Page 13 of Echo’s Secret

He steps inside and closes the door behind him with barely a sound. Moves across the room and sits on the floor beside me, back against the bed, leaving a foot of space between us.

We sit in silence for a long moment. I try to stop crying and fail. Try to say something and can't get words out past the tightness in my throat.

"You don't have to explain," Wesley says. "I get it."

"You can't possibly get it," I manage to choke out. "I showed up out of nowhere with a baby, a sob story and demands for money. Your entire club just welcomed me like I belonged here. Nobody does that. Nobody has ever done that."

"We did."

"Why?" I turn to look at him. "Why would you do that? You don't know me. Not really. We talked for a few months years ago and then again recently. That's not enough to—" I gesture helplessly at the room, the clubhouse, everything. "This."

Wesley is quiet for a moment. Then: "You remember the fence?"

The fence. Of course I remember the fence.

Sacred Heart Orphanage had two facilities—boys' and girls' separated by a chain-link fence and fifty yards of grass. We weren't supposed to talk to each other. Boys stayed on their side, girls stayed on ours. But during supervised yard time, sometimes you'd end up near the fence at the same time as someone from the other side.

That's how I met Wesley.

I was sitting against the fence reading a book I'd stolen from the library because I wasn't allowed to check out more than two a week and I'd already burned through those. He sat down on his side, back against the same section of fence.

"What are you reading?" he asked.

I told him. Some fantasy novel about orphans with magic powers who saved the world. Wish fulfillment at its finest.

"Sounds better than reality," he said.

"Everything is better than reality."

We sat there for an hour, backs pressed against opposite sides of the same fence, talking about books and music and the specific kind of loneliness that comes from being a kid nobody wanted.

It became our thing. Three times a week during yard time, we'd find each other at the fence. Sometimes we'd talk. Sometimes we'd just sit in comfortable silence, knowing someone else understood.

"I remember the fence," I say now, wiping at my face.

"I told you once that I didn't believe in happy endings," Wesley says. "I said the only people who got happy endings were people who had families to begin with. The rest of us just survived."

I don't remember him saying that, but it sounds like something kid Wesley would have believed.

"You told me I was wrong," Wesley continues. "You said maybe we couldn't have the kind of happy endings other people got, but that didn't mean we couldn't make our own. Different ones. Ones that made sense for people like us."

"I was fourteen and reading too much fantasy," I mutter.

"You were fourteen and hopeful." He shifts slightly, shoulder almost touching mine. "You lost that somewhere along the way. I get why. Life beat it out of you the same way it beat it out of me."

"Then why help me?" My voice cracks. "If we're both too broken to believe in happy endings, why are you giving me money and a room and—" I have to stop because I'm crying again.

"Because Theo deserves better than what we got," Wesley says. "And because you're right. Neither of us believes in love or happy endings or any of that shit people promise each other. But I believe in showing up. I believe in protecting what's mine. And whether you planned it or not, whether we're together or not, Theo is mine. That makes you mine to protect too."

"I'm not yours."

"You're the mother of my son. You're staying under my roof. You came to me when you had nowhere else to go." His voice stays quiet but there's steel underneath. "Yeah, Hannah. You're mine."

I should argue. Should tell him he can't just claim ownership of people. Should remind him we barely know each other anymore.

But God, I'm so tired of being alone.

"Tell me a happy story," I say instead. "From Sacred Heart. Something good that happened."