Blacklands

Chapter 25

WHEN SEAN ELLIS’S HOT WIFE BURST INTO TEARS HE WAS shocked, then embarrassed by the outburst. He was not a man who liked to show emotion in public. Even when the judge had sentenced him to a minimum of sixteen years, he’d maintained his composure, and had turned to wink reassuringly at his wife as he was taken down to the cells.

Now, as she bawled, his first look was around at his fellow cons to gauge their reactions. When he saw only mild interest, he turned his attention back to his wife, whose name was Hilary.

“Hilly,” he said softly, “what’s up, baby?”

Hilary Ellis bawled harder into her clenched fists, her face becoming hot with emotion, her cheeks streaking with mascara.

“You don’t want me anymore.”

“What?”

“You don’t want me anymore!”

Sean Ellis was confused. He adored his wife. He missed his wife so badly sometimes it hurt. He wanted her—had always wanted her—and had never wanted anybody else since he met her. The torture of being in prison was not his confinement, but the fear that she would gradually drift away from him; that she would start to leave longer and longer gaps between visits; and that one day he would receive, not a visit from his hot wife, but divorce papers from a cold lawyer. The near expectation of those divorce papers had kept Sean Ellis awake at nights for two long years in a way that the faces of a couple of surprised bank tellers had never managed to do. The terror of losing her had even led him to turn in his drug-dealing cellmate—a betrayal that had earned him two years off his sentence, and a swift trip to the VPU where he might have a chance of completing his time in safety.

And here she was, crying that he did not want her!

Sean Ellis was as confused as it’s possible for a man to be—which is very.

“Sweetheart, how can you say that?” He grasped her hands and looked with love and amazement at her red, blotchy, black-streaked face. “I love you! I want you! Of course I do! Are you nuts? Who wouldn’t want you?”

“But the pictures!” she wailed. “You don’t like the pictures! You never say anything about them! You think I’m a whore!”

Conveniently within earshot, Officer Ryan Finlay twirled his keys nervously. Fuck.

Ellis pushed tear-dampened hair from his wife’s face and cupped her cheek. “What pictures, baby?”

He listened to her hitching, halting, hiccuping description of the photos she’d been sending him every week since his incarceration, and felt himself move grindingly from confusion to cold, cold fury.