Indigo: The Saving Bailey Trilogy #2 by Nikki Roman Page B

Clad says.
    “Thanks.” I force a smile.
    I reach across the table and grab his hand. Partially out of my seat, I fight the impulse to fling myself at him. “I missed hearing your voice…” I say. “Clad, I missed every little thing about you…” My voice fades away.
    “I truly thought you were going to visit me sooner,” he says, not squeezing my hand back. “It hasn’t been a cakewalk and seeing you could have made things more…bearable.”
    My voice leaves me completely. It’s in another world, along with all my senses. I have only one feeling and aspiration right now: to be in Clad’s arms.
    “At first, I didn’t mind the bad smells and bland food. I was on a high because I had saved you. But Bailey, you must know I’ve come down from that high. Hard .”
    He lets my hand drop on the table. “Do you have anything to say?”
    I shake my head mechanically.
    “Okay, then just listen,” his voice lowers to a whisper and he looks around the room before saying, “I saw them kill a guy. They dug a well in him.”
    “ Dug a well ?” I say, my voice returning.
    “You take a toothbrush and grind it down to a point, then you stab it in the gut of whomever you’re trying to kill and dig out their organs,” he pauses, “ you dig a well .”
    “I didn’t ask for you to save me,” I say.
    “You didn’t have to. I was bound to, the minute I found your Bullet List.” He smiles to himself, pleased with this one bit of knowledge he has held onto for six months.
    “ That’s how you knew,” I say. “You snoop.”
    “I saved a lot of people… not just you.” He pushes his finger into my chest “It was my choice. And now I’m dealing with the consequences. I just wish you would have been there for me all along, like I was for you .”
    “I wanted to, Clad, but I was in a bad place mentally and physically.”
    “What kind of state do you think I was in, being handcuffed and pushed into the back of a police car—a criminal for doing the right thing, for doing the only thing I could, saving you and everyone else?”
    “You’ve changed.”
    His voice rises, “Of course I’ve changed! You don’t witness a gruesome murder and stay the same person you’ve always been. Prison changes people and never for the better.”
    “You’ve completely lost yourself!” I say in disbelief.
    “I tried to hold on to who I was, but everybody took a piece of me, until I had lost every part of my being.”
    His words are still wise but they lack all their previous comfort, they are hateful now. Turned sour, like milk left out in the sun.
    “Do you hate me for not coming?” I ask.
    “No.”
    “Do you hate me at all?”
    “If I hated you, would I have gone to prison for you?”
    Good point .
    “Have they hurt you?”
    “No, I met somebody… a friend who’s always got my back. He won’t let anything touch me.”
    “What’s his name?” I ask trying to small talk my way into a lighter subject.
    “Angel,” he says.
    “That’s a coincidence, my dad’s—”
    “No, it’s not.”
    Way to make small talk; this conversation just gained a few thousand pounds .
    “He’s your dad.” Clad pulls a wallet sized picture out of his jumpsuit. He puts the picture on the table in front of me.
    It’s me—well, three year old me—with short black curls and my eyes as large as the sea, my smile not yet tainted by the cruel world.
    “Really?” I ask. “You know my dad? You’ve seen him ?”
    “I share a bunk with him,” he says, blasé.
    “How is he?”
    “He misses you, talks about you every night before we go to bed; I try to fill him in on what he’s been missing. He calls out your name in his sleep.”
    “Will he see me?” Tears blur my vision until Clad looks like he could be the same boy that gave me his cookies at recess and pummeled T-rod.
    “I thought this might be too much for you,” he says, squeezing my hand at last.
    “What does he look like?” Questions that demand answers flood my