Hollywood Lied

Chapter 15: I Speak to Tanner

The clang of metal echoed across the dim prison gym, that hollow, cavernous sound that always made my skin crawl. It was late—too late for anyone to be in there unless they were looking for trouble. The guards didn’t bother patrolling this side of the yard after dark. They knew the routine: the weights were old, the benches rusted, and only idiots or predators hung around after hours.

I guess that made me an i***t. Stress keeps you up. Meth ghosts keep you up longer.

I was wiping sweat off my forehead when a hard shoulder slammed into me, nearly knocking the barbell from my hands.

“Watch it,” a voice snarled.

I stiffened.

Tanner.

I didn’t have to look to know it was him. The air around him always felt colder, like he dragged winter in on his breath. He towered over me—lean, defined, skin pale like he’d been carved out of bleached granite. His shaved head gleamed under the flickering fluorescents, and those icy blue eyes were the kind that made you believe some men were born without souls.

I finally glanced up just enough to acknowledge him.

“My bad,” I muttered, though every muscle in my body wanted to recoil.

He stepped closer. Too close. Close enough that I could smell the sweat and iron on him.

“Didn’t know you were lifting here,” he said, voice low and taunting. “Thought you preferred the company of your pet n****r lover.”

I felt my jaw clench so tight it hurt.

Ryland.

He didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve any of this. But standing up for him meant one thing: getting stabbed before dawn. And for once in my life, I wasn’t suicidal.

I forced myself to breathe. Forced myself not to react. Forced myself not to give him the satisfaction.

Tanner smirked at my silence, then turned his head just enough to tilt his chin toward the far corner of the gym.

Three men stood there watching us. Big men. Tattooed from neck to wrist. Most with shaved heads. All wearing smirks that were mirror images of Tanner’s own.

The Aryans.

A whole damn flock of them.

I swallowed hard.

Tanner tapped my chest once with a single finger—light, but the message behind it felt like a hammer.

“You been here long enough,” he said. “Long enough to know how things work.”

He walked around me, circling like a shark testing a wounded seal.

“You keep to yourself. That’s fine.” “You ain’t no snitch. That’s good.” “You can fight when you need to, even better.”

He stopped behind me, breath brushing the back of my neck. My skin crawled.

“But you got somethin’ else too.”

I didn’t respond.

“You got fire.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or run.

He stepped around me until he stood directly in front of my bench, arms crossed, eyes drilling into mine.

“We like fire.” “We can use it.”

I finally met his gaze fully, even though every instinct screamed not to.

“Use it for what?” I asked quietly.

Tanner’s smile spread slowly across his face, like a stain.

“Protection, first of all.” He nodded to his crew. “You roll with us, nobody touches you. Nobody touches your cellmate neither.”

That hit me harder than the shoulder check.

Ryland.

They’d been circling him more lately. Calling him names. Throwing things. Testing boundaries. The kind of tests that escalate to violence.

I knew it. They knew I knew it. And Tanner was dangling it in front of me like a poisoned treat.

He leaned in slightly.

“Second reason…” His grin sharpened. “…you’re famous.”

My stomach dropped.

“People see you with us, it sends a message.” “You ain’t some washed-up junkie actor.” “You’re one of ours.”

One of theirs.

The thought made my spine shudder.

I looked away for just a moment, scanning the gym. The cracked walls, the shadows, the half-broken equipment—it all suddenly felt smaller. Like I was standing in a shrinking room with no exit.

Tanner took my silence as contemplation, not refusal.

He clasped a hand onto my shoulder, gripping it tight enough that I could feel his fingerprints sink into my skin.

“Think about it, Heller.” “You don’t have to die in here.”

His voice dropped to a whisper.

“But if you stay neutral?” He shrugged. “Neutral gets swallowed.”

He released me.

Walked away.

His crew followed, their boots pounding the gym floor as they disappeared into the dark hallway.

I stood there alone, heartbeat pounding in my ears.

Join them and become something I despised.

Refuse them and endanger Ryland.

The weights in my hands suddenly felt heavier than they ever had.

I sat down on the bench, staring at the cracked concrete beneath my feet.

No matter what I chose, I knew one thing:

Prison wasn’t going to let me leave clean.

Not anymore.

The cold steel bar rested above my chest, and I pushed it up with a shaky breath. One… two… three… My arms trembled on the fourth rep. One hundred and fifty pounds—laughable for most guys in here. But for me? It felt like lifting the entire damn world.

I’d done this to myself.

Years of drugs had carved me out like a rotting pumpkin. My muscles had shriveled. My stamina evaporated. My teeth—well, they were practically gravel at this point. Chipped, broken, yellowed. I used to forget brushing them for days on end because heroin had convinced me time didn’t matter. Meth convinced me I was invincible until the mirror proved otherwise.

“Don’t be like Staley,” I remembered telling myself when I was nineteen and terrified of dying young.

Layne’s voice echoed in my mind, that ghostly drawl from Get Born Again washing through the gym like an omen. It always gave me chills—those tortured notes that carried enough pain to fill a dozen lives. I promised myself I’d never spiral like that. That I wouldn’t disappear into the hollow places addiction carved out.

But addiction doesn’t negotiate.

Addiction doesn’t listen to promises.

It doesn’t care if you idolize someone or pity them or swear to hell and back you’ll never follow the same path.

It only cares about the next high. The next numbness. The next lie you tell yourself to justify another hit.

The bar dipped lower as my arms began to quiver violently. Sweat dripped down my forehead, stinging my cracked lips.

“Come on,” I whispered through clenched teeth. “Don’t you dare give out on me now.”

I forced another rep—barely. The bar clanked into the rack with a sound that echoed like distant gunfire.

My chest burned. My arms tingled. But worse than that, my thoughts spiraled.

All the moments I said, This is the last time. All the times I swore I’d quit. All the times I whispered promises into the void just to break them twenty minutes later.

I wiped my face with a rough towel and stared at nothing.

In that moment, I didn’t feel strong. I didn’t feel redeemed. Hell, I didn’t even feel human.

I felt like a ghost dragging around a body that had long since stopped being home.

And Layne’s voice kept haunting me in the background:

“I get born again…”

It was almost funny, in some dark twisted way. I wanted to be reborn. I wanted a clean slate. I wanted to scrape off everything I’d screwed up.

But rebirth doesn’t happen in a prison gym at 2 a.m.

It starts with the hollow ache in your chest after benching a measly 150 pounds. It starts with realizing how far you’ve fallen. It starts with admitting that every lie you told yourself led you here.

Prison wasn’t the rebirth I imagined.

But maybe—just maybe—it would force me to stop dying.

Ryland stormed in like a man whose whole world had just been kicked apart. His face—normally calm, normally patient—looked like someone had carved hurt straight into it. His fists kept opening and closing, and his jaw twitched like he was trying not to scream.

I sat up on the bench, wiped the sweat from my forehead, and frowned.

“What’s wrong, R?” I asked, already bracing myself.

He didn’t hesitate.

“They took my Bible!” he blurted, voice cracking down the middle. “How could they? Why would someone do that?”

I blinked, stunned for a second.

A shank? A pack of smokes? A couple bags of chips? Sure—those went missing every damn day.

But a Bible?

That was low even for this place.

“A Bible?” I repeated, shaking my head. “Seriously?”

Ryland wasn’t just upset; he looked violated. The guy clung to that book like it was a life raft in a sinking ocean. In this hellhole, faith was the one thing nobody expected to be messed with. It was supposed to be off-limits—sacred even to the bastards who pretended they didn’t believe in anything.

He ran a trembling hand over his shaved head, pacing in a tight circle.

“It was right on my bunk,” he muttered. “I left for ten minutes—ten—and when I came back it was gone. Just gone.”

His voice wavered. For Ryland, losing that Bible was like losing a limb.

“I thought this place was bad,” he whispered, eyes distant. “But I never thought someone would stoop that low.”

I didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t like when someone stole my toothpaste or shanked my pillow just because they were bored. This was something deeper. Something cruel for the sake of cruelty.

“You think it was Tanner?” I asked quietly.

Ryland swallowed hard.

“Probably one of his guys,” he said. “They’ve been on me for weeks. Calling me a n****r lover, telling me I’m not ‘one of them’ because I talk to you. Because I talk to anyone.”

He paused, chest rising and falling too fast.

“I don’t care what they call me,” he said, voice breaking again. “But that Bible was… all I had left. They knew that.”

I clenched my fists.

Tanner and his gang had been needling Ryland for months. Insults. Threats. A shove here, a trip there. Just enough to remind him he wasn’t safe—but not enough to get thrown in solitary.

They were smart like that.

“I’m gonna get it back,” Ryland said suddenly.

I stood up fast.

“Hold on—R, don’t do anything stupid.”

He turned to me with a gaze that was both fragile and furious.

“Cody… it’s the only thing keeping me sane in here.”

And right then, I understood.

Not because I believed in God. Not because I cared about the Bible. But because I knew what it was like to cling to something—anything—when the world had already taken too much from you.

Ryland wasn’t just upset.

He was heartbroken.

And someone was going to pay for that.