The Confession Read Free

exhausting.
    â€œActually, I . . .” I hunched over the washer. “You already knew he’d be busy, didn’t you?”
    She inhaled, cheery as an ad for kids’ cereal, and acted as though she hadn’t heard me.
    â€œWhen do you get off? Five?”
    â€œSomething tells me you already checked what time I get off.”
    â€œYou could be over by five thirty. I’ll rent a movie if your dad’s pulling a late one.”
    â€œAmy.”
    â€œAll right.” She rubbed her hands together, avoiding my gaze. “Good talk. See ya at five thirty.”
    â€œAmy.”
I blocked her from leaving the room.
    She stayed tense while I sighed.
    â€œAnna, just let us,” she said quietly. “Just for a while.”
    How long?
I wanted to ask. They’d been doing it since the night on the bridge. Two and a half months of constant
support
. I’d left Alec so everyone could move on, unafraid, leaving the chaos he’d brought into our lives behind, but instead they’d put everything on hold to watch me like I was a ticking time bomb.
    I should have been protecting Amy after everything that had happened, not the other way around.
    But as she faced me, green eyes rounding even as her thin lips pursed, I knew there was no turning her down.
    â€œI have a CASA thing at five thirty,” I said. “I’ll be over before seven.”

Two
    T he Children’s Museum ran a special program for foster kids after hours on Wednesday nights. This month they’d brought in local artists to give lessons. It wasn’t technically a Court-Appointed Special Advocate event, but it was a good chance for me to check in on Jacob, the first boy I’d been assigned to.
    The parking garage was next to the main building, but I took a metered spot on the street. It wasn’t that I was afraid of the dark, but I wasn’t stupid. Parking garages were prime places for predators to attack, and I didn’t exactly have a great track record.
    After putting my neon blue sewing machine of a car in park, my fingers grazed absently over the small button hidden beneath the center console. Alec had installed the “kill switch” days after he’d gotten out of prison. It had saved my life once. Now it was one of the few reminders I had left that he’d ever really cared about me.
    Grabbing my purse, I left the car. The air was still muggy, the result of an afternoon shower, and immediately made my skin glisten. I had been told this was the hottest August in years, a slow burn in a relentless summer.
    The traffic light turned green up ahead, and the cars zipped past, drawing my gaze across the street to the trendy restaurants that lined the block.
    My heart thudded to a stop.
    Behind the wall of windows making up the front of a tapas bar was a man, seated at one of the tables. He wore a baseball cap, but even from here I could see a hint of dark hair that curled out from beneath it. Though he was turned to the side, it was obvious his shoulders were broad by the thick girth of his upper arms. His legs were too long for the little table he sat at; his knees hit the underside, even with his feet stretched beneath the empty chair opposite him.
    He was staring at me.
    â€œAlec.”
    Saying his name aloud made something in my chest twist even as it made my mouth water.
    At the blare of a horn, I jumped back. I hadn’t realized I’d stepped into the street, but even as I backed into my car I felt the urge to lean forward again. There was a pull coming from inside that restaurant, like the whole building was magnetized.
    When I looked again, Alec was gone.
    I didn’t think about it. If I had, I would have told myself to go into the museum and say hi to the kids. Instead, I waited for a break in the traffic and raced across the lanes. Even as my hand gripped the door handle, I could feel my blood begin to buzz.
    Alec was here. He’d seen me. He was close.
    I