Read Online All Chained Up by Sophie Jordan - Free Book Online Page A

shrugged, and that irritated the hell out of her.
    â€œI’m not.” I ’m not like my mother . “I’m not going there for kicks.”
    For some reason, Knox Callaghan’s face flashed across her mind. He put her on edge. Something about him. The tension she felt coiled tightly inside him, just beneath the surface. He was a storm waiting to break. She just hoped she was nowhere near him when that happened.
    â€œSo,” Laurel proclaimed as she returned, baby and a giant bowl of potato salad in tow. “Did Caleb tell you about his boss’s nephew?” She waggled her eyebrows. “He’s a partner at a big accounting firm. Single, of course. Balding but attractive. He’s got that Bruce Willis thing going for him. He’s very open to being set up. He’s just coming out of a bad relationship.”
    â€œIsn’t Bruce Willis like sixty now?”
    Caleb snorted back a laugh as he set the burgers down on the table. Laurel glared at both of them. “I didn’t say he was Bruce Willis. And I meant Bruce Willis like in his Die Hard days.”
    Briar grinned and took a sip of her iced tea. Laurel plopped the baby in Briar’s lap and started fixing the kids’ burgers. “C’mon. When was the last time you went on a date with a nice guy?”
    Briar couldn’t remember.
    â€œSay yes,” she commanded in that bossy way of hers.
    â€œMaybe,” she hedged.
    â€œI’ll give him your number.”
    â€œLaurel,” she warned.
    â€œWhat? Is it so wrong I want you to meet a nice guy? Have you dated anyone seriously since college? Since Beau?”
    Beau . Her stomach bottomed out. No. There hadn’t been anyone since him. Not really. She’d dated off and on a little in college after they broke up, but no one serious. Her father and Beau had pretty much killed her faith in the male gender. Neither were exactly stellar examples. After them, who wouldn’t swear off men forever? Of course, she had never told her sister the full story regarding Beau. Laurel had been pregnant with Addy at the time, but that wouldn’t have stopped her from coming after him with a shotgun.
    â€œLet’s eat.” Briar clapped her hands and bounced little Tyler on her knee. Her sister wasn’t the only one good at pretending the past had never happened. Sometimes she wondered if she pretended enough, maybe she could forget it all.
    IT WAS THE darkness that got to Knox the most—that found its way under his skin like a parasite digging for home.
    The unending stretch of hours. The smothering silence that only came with darkness. He tried to sleep at night when the dark was the worst, the deepest, the most impenetrable . . . desperate to escape that smothering tar, but the hole was a tricky place.
    In the hole, even the daylight hours were dark. Well, gray . Paltry light crept out from the small slit where they delivered food to him and where prisoners stuck out their hands to be cuffed. Like a weed growing out of concrete, the light fought its way in, trickling onto him where he sprawled on the cot. He held his hand up to that ribbon of light, turning it over, letting it flow over his fingers as though it were something tangible. Something he could feel .
    Men went crazy in here. Tear-­out-­their-­hair, see-­the-­ghosts-­of-­their-­victims, and cry-­for-­mommy kind of shit. He clung to sanity by building a regimen and dedicating himself to it. That was the key to keep from going nuts in segregation, to keep the demons at bay.
    Out of the hole, there wasn’t a day he and his brother didn’t break their backs exercising. He and North worked out both in the yard and in the privacy of their cells. It was one of the first things Knox established when they got to the Rock. A permanent workout routine. They didn’t need a gym. They stayed fighting-­strong working out and pushing past the pain.