“You’ll what?” Wren asks innocently, utterly unaware of what she’s doing to us.
“Yeah, Pete? You’ll what?” I ask with a smirk as Jagger watches him with narrowed eyes. He seems to think it’s hisjob to protect her innocence. Pete wants to corrupt her. Sly is dying to get his hands on her, but agrees with Jagger most of the time. And me? I’ll take her anyway I can have her. Innocent, corrupted, she’s perfect no matter what. I think she can handle more than Jagger and Sly believe she can. They worry that if they corrupt that innocence, that she’ll come to her senses and realize that we aren’t exactly the good guys here.
Is her brother a giant piece of shit who planned to sell her? Yes. Did we kill his men because they were harming others? Also yes. But that doesn’t make us the good guys. We’re all guilty of murder, and whether they deserved it or not, we still did it.
“Never mind,” Pete finally answers, shoving a forkful of noodles in his mouth.
When we’re done eating, I switch on the TV and look for a show on animals or travel. She seems to really enjoy watching both of those. Jagger pulls her legs into his lap as she leans against me. Settling on a show about elephants, I start to play with strands of her hair and take some comfort in the calm before the storm.
Robert was going to pay for what he did to her, what he did to all of us. I still can’t believe her brother is the same man who got me wrongfully convicted. How had none of us pieced it together before?
I glance down at her bag beside the couch and see the white edge of an envelope. I reach inside, careful not to dislodge her from my side, and pull out the stack of letters she saved. A warm smile covers my face. She ran away from home, and our letters were something she deemed worthy enough to bring with her.
I thumb through them and find one I sent her about five months ago. Opening it up, I let out adeep exhale, remembering her letter that I was responding to, one where she had finally admitted she had no other friends, except for us.
My dearest Wren,
Got your letter yesterday. Read it five times just to make sure I didn’t miss a single word.
It makes me sad that you don’t have any friends out there in the real world. That kinda hit me, sweetheart. You’ve been writing to four convicted felons for months, and somehow we’re the best company you got?
I don’t like the thought of you sitting alone somewhere, thinking you got nobody. Cause you do. You got us. Maybe that’s not what you meant when you signed up for this penpal thing, but tough luck, you’re stuck with us now. With me.Especially me.
If I could, I’d sit next to you and tell you stories until you laughed so hard you snorted. (Don’t lie, you seem like a snorter.) I’d teach you how to play cards and cheat. I’d make you forget every person who ever made you feel like you didn’t belong.
And yeah, maybe it’s weird that a guy in a prison is saying that. But sometimes the right people show up in the wrong places, yeah?
So here’s the deal: you keep writing, I’ll keep answering. That way, neither of us has to be alone.
Dex
P.S. I tried to find a flower in the yard to send to you, but there’s nothing but dirt and grass out there, so I drew you one instead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
WREN
When the show on elephants ends, Dex surfs through the channels until he finds The Bachelorette. I not-so-secretly sort of love this show. It was like a glimpse into dating.
What concerned me most was why Laurie had to choose. Mark, Micah, and Theo all seemed like perfect matches for her. I try to subtly glance at each of my guys, scattered around the couches, as I wonder for the hundredth time if I’ll eventually have to choose.
I should ask.
Yep, you should definitely ask.
But I won’t. How could I? What if the answer was yes, I had to choose. Then what? This way, I could pretend to be utterly oblivious to the fact that three of these fourveryattractive men had kissed me, and all of them seemed interested in more than friendship.
I do feel relatively inexperienced with this sort of thing, though, so for all I knew, it was normal for friends of the opposite sex to be attracted to each other. Do friends havesex together sometimes? How complicated would that be? How would you ever know who’s your friend and who you’re in a relationship with?
For now, I wasn’t going to ask those burning questions. We had more important things to deal with, anyway, like Robert. Just thinking about him makes my hands clench into fists, and my stomach churn.
I can hardly believe he’s responsible for sending my guys to prison. I feel foolish for never putting it together before. Why did I never wonder why he had a list of their names? Thinking back, I was just so caught up with the excitement of having these four intriguing men write to me that I forgot all about the Big Sister program and how I found them.
Now I know the truth, I know I can’t keep running from Robert anymore. Hopefully, once we get to Ashford Springs, we’ll be able to come up with a plan to get them declared innocent and have Robert arrested for lying… Or something. I wasn’t actually sure what charges could be laid against him. It wasn’t like he personally accused them of murders they didn’t commit. He was just working behind the scenes to set them up. He must have been.
Jagger squeezes my calf, and my eyes move to meet his. He tilts his head in question, and I shake my head, unsure what he’s asking.
“You okay?”he signs.
