EMMA

I had imagined this moment a hundred different ways, and yet it still felt like jumping off a cliff, unsure whether there was a safety net waiting for me.

"You're all set, Lawrence." The CO in Receiving and Discharge handed me a small property bag and pointed me toward the changing area.

Inside the stall, I opened the bag and pulled out the clothes Eric had brought. Straight-leg jeans, a white tank top, and a soft linen shirt in a shade of blue Alycia always swore made my eyes stand out.

I smiled. Her fingerprints were all over them.

I changed quickly, pausing before folding the tan uniform for the last time. I exhaled slowly and looked at my reflection in the polished metal mirror. I looked like someone I was still getting to know.

My hair was longer now, brushing past my shoulders in loose waves, and my eyes... they looked clearer than they had in years, like a sky after a storm.

The CO knocked. "Time to go."

I took a deep breath, nodded at myself in the mirror, then stepped out, following her.

She stopped at a desk and slid the release forms toward me. "Sign here."

I signed. She flipped to another page. Another signature.

I signed. She flipped to another page and another signature.

"Alright, Lawrence," she said, gathering the papers. "Door's ahead. They'll buzz you out. Good luck."

I managed a small smile and walked to the gate. It buzzed. The sudden sound made me jump a little. For a second, my heart clawed up my throat, and my legs felt like they had forgotten how to move forward from this point.

But then the gate rolled open, and warm air rushed through the gap the moment sunlight touched my face.

I squinted against the light and took one step outside. The sky was bright, too bright, and the world felt bigger, louder, alive in a way I had missed so deeply my chest ached. Then I saw him.

Eric was leaning against the hood of his car, pretending to scroll through his phone, but the second his eyes found mine, he straightened so fast he nearly dropped it.

Just like that, my worries—the probation, the future, all the unknowns that had gnawed at me for months—dissolved into ash. Before I even realized it, I was running to him.

He met me halfway. His arms wrapped around me, lifting me clean off the ground the way he used to when I was a kid, when I scraped my knee or cried over something stupid that felt like the end of the world.

"God, Em..." His voice cracked as he buried his face in my shoulder. "I missed you. I missed hugging you without someone yelling 'wrap it up' after five seconds."

A laugh broke out of me, half-sob, half-relief. "I missed you, too."

We stayed like that for a few seconds more because no one was counting now. Finally, he eased back enough to look at me. His eyes scanned my face, worried and relieved at the same time.

"You look good," he said.

"And you look like you haven't slept in two and a half years."

He snorted. "Yeah, well. You owe me a lot of sleep, jailbird."

I stared at him. "Call me that again, and I'm walking back to New York."

He laughed, eyes misty, and slung an arm around my shoulder, guiding me toward the car. Before getting in, I turned back one last time.

Danbury stood behind the gates and razor wire, the place where I had broken apart and rebuilt myself from the ground up. And now, I had to figure out what came next.

"Ready?" Eric asked.

I nodded. "Yeah. Let's go."

The drive was quiet, comfortably quiet. I knew Eric was giving me time to process, to take everything in. I appreciated that.

But after twenty minutes, he finally broke the silence. "So," he said, glancing at me, "what's the first thing you want? Champagne? Steak? An overpriced salad?"

I huffed out a laugh. "Oh, trust me, I'm not picky. I'd be happy with anything that didn't come on a tray."

He grinned. "Then I'm taking you to this diner I found during visits. I swear, Em, it has the best unhealthy, greasy burger you'll ever eat."

I raised an eyebrow. "Bold claim."

"You'll see."

The diner was tucked between a laundromat and an auto shop, and looked like it hadn't had a paint job since the eighties. On the outside, it had a buzzing neon sign that flickered like it had insomnia, and on the inside, there were chrome stools and red vinyl booths patched with duct tape.

Eric ordered for both of us—double cheeseburgers, fries, and vanilla milkshakes. When the plates hit the table with a heavy clatter, I didn't wait for him. I didn't even pretend to have manners. I took a chunky bite, and I'm not exaggerating if I said the world went into slow motion.

After months of bland, lukewarm prison food—no matter how much love Mama G tried to sneak into it—this felt like tasting the meaning of life itself.

"Wow," Eric said. "Okay. I think I just witnessed a religious experience."

I glared at him, cheeks full. "Shut up."

"You're actually tearing up."

"I said shut up."

"Is it that good?"

I swallowed, wiped my mouth, and leveled a look at him. "It's... passable."

He laughed so loudly that the couple in the next booth turned with a suspicious look. "There she is. My little sister, who used to complain about Michelin-starred restaurants."

I kicked him under the table.

He only grinned wider. "God, I missed you."

I rolled my eyes, but the warmth in my chest stayed. This banter, this normalcy, felt so good, like a muscle I hadn't used in years finally remembering how to move.

Eventually, Eric leaned back in his seat and asked, "So... when do you meet your PO?"

"In seventy-two hours," I said, finishing the last bite of my burger.

He nodded thoughtfully. "Nervous?"

"Terrified."

He paused, clearly surprised by the honesty, but didn't push.

I took a breath, fingers tracing the condensation on my milkshake glass.

Although I had served my time in Connecticut, they had approved my transfer back to New York. Still, I had two years of supervised release ahead of me. Two years of proving I wasn't the same person who walked into a museum with a plan to steal a painting, and then into a coffee shop and ruined everything.

But I wasn't complaining. I could still drink a glass of wine. I could still go out. I could still live... mostly. As long as I checked in, followed the rules, and didn't screw up, which, historically, wasn't exactly my strongest skill.

"I don't know what he'll be like," I admitted. "Maybe he'll be a complete ass. Someone who enjoys making people miserable. Or maybe he'll actually care that I'm trying."

Eric nodded slowly.

I let out a breath. "Either way... I've dealt with worse. And I haven't lost all my charm." I smirked. "It still works when I need it."

He smiled. "That's the Emma I know and love." He took a sip of his shake, then looked at me again. "And what about work?"

"I start in two days," I said, popping a fry into my mouth. "Melissa wanted me to have at least a little breathing room."

Eric scoffed. "See? If you'd taken the job at my start-up, I would've given you a whole week. I'm not that cruel of a boss."

I rolled my eyes. "Eric, you're someone who thinks sleeping eight hours is for the weak. I pity the people who work for you."

He made a face. "Please, they love me. I bring them a lot of coffee after 10 p.m."

I chuckled, shaking my head. The truth was, he had offered me a job when I was starting to panic about securing work right after release. Because when you have a record, and your face has been plastered across news headlines about a stolen Van Gogh, you don't get to walk into a museum and hand them your résumé.

I knew my degree would be useless. The art world despised me, blacklisted me, and doors would slam shut before I even reached them.

And I had appreciated Eric's offer, but there were few things in this world I loathed more than tech, and I would have taken a cashier job at Baskin-Robbins over it any day.

But when I remembered Melissa Stuart, it felt like a lifeline had appeared in front of me.

She was the director of an NGO that worked with formerly incarcerated women and girls in the juvenile system. She had visited Danbury once during an art show the women and I put together. I remembered how she walked through the room quietly, pausing at every piece, talking to every artist like our work deserved to be in a real gallery.

Before she left, she had given me her card. "If you ever need a place to land, reach out."

One night, sitting on my bunk with Mama G's snoring filling the cell, I wrote her a letter.

I didn't expect anything. I definitely didn't expect her reply... or her offer. A full-time position as an art facilitator, working with the same kinds of girls I saw in that multipurpose room every week, girls who needed something to hold on to, something to believe in.

I had stared at the letter, thinking maybe I was hallucinating it. But it was real. And it was perfect.

I understood art. I understood incarceration. And after a lifetime of conning and surviving, I understood people, especially the broken ones.

"I'm proud of you," Eric said suddenly, breaking the silence that had settled between us. "For everything."

I nodded, swallowing the sudden tightness in my throat. The truth was, I wanted this to work more than I had wanted anything in a very long time. And I let myself believe that maybe karma and I weren't enemies anymore. Maybe we were cautiously negotiating a truce.

For a few minutes, Eric and I slipped back into our familiar rhythm; he teasing, me deflecting, both of us pretending the world was simple again.

We finished our food and ordered coffee and a slice of cheesecake to share, stretching the moment out without saying so, as if neither of us was ready to step back into the real world.

But there was one question sitting on my tongue since the moment I walked out of those prison gates. It pushed forward before I could swallow it back down.

"Have you heard from them?" I asked quietly. "Mom and Dad?"

Eric froze mid-sip of his coffee. His shoulders tensed, eyes dropping to the table. He sighed and set the cup down.

He wasn't a good liar. He had never been with me.

"I wasn't going to tell you today," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I wanted you to have... I don't know, one peaceful moment."

A dull ache tightened low in my chest, an old habit of bracing for the worst.

"What happened?" My voice was barely a whisper.

Eric exhaled again. "They sent me a letter a while ago."

I swallowed. "And?"

"They said they're stepping out of our lives for good," he said. "And that we shouldn't try to find them."

I stared at him, head tilting slightly, like I needed to hear it twice to believe it. "They're disappearing?"

"Yeah." He clasped his hands together. "Again. But this time... permanently."

I felt like someone had squeezed my heart. "They didn't even want to see me? After everything?" My voice cracked on the last word.

Eric reached across the table and closed his hand over mine, squeezing gently. "They said they didn't want to jeopardize us anymore. And..." He hesitated. "And maybe that's for the best. You're still walking on thin ice right now, Emma. Anything could land you back. And I don't want to lose you again."

I swallowed hard. The diner suddenly felt too bright, too loud, too full of people eating their meals without the weight of our kind of history sitting beside them.

I nodded, but the hurt didn't fade. It sat in my chest like a stone, because in the long nights of my sentence, after lights-out, when the world was quiet, and my thoughts were loud, I had imagined this moment differently. I had pictured stepping out into the sun and seeing them waiting, my mother's arms wrapping around me, my father's quiet smile.

But that was the thing about dreams in prison... they were stitched together from longing, not reality.

Eric cleared his throat, pulling a small flash drive from his jacket. "They sent this too," he said, placing it beside my hand. "They told me I should give it to you when you got out."

I stared at it without touching it. Only after a long moment did I reach forward and take it, the plastic cool against my palm.

"Let's go," I said at last, forcing a small smile so I wouldn't ruin this moment for either of us. "Before I convince myself to run away to Alaska."

He snorted, relieved by the shift. "You wouldn't last a week."

"Watch me."

We slid out of the booth, and he paid the bill. We stepped out into the sunlight, warm and golden against my skin, and then we drove.

The closer we got to New York, the quieter I became. I didn't feel uneasy, just... reflective. Watching the skyline rise felt like watching a past life materialize in real time.

New York had been everything to me.

The place I stole from, lied in, loved in. The place where I lived through the worst night of my life. The place where Adam brought me back, thinking he could break me for good.

I leaned my head back against the seat, closing my eyes as the car passed along the bridge.

Maybe it was time for this city to witness something else... my rebirth.