Change of Heart - By S.E. Edwards Page 0,13

me, you shouldn’t be in any trouble.”

I give a bitter laugh. “Oh, that’s comforting.”

“It should be.” He frowns. “Now, get in. We’re wasting time.”

I huff but follow through. It’s not like I have many other options. “Where are we going?”

“I need to make some calls.” Rich starts the engine and backs up. “We’ll go somewhere safe, somewhere public. Figure it out there. Maybe once I get a better understanding, I can explain things.”

“Fine,” I nod. Then I feel a sudden constriction in my chest. “Oh my God. Shit! I forgot my purse!“ All my possessions were in there: my cell phone, my now-useless apartment key, my wallet, all my identifications, and—most precious to me of all—a tiny locket with a faded picture of a young man cradling a baby in his arms. His head is down so you cannot see his eyes. That picture means the world to me—it’s the only piece of my father I have left. “Do you think they’ll take it?”

Rich scoffs. “They’re not thieves.”

***

Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting at the bar of a breakfast diner, cradling a warm cup of coffee between my palms. Looking over my shoulder, I see Rich still talking to somebody on the payphone by the far wall.

I sigh, and take a sip of my drink. Rich has been on that phone from the moment we walked in. He’s spoken softly the entire time, so even though we are the only two customers, not a single word of his conversation has filtered over to me. I know as little now as I did when the banging woke me up.

The woman behind the counter gives me a commiserating smile as she refills my cup. I wonder what she thinks as she looks at me. I know I must look like hell—but I feel even worse. I’d been running on pure adrenaline and lust during the hookup with Rich. Now, all the fatigue from the long week is catching up to me. My entire body feels sapped. My mind starts to wander, and I find myself thinking about how Abby’s holding up.

Probably better than me, I decide with a bitter snort. With the way things have been going recently, it seems like just my luck to get caught in the middle of something like this.

I sigh again and take another long sip, trying to extract every last bit of energy from the drink. I need my mind clear right now, not groggy. Exhausted as I am, coffee seems like the best solution.

If I had somewhere to go, things would be much simpler. I could just ask Rich to drop me off and forget about all this. But, thanks to some severely short-sighted decisions I’d made in my recent past, that wasn’t an option.

In hindsight, maybe the move from California to Oregon with a girl I’d only known for a few weeks hadn’t been such a great idea. But, I’d been desperate to get away—and so had Abby.

We met at the orphanage. She’d run in one rainy night, bawling her eyes out. Once she calmed down, her story came gushing out. She said she’d found her boyfriend cheating on her with her step-mom. She cried about how much she’d loved him, and how horribly betrayed he’d made her feel.

In that unspoken moment I felt a bond flare between us. I’d experienced something similar in my life. Jeremy, the only boy I’d ever loved, my first and final boyfriend, crushed my soul when I walked in on him making out with our eleventh grade algebra teacher. I ran out of there, shocked. I tried to deny what I saw at first, to pretend it was some misunderstanding, but the image of Jeremy running his hands over our teacher’s body had been imprinted in my mind forever. I can still remember the disgusting way they groped at each other on the floor of the afterschool detention room.

I walked in on them… and cried for hours after. Worse, it wasn’t like I could just get away. Jeremy and I lived in the same orphanage, went to the same school, and had the same classes. Awkward didn’t even begin to describe the tension between us in the following days. That was the point in my life I’d decided that real love was a sham. It was just a way to expose yourself to getting hurt.

I’ve kept my heart locked tight ever since.

So, when I heard Abby’s story, I knew we had something in common. That had been enough. As