What If

Things went so fast with us. If you do love me, please, just leave this alone. Don’t come and try to find me. Heather won’t tell you where I am. Eventually, I’ll have to show up for the legal stuff, and with your connections, I know you could find me but please just stay away. I’m begging you, don’t. I can’t take it. I’m already on the edge. Go on and live your life. Get your promotion and don’t give up on your dreams. It will be your gift to me, maybe the one thing that keeps me going is knowing I didn’t screw up your life too.

I’m probably going to prison. I’m sure you know by now, and I should have told you, I have a prior conviction. I won’t go into the details of how that happened, well my side of things at least, just know I’m not a bad person. I’ve never done drugs in my life, not even smoked pot. I just seem to keep putting myself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unfortunately, the law doesn’t cut you much slack for poor choices and naivete.

Take care. Know the last week has been the highlight of my life.

Jessie

I turn back to see Heather looking at me.

“Where is she?” I demand.

“Like I said, I’m not going to tell you, Torin. It’s not just for you, it’s for Jessie. She needs her space right now. Her life is upside down and backward, and she doesn’t need the guilt of ruining your life too. Okay? Try to see it from her side. Don’t make it harder on her. If you find her, it’s not going to change what’s going on with her, but it could change the good things that are going on with you. Don’t put that on her, it may just be more than she can take.”

As Heather closes the door, I see her eyes well, and she puts a hand over her lips.

My chest tightens as I turn and make my way to my truck.

Inside, hands on the wheel, I lower my forehead and bite back the scream that wants to rip from my throat.

This can’t be happening.

I can’t get a glimpse of everything I’ve ever wanted just to have it torn from me.

I don’t feel connected to the world. I feel like I’m floating, but there’s an anger burning inside me that needs an outlet and that outlet’s name is Derek Melrose.

Chapter 12

Jessie

You know that scene in the Twilight movies where the girl is sitting in a chair in front of her bedroom window? The seasons fly by, but she just sits there.

That’s me.

I’ve been numb since the day the officer dragged me out of Derek’s truck and put the handcuffs on me almost two months ago.

The only grace in all of this is that Heather told me Torin got his promotion. He’s Head Detective now, and it’s the only solace I have in all of this that I didn’t ruin his life in the process of ruining mine.

The only other grace I suppose is all the unprotected sex I had with Torin didn’t produce a baby. That thought has me on the verge of tears. I’d wanted that in a way I didn’t know before Torin. I never understood the miracle of creating a new life out of love.

The thoughts turn me cold, knowing if that had happened, who knows what would have happened.

The thought of having a baby in prison…

“Jessie.” My mother’s voice comes through my bedroom door as the early morning sunlight streams through the Waverly floral curtains in the guestroom of my mom and stepdad’s absurdly large home in the gated community where Stepford is alive and well.

“Yes, Mom?” I answer, looking down at the screen on my phone, reading and re-reading the texts from Torin that he still sends daily. He made it clear the day of the arrest after he’d left Heather’s house that he didn’t expect me to respond, but he needed me to know every day he was thinking about me. And he understood.

“It’s time to go. I don’t want to be late. I have to be back here by one.” The terse snip to her voice has the ball of tension in my stomach twisting.

“I’m ready.”

I’m downstairs and in the car on the way to Heather’s husband Mitchell’s law office to go over some new information and discuss trying to come to a plea agreement with the D.A.

The entire hour drive my mother barely stops talking about her upcoming trip to Paris with my stepfather, Walter. They are leaving in a month and if she’s told me once she’s told me a bazillion times how she will not be able to enjoy her vacation if all this trouble isn’t settled by then.

I’m not sure she realizes, although I’ve made it clear on several occasions—as has Mitchell—that having this ‘trouble’ settled almost certainly includes me surrendering to a correctional facility for an indeterminate number of years.