Page 72 of My Unfinished Heart

“Yeah, I did say that…” I swallow the rest of my drink, finding myself frowning at the lamp on his desk.

“Did he not move away?” he asks.

“He did.”

“I'm not really in the mood for twenty questions.” West stands up to refill my glass, then sits back down. Waiting. I haven’t looked away from the lamp, but I feel his hard stare probing me.

“You remember that night…when I was here? Not this past Friday, but the Friday before that?”

“Most of it.”

“When I left here, I went to see him.”

“Hmm.” The sound is non-judgmental enough to keep me talking.

I drink some more. “Just to tell him goodbye.”

“And how’d that go?”

“Well, at first not so well. There was this tree involved which is how I broke my knee, and then he didn't seem to enjoy how fucking drunk I was, but ultimately we started talking, and I told him I'd miss him.”

“Okay, hold on—I’m having some problems with this story. You climbed a fucking tree? And were you in some kind of relationship with this guy? Had y’all hung out before? Because I’m assuming if you’re gonna ‘miss him’ there would be something to miss—so what am I missing?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

Seems I don’t really need to finish the story. The ending is probably written all across my guilty face.

“This was all consensual right?”

“Like legally?”

He scowls, looking deeply troubled. “Like actually.”

“Yeah…I mean…I think it was.”

He puts his elbows on his desk and leans toward me. “How old is he?”

I let go a heavy sigh and slump further down. If it’s possible to feel worse about what happened, I do. But right now, I’m actually not thinking about the sex part of it. I’m thinking about the way he kissed me on the sidewalk. Like his heart would break if he didn’t.

If I regret anything, I regret telling West any of it. It’s too personal. “I don’t know why I brought this up. Nothing really happened. I said goodbye. He moved. Connor’s not handling it well.”

“Nothing happened,” West repeats, like he knows I’m full of shit.

I kick my feet up onto his desk and try to make myself look relaxed. “Boring, right? Anyway. Moving on…”

“Yes. Let’s move on. The clock is ticking.”

It is. Two weeks till prison.

Nine weeks till Connor turns nineteen.

If I hadn’t just bought a bar, I could get the fuck out of this town and never look back.

I stumble into my house at nearly four in the morning. Give or take.

Connor’s car was blocking the driveway, so I came in through the front door, which is how I find him the way I do.