She helped me strip the table and toss the crumpled sheets into a pile on the floor.
“You could totally hit that, you know,” she said.
“Hit that? What are we, sixteen-year-old boys?”
She giggled. “I’m just sayin’. He’s hot. You’re hot. He’s not looking for serious. You’re . . .”
An all-too-familiar silence settled between us.
“Definitely not looking for serious,” I finished quietly. “Or anything, for that matter.”
She picked up the pile of sheets while I wiped down the counter and replaced the bottles of lotion and oils.
“Maybe something casual is just what you need.” She didn’t look up.
My jaw clenched, and I forced it to relax. Once, casual was all I did. No one got too close—romantic or otherwise. Now the idea seemed incomprehensible. Alec Flynn had made everything in my life dead serious.
I smiled, because the last thing I wanted was for Amy to feel guilty over my breakup. Not after everything she’d been through.
“I have everything I need. You and Paisley and my new, favorite roommate.”
After Alec and I had broken up, I’d finally told my dad everything that had happened with Trevor and his hit man, Reznik, on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. He’d listened quietly, expressing only minimal concern. I thought I’d dodged a bullet until he showed up on my doorstep the next morning, complete with his Great Dane, Mug, and no plans of ever letting me leave his sight again.
Amy chuckled. “He might as well just get a place here.”
“But how would he keep tabs on me twenty-four/seven that way?”
“True.” She sighed. “I guess you’ll just have to get a bigger house and live out your days as a spinster dog lady.”
“There’s just one dog.”
“So far,” she said. “Just you wait.”
She followed me as I carried the sheets to the laundry room, just as she would accompany me to the front desk for my next client, and magically appear in the back room when it was time for my lunch break. I sometimes wondered if she thought she was being sneaky. Or if Marcos, the cop who’d been assigned to tail me three months ago, remembered the danger had left with Alec when he randomly sent me text reminders asking me to check in. At least my dad didn’t try to hide the fact that he was keeping an eye on me. He had practically reverted to holding my hand before I crossed the street.
“Why don’t you guys come over for dinner tonight,” she said. “I’ll make something glorious from a box. I might even get crazy and throw some corndogs in the microwave.”
I knew this wasn’t an idle threat. Amy’s freezer was always stocked with last-minute meals.
“As appealing as that sounds, Dad has a case he’s working on.” He’d already informed me he had some PI work tonight—he’d started taking on a few private clients after his recent retirement from the police force in Cincinnati. He’d even managed to snag a couple of cases since coming to Tampa last month.
Amy handed me the detergent after I shoved the sheets into the washing machine.
“Well you should come by yourself then.”
The truth was, I’d been looking forward to some time alone. Maintaining the “everything’s great” façade was exhausting.
“Actually, I . . .” I hunched over the washer. “You already knew he’d be busy, didn’t you?”
She inhaled, cheery as an ad for kids’ cereal, and acted as though she hadn’t heard me.
“When do you get off? Five?”
“Something tells me you already checked what time I get off.”
“You could be over by five thirty. I’ll rent a movie if your dad’s pulling a late one.”
“Amy.”
“All right.” She rubbed her hands together, avoiding my gaze. “Good talk. See ya at five thirty.”
“Amy.” I blocked her from leaving the room.
She stayed tense while I sighed.
“Anna, just let us,” she said quietly. “Just for a while.”
How long? I wanted to ask. They’d been doing it since the night on the bridge. Two and a half months of constant support. I’d left Alec so everyone could move on, unafraid, leaving the chaos he’d brought into our lives behind, but instead they’d put everything on hold to watch me like I was a ticking time bomb.
I should have been protecting Amy after everything that had happened, not the other way around.
But as she faced me, green eyes rounding even as her thin lips pursed, I knew there was no turning her down.
“I have a CASA thing at five thirty,” I said. “I’ll be over before seven.”
Two
The Children’s Museum ran a special program for foster kids after hours on Wednesday nights. This month they’d brought in local artists to give lessons. It wasn’t technically a Court-Appointed Special Advocate event, but it was a good chance for me to check in on Jacob, the first boy I’d been assigned to.
The parking garage was next to the main building, but I took a metered spot on the street. It wasn’t that I was afraid of the dark, but I wasn’t stupid. Parking garages were prime places for predators to attack, and I didn’t exactly have a great track record.
After putting my neon blue sewing machine of a car in park, my fingers grazed absently over the small button hidden beneath the center console. Alec had installed the “kill switch” days after he’d gotten out of prison. It had saved my life once. Now it was one of the few reminders I had left that he’d ever really cared about me.
Grabbing my purse, I left the car. The air was still muggy, the result of an afternoon shower, and immediately made my skin glisten. I had been told this was the hottest August in years, a slow burn in a relentless summer.
The traffic light turned green up ahead, and the cars zipped past, drawing my gaze across the street to the trendy restaurants that lined the block.
My heart thudded to a stop.
Behind the wall of windows making up the front of a tapas bar was a man, seated at one of the tables. He wore a baseball cap, but even from here I could see a hint of dark hair that curled out from beneath it. Though he was turned to the side, it was obvious his shoulders were broad by the thick girth of his upper arms. His legs were too long for the little table he sat at; his knees hit the underside, even with his feet stretched beneath the empty chair opposite him.
He was staring at me.
“Alec.”
Saying his name aloud made something in my chest twist even as it made my mouth water.
At the blare of a horn, I jumped back. I hadn’t realized I’d stepped into the street, but even as I backed into my car I felt the urge to lean forward again. There was a pull coming from inside that restaurant, like the whole building was magnetized.
When I looked again, Alec was gone.
I didn’t think about it. If I had, I would have told myself to go into the museum and say hi to the kids. Instead, I waited for a break in the traffic and raced across the lanes. Even as my hand gripped the door handle, I could feel my blood begin to buzz.
Alec was here. He’d seen me. He was close.
I jogged past the hostess without a word and turned the corner, but the table where Alec had sat was empty.
“Just one, ma’am?” The hostess caught up with me, and as she did, the sounds of the restaurant tumbled past the rushing in my ears. Clanking dishes. Silverware hitting the floor. Laughter and conversation.
My chest went cold.
“N-no, I’m fine,” I said. She continued to watch me as I scanned the main seating area. “There was a man sitting there a few minutes ago. Do you know where he went?”
Her brows lifted. “I haven’t seated anyone there since lunch.”
I looked again at the empty table, feeling the color rise up my neck. Great. I was hallucinating him everywhere now. And even i
f he had been real, what was my plan once I’d gotten here? Hey Alec, how’ve you been? Anyone you know been tossed off a bridge lately? This wasn’t a margarine commercial. We weren’t running to each other in slow motion across fields of daisies.
“Sorry,” I told her. “My mistake.”
I’d promised myself I would stay clear of him. For Amy and Paisley. For my own safety. I told myself this like he’d been incorrigible, unable to leave me alone.
That was most definitely not the case.
I hadn’t changed my number, and he hadn’t called once. I lived at the same apartment, worked at the same salon. He knew where to find me, and he hadn’t.
There was nothing quite as shitty as realizing you’re easy to get over.
It was time I got over Alec Flynn.
I crossed the street, the numbness descending back over my shoulders like the heavy air. I was grateful for it. It was easier to feel nothing than to be constantly aware of the empty pit he’d left inside of me.
The signs were easy enough to follow once I entered the building. The lobby was clean and painted by a rainbow of colors reflected through the stained glass windows. The dinosaur exhibit in the main room had been pushed aside to create more floor area and thirty or so kids sprawled out across plastic tarps, surrounded by stacks of newspapers.
It didn’t take long to find Jacob. He was the one with two fingers in his mouth, whistling loud enough to crack someone’s eardrums.
Making my way across the floor, I waved at his foster mom, chatting with a few other women on the far side of the room. Squares of newspaper immediately stuck to my shoes, a result of the paste that was being used to papier-mâché balloons.
Jacob’s black hair was sticking straight out on one side. He’d probably touched it with his pastey hands. He gave me a lopsided smile and pretended to throw his heavy balloon, smothered with newspaper, straight at me.
“Did you hear me whistle?” he asked.
“I’m pretty sure people in New York heard you whistle,” I answered, rubbing my ear. “I have a name, you know. People usually save whistling for dogs.”
He knelt back on the ground beside his little sister, six-year- old Sammy, who was making neat stacks of newspaper rather than attending to her balloon. Her kinky hair was in two puff balls on the top of her head, and her eyebrows were furrowed in concentration.
“Stanley showed me how,” he said.
Stanley was his foster father at the placement where I’d fought for him to live with his sister. I smiled. Maybe things were crap in my life, but knowing Jacob was happy, and that I’d played a part in that, took some of the weight off my shoulders.
“What are you making?” I asked.
“Hot air balloons,” he said. “Mr. Rodriguez is an artist. We’re making masks like that one.” He pointed to the front of the room, where an elderly man with a long, white beard was showing an intricate tiger mask to a young girl.
“Awesome,” I said. “So how’s everything going?”
He painted his balloon with enough white paste to drown a horse and then haphazardly stuck pieces of newspaper to it.
“Good,” he said. “Lucia and Stanley want to adopt us.”
I crouched beside him, finding a clear space that didn’t look completely sticky.
“I heard. What do you think about that?” Being adopted was a big deal. Knowing someone wanted you—really wanted you—was both enormously validating, and its own type of betrayal. I’d never felt like I’d let my birth mother down more than the day my dad said he wanted to make me his.
“It’s good,” he said. “My mom gave up custody.”
I knew that, too, but played dumb so he could tell me about it.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Lucia says we don’t have to see her again if we don’t want to.”
“And do you want to?”
Part of me wished I could see my birth mother again, if only for a few minutes. I’d forgiven her for loving the drugs more than me a long time ago, but sometimes I still wanted to ask her why she’d never tried harder to be my mom. Why she’d never fought for me.
Was I not worth fighting for?
“Nope,” said Jacob definitively. “She makes me and Sissy feel bad.”
I nodded. “Yeah. But I bet there was a time she didn’t make you feel bad. And if you’re ever thinking about that, and wondering what she’s like, you can talk to Lucia about seeing her.”
“I won’t.”
I’d probably said the same thing.
“Okay,” I said. “Should we celebrate the adoption?”
Jacob looked up. “Tacos?”
I snorted. “Sure. When it’s all done, let’s go get tacos.” I turned to Jacob’s sister. “Hey Sammy, nice stacking.”
She smiled at me, and I grinned back. She didn’t do that much, and I’d take what I could get. Glancing down, she picked up the newspaper on top and handed it to me.
“You wanna do craps with us?”
“She means crafts,” said Jacob.
“I would hope so,” I said. But before I could say yes, I looked down at the paper and stalled, because staring back at me was Alec’s face.
He was sitting in a courtroom, hands folded on the desk before him. His hair had grown out a little since I’d seen him, but was still kept smoothed back behind his ears. He was wearing a suit and tie, and looked like someone had died.
Key Witness Has Questionable Past said the caption beneath the photo. The rest of the article had been cut away. The date was still at the top, though. It was from four days ago—the first day of the trial.
Resentment at the quote surged through me before I remembered that he wasn’t mine to defend.
I’d known when the trial had begun of course. I’d counted down the days until it started, along with half of Tampa. But because of my ties to Alec, to Maxim, to all of it, I’d tried to steer clear as much as possible. I didn’t get the newspaper. I’d turned the Internet off on my phone. When I went to restaurants or the gym, I made sure to position myself as far away from the televisions as possible.
And yet Alec still landed right in my lap.
“You coming to the dinner?” Jacob asked. “Lucia says I gotta wear a tie.”
“I got a dress,” said Sammy. “It’s pink.”
“Nice,” I told her. The dinner Jacob was referring to was a formal CASA fund-raising event this Friday. The program was staffed by volunteers, but training and raising awareness didn’t come cheap. This was a chance to reach out to the donors with deep pockets and show them just how important the advocates were to the kids.
“ ’Course I’m going to be there,” I said.
“You going to bring your boyfriend?”
I stiffened. “You don’t want to be my date?”
“Ew, gross. You’re, like, thirty.”
“Not quite,” I said. “But thanks.”
I’d actually asked Amy to come with me. It would have been nice to dress up for a date. Wear something long and pretty he could have peeled off at the end of the night. But I couldn’t picture anyone but Alec in that role, and well, no Alec.
Amy would have fun. She didn’t get a lot of chances to go to fancy events.
“Hey, you gotta meet Brendan,” said Jacob, pulling me from my thoughts. With that, he was up like a shot and weaving through the kids on the floor. Less than a minute later he was leading over a boy with sun-kissed hair, recently chopped short I’d guess, based on the tan line around his scalp. He took one look at me and his thin mouth fixed into a frown.
“This is Anna,” said Jacob. “She can help you out.”
“Jacob,” I said. “We talked about this.”
Since I’d spoken to the judge and helped Jacob get a placement with his sister, he was constantly trying to set me up with other kids who were in need of t
ransfers.
“It’s okay,” said Jacob. “Brendan’s cool. He’s got a brother in Sarasota that needs to move here with him, though.”
I hummed and made room for the other boy, who sat no less than five feet away from me.
“It doesn’t exactly work that way,” I said. “A lot goes into a placement. You know that.”
“I told you,” I heard Brendan mumble. The newspaper made a crumpling sound as I clenched the edges of it. I wanted to find his file and see just what was going on with this brother in Sarasota.
“Do you have a court-appointed advocate?” I asked Brendan. He shook his head without looking up.
I smoothed out Alec’s picture, unable to set it aside to be ripped and painted.
“Is your foster mom here?” I asked, but even as I did I wished I hadn’t. There was a reason I hadn’t taken any more cases on since Jacob. I’d been asked. Not just by kids Jacob had spoken to, but by social workers and other CASA volunteers I’d met.
I was finishing things out with Jacob, and when he and his sister were secure, and Amy and Paisley were back on their feet, I was moving on.
Three
I know I’d said I would go straight to Amy’s, but somehow I ended up a few blocks away from the Children’s Museum, at a park overlooking the Bay. It was quiet this time of night; only one other car took up a spot at the far end of the lot, but the occasional dog-walker and Rollerblader passed by on the path before me. The sun had burrowed into the clouds on the horizon, throwing splashes of pink and gold across the sky, and the water was flat and calm.
Stupid autopilot had led me here more than I cared to admit. The view was beautiful, but I’d known it would be even before I’d come here the first time. Behind me was Alec’s high-rise apartment. This was his view. I was just renting it for a little while.
It wasn’t like he could see me. Not that he’d be looking anyway.
I aimed all the air-conditioning vents in my direction and removed the square of newspaper with Alec’s picture that I’d taken from arts and crafts. I traced my fingertip over his shoulder, remembering too well the feel of the hard muscles beneath this suit jacket. Questionable Past, the caption said. Bastards. They didn’t even know him.
The Confession Page 2
