The sky was overcast and there was a slight breeze, chilling my arms beneath the sweater. I hugged it over the olive-colored dress that was speckled with cream flowers to my sides as I crossed the glass-bottom bridge, careful of the pain in my side. It was getting worse as the day went on, probably from all the walking I’d been doing, but I did my best to ignore it.
The rushing river below helped calm my racing nerves, soothing me while I dragged my eyes off the building ahead of me to the water below. Valor Holdings itself was a non-descript orangish-red brick building no more than ten stories high. It could have been anything. Yet, within those walls were two men who’d become an enigma to me, and the possibility of a future I was still fighting to keep dreaming of.
Sure, I was going to community college, but at one time, I’d been destined for Purdue.
I went to prison before I graduated from high school with a four-point-three grade point average.
The first few years of prison were the hardest, despite finding a core crew of women who had my back. They were older, but Candace forced them to help protect me, and Candace might not have been the warden or in charge of the prison, but I learned quickly fellow inmates didn’t go against her.
Hell, she’d been inside so long she had four degrees by the time I left. Studying and getting an education helped her focus and kept her having goals despite the fact she’d never again be free. She was seventy-eight, but I’d bet my meager life savings and parole she would get at least two more degrees before she passed. She tried to convince me for the first two years to take the GED courses offered to all inmates. It took me that long to take her up on it, another year to actually do it, and then a year went by before I started taking classes through the prison inmate program with the same community college I was currently attending.
With all of that, though, the courses felt like wasted effort. A heavy sorrow filled my soul every time I passed a class. It was virtually impossible not to remember the applications I filled out for my first teenage jobs, that section I scoffed at and even harshly judged when it asked if you had ever been convicted of a felony.
Forevermore, that box would be checked yes. Due to my sentencing and plea, I would have to explain that when I was eighteen, I killed my brother while driving under the influence.
I would be judged from the day of the accident until eternity and sometimes that burden wrapped around me like quicksand, slowly sinking me, pulling harder when I fought against it and hoped for something normal.
To be the girl I should have been.
My steps stalled at the front of the building as my heart pounded inside my chest.
This wouldn’t end well. For me. For them.
And yet, damn it. I knew me. I was intelligent. I’d studied hard in school. There was a time I believed I could have been somebody important.
Why did I always have to think and assume the worst now?
Nancy asked me that question frequently. Give me the name of an ex-con who’s done something amazing with their life? I’d asked her once.
She’d had no reply for me.
But earlier that morning I had hope, believed, even if it was the tiniest amount, that there were people in the world, in this city, who believed in me, who were willing to help me become at least a fraction of who I could have been.
“You can do this,” I said, earning a side-eyed look from the gentleman next to me.
He yanked open the door and walked in first, holding it and giving me an irritated glance.
“Sorry.” I skittered in behind him. “Thank you.”
He strolled forward, business shoes clacking on the tiled floor, and yet he was wearing jeans in new condition with a short-sleeved polo shirt.
Thank goodness I went to Target. I fit in based on a quick scan. David hadn’t lied about their relatively casual dress code.
It made my heart skip a beat. Small measures of honesty mattered when I hadn’t been able to trust much.
Noticing what looked like the main desk, hard to miss with a security guard standing behind a woman around my mother’s age and a wall of plexiglass, I headed there.
“Lilly Huntington to see Mr. Valentine, please.”
Her nameplate said Cori Lawson. I glanced at it and then attempted a smile. My pulse raced with trepidation. Behind her, the guard stood firm. Bald with a mustache and a gut and gun at his belt, it was his fierce expression that held my focus.
Like he knew who I was and what I’d done and he was watching me.
“Yes, Lilly. David told me he was expecting you.” She held out her hand. “I just need to see your ID, please.”
My gaze went back to the surly security guard. With shaking hands, I reached for my purse. “Why?”
“To make your visitor badge.” She might as well have added a duh to the end.
I gave her my ID, cringing at the highlighted words “Identification Card” beneath Iowa instead of Driver’s License. It wasn’t often the different look made people pause and if this woman noticed, she didn’t say anything.
“Thank you.” She took it, scanned it in front of a small machine and then that machine whirred to life, printing out a piece of paper.
She handed both back to me. The paper wasn’t paper, but a sticker, complete with my name and VISITOR stamped in bold, black ink.
“Do I need to wear this?”
Another blank look from the woman. “Yep.”
Right. Obviously. I tore off the paper and tossed it into a small basket on the counter filled with similar crinkled paper and tucked my ID away.
“Eighth floor. You can head on up.”
“Thank you.”
“Elevators are to your left.” She gestured. “Have a great weekend.”
My gaze flickered to the guard. His expression was the same.
“Th-thank you,” I jumbled the words and ducked my head so he couldn’t see how nervous he made me.
Fortunately, the elevators arrived quickly and I waited for at least a half-dozen people to step out. Smiles on their faces. Lunch bags draped over their arms while they happily chattered about weekend plans.
I watched them go with envy filling my veins and stepped into the lift.
Alone. Thank God. I exhaled and pressed the button for floor eight and settled into the back corner.
“Lilly.”
David called my name, walking toward me at a quick pace. I glanced up from where I’d been looking at the floor to see the remnants of a smile fall from his face. “What happened to you?”
I brushed my hand to my cheek. “Nothing. It’s okay.”
“It’s absolutely not okay.” A heavy, heated pulse of anger surged toward me, and I stepped back, not from fear of him, but in surprise.
Tears beckoned. In one fraction of a moment, he showed me more care and concern than my own father ever had.
“You’re right. It wasn’t okay, but I’m fine, or I will be. And I didn’t come today to discuss this.”
Wrinkles pierced his skin as he narrowed his eyes. He lifted his hand as if he wanted to brush away my scrapes and scabs before he shoved his hand to his hip. “Will you please tell me what happened?”
“No.” For the first time since I met him, the two letters left a tang of disappointment on my tongue.
It made no sense, but fortunately, I wasn’t given time to consider why I’d care about disappointing someone I didn’t know. A beautiful woman with thick dark brown hair almost to her waist glided out of a room behind him.