She’d noticed the mark in the shower when she got home that night – hardly an hour after informing the warden she was leaving.
God has a sick sense of humor, she thought, tracing the letters on her thigh, the same scratchy handwriting that had been on the note in her office, folded around the shamrock necklace that twinkled in her nightmares.
All for you, Gloria. All for you.
Why now, she couldn’t fathom – she’d been relieved when nothing had turned up after she’d first recognised her feelings toward Ryan O’Reily went beyond basic compassion, and that relief only strengthened the more clear it became that Ryan O’Reily was, in particular, not someone anybody would want as a soulmate, in her position or otherwise.
You’ve said over and over that you love me and all you want is for me to say I love you back. Well, it's the opposite. I hate you!
Even after Sister Pete’s insistence that he wasn’t responsible for the rape, even after seeing Keenan’s corpse, even after reading the note, and even now reading the name etched into her skin, she still felt the same.
But she guessed it didn’t matter.
No one will ever love me as much as Ryan O'Reily. And I have to live with that fact every day for the rest of my life.