My jaw tightened. “It IS a mistake. I didn’t do what they’re saying I did.”
Adrienne laughed for real this time. A dry, humorless sound. “Yeah, sis. That’s all of us.”
I opened my mouth to argue—to explain that no, really, I was actually innocent, this was actually a setup—but what was the point? Everyone in here probably had a story. Probably believed their own story. Who was I to say mine was more true than theirs?
Besides. I wasn’t completely innocent, was I?
I DID steal my sister’s identity. I DID lie to everyone I loved for five years. I DID build an entire life on a dead woman’s name.
I just didn’t kill her.
“So what they got you for?” Adrienne asked, like we were making small talk at a bus stop.
“Murder.” The word tasted like ash in my mouth. “First degree. And identity theft.”
Adrienne’s eyebrows rose. “Damn. They came for your neck.”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my belly again. The baby had settled down, but I could still feel that fluttery movement, that reminder that there was a whole other person counting on me to figure this out. “They really did.”
“Who’d they say you killed?”
I closed my eyes. “My sister.”
Silence.
When I opened my eyes, Adrienne was looking at me different. Not with suspicion. Not with judgment. Just… looking.
“Did you?” she asked quietly.
“No.” My voice cracked. “I found her. After. I found her body and I… I took her name because I was scared and I didn’t know what else to do. But I didn’t hurt her. I would never?—”
I couldn’t finish. The tears were coming now, hot and fast, and I was so tired of crying. I’d cried during booking. Cried in the holding cell. Cried when they took my clothes and gave me these scratchy khakis that smelled like giving up.
“Alright, alright.” Adrienne’s voice was softer now. “I believe you. Breathe.”
I wiped my face with the back of my hand. Took a shaky breath. Then another.
“The worst part ain’t being in here,” Adrienne said after a moment. “It’s not knowing what’s happening out there.”
That hit me like a punch to the chest.
Yusef.
Oh God, Yusef.
He’d watched them drag me out of my own grand opening. He’d seen the handcuffs, the cops, the chaos. After everything that boy had been through with his mom, his father, with me, the shooting, the months of silence and therapy—now this?
Who was with him right now? Was he okay? Had he spoken? Had he eaten? He knew I wasn’t a murderer. He was with me when we found the body.
And my bakery. Sweet Zin’s. The tables were probably still set up for the grand opening that never finished. The banner probably still hanging. My dream, frozen in time like a crime scene.
Because that’s what it was now. A crime scene. MY crime scene.
“You got somebody?” Adrienne asked. “Somebody on the outside fighting for you?”
I thought about Prime.
The way he’d looked at me when they put the cuffs on. Like he was going to tear the world apart. Like he was barely holding himself back from doing something that would get him locked up, too.
