn’t horrible. In fact, it was the one thing that kept me going.
The guys who came to the classes were just so damn grateful. They were so eager for something to learn, something to pour themselves into. It made me feel good to be able to help them.
I never told anyone at the prison, but the donated instruments came from my mother.
Besides teaching music, I had a lot of time to write more songs. I have notebooks of them now. Most of them are more hard-edged than the love songs I wrote for Keegan.
No idea if anyone else will like them. But I’ll probably put them out there.
I know how privileged I am. I know I got special treatment. Even though I did serve time, and even though I was given a dishonorable discharge, I still got out way earlier than I probably would have if I’d been anybody else.
I had celebrities and powerful politicians and one very determined girlfriend helping me out.
Cunny’s mom coming to the clemency board hearing, that’s something I will never forget.
That’s the kind of person I want to become, somebody who could be so gracious, so forgiving. Now I know where Cunny got it.
A Bryson song comes on, and my face splits into a huge smile. “I still can’t believe,” I say, “that Bryson and my mom are—”
“Doin’ the nasty?” Keegan’s grinning salaciously.
“I was going to say in love.” I return her grin. “But thanks for that mental picture. Damn, woman.”
I shake my head, my grin getting even bigger, if that’s possible. It feels so unbelievably good to joke around like this.
But it also feels like I’m not fully here right now. Like I’m a shadow of myself. Maybe that’s normal. Maybe it takes a while to lose that feeling. Maybe I never will.
I know I will never forget what I did, never fully forgive myself. I will live with it for the rest of my life.
But maybe I can make something good come out of it. I’m determined to try.
~~~
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