Three years, four months, and eleven days later, I walked out of Fremont Correctional Facility with forty dollars in gate money, a pair of jeans that no longer fit right, and a pair of thin cotton gloves I had sewn myself from a torn pillowcase because the facility lost my originals somewhere around month eight.
The Colorado air hit me like an apology it did not mean.
I stood on that sidewalk outside the facility gates and I took one long breath. The mountains were still there, purple and massive and completely unbothered by what had happened to me. I respected that about the mountains. They did not perform grief.
My phone — a replacement I had arranged through a lawyer who owed my late father a favor — buzzed in my pocket. One message. Unknown number.
Welcome back, Elliot. Hope prison treated you well. Colorado Springs has changed. So have we. Don't come home.
I read it twice. Then I smiled. The real kind. The kind Marcus never liked because he said it made me look like I knew something he did not.
He was not wrong about that either.
I typed back four words. Already on my way.
I hit send and dropped the phone into my jacket pocket before I could second-guess myself. Second-guessing was the old Elliot. Old Elliot cried in a prison bathroom for six weeks straight before deciding tears were a waste of hydration. New Elliot was conserving resources.
I walked to the bus stop at the end of the facility road and sat down on the metal bench. It was cold. Colorado in early March has absolutely no interest in being pleasant about it. The kind of cold that reaches through your jacket and taps you on the shoulder like, Hey, remember suffering? I remember you.
I pulled my gloves tighter and looked down the empty road. Forty dollars. One phone. A name I had been sharpening for three years like a blade against stone.
Naomi Fletcher.
Not Marcus. Not yet. Marcus was obvious. Marcus was the wound everyone could see. Naomi was the infection underneath it, the one that actually did the damage while everyone stared at the surface.
I had three years and four months to think inside that facility. No distractions. No Marcus leaving coffee mugs on my counter. No pack politics bleeding into my weekends. Just me, my thoughts, a prison-issue mattress, and the memory of every object I had ever touched that tried to tell me something I refused to hear.
His jacket, left on my couch one Tuesday in October, eight months before my arrest. I touched it reaching for the remote and felt something sharp and guilty move through my fingers like static. I told myself it was residual stress from a long work week. I told myself that because I wanted to.
His keys, the spare set he kept on my kitchen hook. I brushed them once reaching for my own and felt the echo of a conversation I was not present for. Low voices. Planning. A door closing softly. I told myself I was projecting.
I was not projecting.
The bus arrived eleven minutes late, which felt appropriate. I paid my fare, found a window seat near the back, and watched the Fremont facility disappear behind a bend in the road. I did not feel nostalgic. I felt like someone who had just finished a very long, very unfair shift and was finally clocking out.
My seatmate was an older man with a thermos and a crossword puzzle book. He glanced at me once, took in the too-loose jeans and the cotton gloves and the expression I was apparently wearing, and went back to his puzzle without a word. Smart man.
My phone buzzed again forty minutes into the ride. Same unknown number.
I'm serious, Elliot. People here have long memories and short patience. Leave it alone.
I stared at the message. Then I typed back, Who is this?
Three dots appeared, disappeared, then appeared again.
Someone who actually liked you.
That narrowed it down. My list of people who liked me in Colorado Springs was not long. My father was gone. My two closest friends from before, Darian and Theo, had both gone quiet after the trial. Not cruel. Just quiet. The kind of quiet that happens when people do not know what to say and eventually stop trying.
I typed, Darian or Theo?
A pause.
Theo. And before you say anything smart, I know. I know I went quiet. I am sorry.
I looked out the window at the mountains. They were still unbothered, still massive. I was slightly more bothered than the mountains, but I was working on it.
I typed back, You have approximately ninety minutes to keep apologizing before I get to the city. Use them wisely.
Three dots. Then, You're already on a bus?
I said I was on my way. And I meant it.
A longer pause this time. Then, Elliot, they got married. Like actually married. Pack ceremony, bonding marks, the whole thing. Marcus is pack second now. He has power and people and money. You walking back in there without a plan is not brave. It is just painful.
I read that twice. Then I typed, Good thing I have a plan.
Which was partly true. I had the bones of a plan. The specific muscles and connective tissue were still developing. But I had learned something important about plans in the last three years. You do not need the whole map before you start moving. You just need to know which direction is north.
My north was the truth. And the truth was sitting somewhere in Colorado Springs, attached to objects that had not been touched by the right hands yet.
That was where my power came in. See, the thing about psychometry that people do not understand is that it is not just about what I feel when I touch something. It is about what objects remember. Objects are honest in a way people never are. They do not edit. They do not protect themselves. They do not smile while planning someone's destruction. They just hold what happened. Quietly, patiently, waiting for someone like me.
There was evidence from my case still out there. Personal items logged and boxed. The lighter they claimed was mine. Objects from Marcus's apartment that were never examined because no one thought to look. Objects that had been sitting in boxes for three years, holding their breath, waiting.
The bus pulled onto the highway, and Colorado Springs appeared in the distance, spread out below the mountains like something that thought it was safe.
I leaned my head against the cold window glass.
I am coming, I thought. Not to Theo or Marcus or Naomi or anyone specific. Just to the city itself.
And this time, no one is taking my gloves off before I am ready.