AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And I wasn’t ever going to let myself get close to anyone again either. I’d thought we were family, but they had used me and thrown me away, just like my own dad had thrown me away.
“I’m done with them, done with all that shit.” I leaned my head against the window. “I’m gonna take a nap.”
I closed my eyes, pretending to sleep.
*
“You have to meet with me once per week,” Tom, my PO, said, “but remember, I can make surprise visits at any time. You play by the rules and don’t get into any trouble, and we can change that to biweekly or monthly. It all depends on you.”
I nodded.
“You’ll take a drug test every time we meet. You live with your grandma?” he asked, though he knew I did.
“Yeah.”
“That can’t change. No meeting a girl and moving in with her in two weeks. Moves need to be approved, and that leads me into employment.” He passed a card to me. Harold Graves Construction. “They’re only about fifteen minutes from Clayton, and he’s already agreed to hire you. The owner is a friend of mine, and he’s doing me a favor. You’re good with your hands, right?”
“Yes. Hell yes.” Was I really going to get a job that easily? And working out in the sun, building things? It might not be a dream come true to most people, but to me, it was. After spending six years locked up, the last thing I wanted was to be cooped up inside a building at work all day. And unless things had changed a whole lot in Clayton, which I doubted, jobs didn’t usually fall into your lap. No one there came from shit, none of us had shit, which was a vicious cycle.
“Good. You sound excited. I like that.” For the first time since I’d met him today, Tom smiled.
We went over my parole sheet, and he hammered home every condition of my parole. Then he followed me into the bathroom and watched while I took a piss in a cup, even though I’d just gotten out yesterday.
He let me use the phone to call Harold, my new boss. I didn’t have a cell phone yet. Grandma offered to help me get one, but I didn’t want her to put any more money out for me. Harold and I arranged for me to come in the next day to fill out the paperwork and get started.
“You’re going to need a phone in case I need to get in touch with you,” Tom said when I ended the call.
“Can it wait until my first paycheck?”
“No.” He opened his drawer and pulled out a piece of paper. “Here’s a voucher for—”
“Nah, I’m good. My grandma already offered to help.” I would rather pay her back than owe the government anything, even if I wasn’t expected to pay it back. I had too many complicated feelings about the system.
“Okay. Call and give me your number.”
“I will.” A few minutes later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of Grandma’s car.
“Ready to head to the DMV?” she asked.
No, I really wasn’t. It was…a lot, being free again. Great but also different, almost like the world was bigger than I remembered—the small area of Southern Oregon never ending—and more uncomfortable than it should be. But if I wanted to be able to drive myself around, I needed my driver’s license. “Yeah. We also gotta do the cell-phone thing. My PO got me a job already, so I’ll pay you back as soon as I get my first paycheck.”
“I’m not worried about it, Riven.”
But I was. She deserved a better grandson.
The DMV took for-fucking-ever, but I passed and walked out with a temporary license. She took me to her phone-carrier office next and added a line for me. It was expensive as hell, and I didn’t have credit, so none of it could be under my name.
I was a felon, starting over at thirty-one. People around here lived screwed-up lives already, and mine was going to be even worse.
The second we pulled into Clayton, the pressure was back in my chest. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to living here again—didn’t want to, to be honest. It was guaranteed that I’d run into one of the Hunts sooner rather than later. The thought made my skin crawl, made bile rise up in my throat and my hands tighten into fists. I wanted to kill them, and I wasn’t sure if I could keep myself from doing it, which was a scary truth. I wanted to get my shit together, wanted a damn life, but just thinking about all the trouble they’d caused and how they’d gotten away with it made me see red.
“I’ll cook you dinner,” I told Grandma when we got home. It was the least I could do. She’d spent the whole day running errands with me, and it was after seven.
