Truth was, none of us really understood the courage we had until the moment we needed it most. Winter break had made that clear. How much more courage would the rest of the year require? And how was I this close to finishing college to begin with?
I didn’t want to think about that. Or whether I was ready to teach a class. I didn’t want to worry about when Riley and I would get married or wonder where life would take us after February. I only wanted to live right here and now.
I rolled my chair up to my desk and faced my work head on. One day at a time.
It was seven o’clock before I uncovered the bottom of my inbox. No telling when it’d last seen daylight. I extended my arms behind my head. My outdated desk chair tilted backward much farther than it was ever designed to.
Trey was still busy crunching numbers on a piece of paper under his desk lamp. Even the shadows couldn’t hide the worn creases lining his face. Poor guy needed some rest.
If it weren’t for that stupid incident with Tito last semester, Trey might’ve felt comfortable leaving me here alone. Those carefree days were long gone. It didn’t seem fair for Tito’s impact to be the only thing left. Maybe if I talked to him, got him to back off whatever pressure he was putting on Mr. Glyndon, things could be different.
“I’ll be ready in a few minutes, Trey.” I clambered from my chair toward the back door.
He peeked up from his desk but didn’t say anything.
I flung my coat over my shoulders on my way outside. Amazing how things could transform in a matter of hours. Distant traffic hummed in place of animated voices and shuffling sneakers. Instead of little arms and legs pulling at my sides, the stillness in the air closed around me and collected each exhale.
The outdoor light shined over the ragged basketball net at the opposite end of the court—one more mark of Tito’s recklessness. Not that the rundown court was anything less than what the kids expected. But they shouldn’t have to accept things just because that was how they’d always been.
On the stone bench, I ran my fingertips across the empty spot where Dee’d sat with me months before. Peering at the stars, I tucked the sides of my coat into each other to block the wind from coursing through the hole that hadn’t fully healed.
How could we be losing everything? This place. The work we’d done here. It was supposed to matter. It was supposed to make a difference that would last.
Dee’s voice raced to mind like it always did when I faltered. “I am courageous.”
That courage hadn’t been for nothing. He’d left a legacy. One he didn’t want me to give up on. There had to be a way.
“It’s peaceful, isn’t it?” Trey said from the door.
He strolled over to join me. With his arms folded across his stomach, he surveyed the vacant court. This was as much a home to him as it was to the kids.
“You know, I was thinking.” I angled toward him. “What if we put together an event to raise funds for the center? Make it a service day and get the kids involved. They might not all have talents like Dee, but they each have something to offer. I want to help them see that.”
If we had to close, at least they could take that truth with them.
The light cast a shadow of Trey’s grin over the bench.
I scrunched my lips to the side “What? You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“Oh, quite the contrary. I think you’re much wiser than your years.”
Since when did wrestling with doubt make you wise? I kept my gaze on my lap and dragged the tips of my Converse sneakers along the pavement under the bench. “Do you ever wonder if what you’re doing is worthwhile?”
“I think we all do at some point.” He adjusted his newsboy cap and leaned against the bricks behind us. “Wanting answers isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes—and I reckon it’s more often than not in your case—questions are evidence your heart’s in the right place. It’s when we stop caring enough to ask questions that we end up losing our way.”
“Mm hmm,” I grunted in classic Trey-style. “Spoken like a true sage.”
He laughed his deep hearty laugh. “We’re gonna miss you around here, kid.”
“Hey, you’re not rid of me yet.” I clasped the bench, nowhere near ready to say goodbye.
We both looked out toward the court and held on to the quiet moment a little longer.
“There’s always gonna be brokenness,” he said softly. “Things that don’t make sense, things we can’t change. That doesn’t mean we stop trying.” He motioned in front of us. “You know what this community needs? The only thing more powerful than the weight that holds them down. Hope. And that, Miss Emma, is worth all we have to give and more.”
I swallowed back the tears that’d been threatening to break through all day. Time might’ve been against us. And God knows we didn’t have control over where the road led next, but at least we could choose to face each bend with hope. Even the ones that tried to rob us of it.
“Trey?” I whispered. “I think it’s time I visit Tito.”
chapter eighteen
Imprisoned
The air outside the prison ward hovered on all sides of me like an invisible cell. Thick. Stagnant. The apprehension that’d been building since last night hurled me back to the car. This was a mistake. I reached for the door.
“You’ve got this.” Trey pried my fingers from the handle. “Perspective. Remember?”
I held in a deep breath and exhaled. “Okay.”
I strode beside him as he made his way through a small group of visitors congregated in front of the windowless wall to speak with a uniformed guard at the door. “Marcus, my man.” He clasped the guard’s hand. “We got, what? Like five minutes to visiting hours? You really gonna keep us out in the cold like this, bro?”
“I don’t make the rules, Williams.” He rose from his stool, and I about tripped over my feet, backing up. Who was this guy, The Rock’s brother? His square face could’ve been chiseled out of the cinder block behind him.
His size apparently didn’t faze Trey. He kept messing with him like they were old friends. How many times had he come to visit Tito?
My pulse picked up again. I dwindled a little farther into the crowd, away from the door separating those on either side of it.
A shrill buzz rang into the air and up my shoulders. Trey motioned me inside. After only a few strides across the dingy white tiles, the door closed behind us. I flinched as the echo traveled down the full length of the dim hallway.
Trey prodded me forward. I gripped his coat sleeve and leaned closer each time a stale, musty draft streamed into the hall from a side room manned by another guard.
He stopped each person at the door for some sort of screening before ushering them through the metal detector. I lifted on my toes to see around the burly woman in front of me. A small, square windowpane showed a glimpse inside.
In the far back corner, Tito glanced up from a table as if he felt me staring. One look. That was all it took. I fell back on my heels, chest tightening. Flashes of another scene poured in. Dee’s broken body in my arms. Life draining without any way to stop it. Oceans of heartache. Drowning.
The hallway darkened. Trey’s muffled voice trailed from beside the guard. I strained for balance but couldn’t stand. Couldn’t move. I caved against the wall. What was I doing here?
Trey secured his hand under my elbow. “You all right?” he whispered.
Blinks stood in for words.
He signaled for the pair behind me to go ahead of us. Once they passed, he placed a hand on either of my shoulders and looked at me with the same encouragement that rarely left his eyes. “You can do this, Emma.”
I rehearsed it to myself until a deep, calming breath brought everything back into focus. Straightening, I approached the checkpoint. For Dee.
The door buzzed us in. Several tables cluttered the small room, each with an inmate on one side and a visitor on the other. The prisoners’ orange jumpsuits practically glowed against the du
ll gray backdrop.
I scanned the bleak walls, dodging the cameras, until the waning distance left me no choice but to look straight toward the table approaching too fast. Tito kept his chin dropped to his chest and his hands fidgeting on the tabletop. Without lifting his head, he looked up as we neared. Something in his eyes had changed. My gaze dashed to the floor.
His chair scraped the tiles as he met a half-hug-half-handshake from Trey.
Trey’s unconditional acceptance never failed to catch me off guard. I seized the top of the chair in front of me. My clammy hands skimmed down the metal frame, but I managed to drag it out far enough to sit down.
Tito turned his back toward me and lowered his voice as he talked to Trey. Something about his kid brother. I probably didn’t want to hear it anyway. Tito’s recklessness had landed him in jail and Lucas in juvi. Hadn’t he caused enough damage? Why couldn’t he leave the center alone?
At the table beside us, a little girl—maybe three years old—sat on a woman’s lap. A shabby teddy bear hung from her pudgy fingers and draped over the floor. She stared at the man across from her. Probably her father. Though tears clung to the woman’s eyes, the little girl’s remained vacant, as though struggling to place who this stranger was.
She could’ve been a younger sister of any of the kids at the center. Most likely would’ve been there herself at some point. If it weren’t closing.
The ache of loss rushed in and shut the place out until Trey’s voice cut through the white noise in the background. “I need to speak with the guard.” He motioned toward the door. “I’ll just leave you two alone.”
Alone? He might as well have shouted it through a megaphone. The word kept rebounding in my ears with enough force to knock me over. I gripped the table edge. He patted my shoulder as he passed.
Tito sank onto his chair and stared at the table for a minute before meeting my eyes. “You’s the last person I expected to see here, señorita.”
That made two of us.
He tilted his chair backward and dragged his hands over his shaved head. I looked away. Did I really think I could do this?
His chair dropped onto all four legs. The sharp sound drew a glance from the guard, but he didn’t move.
Tito lowered his head so far that his exhale left a momentary stain of breath on the metal surface. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For hurtin’ you.”
My arms slid off the table onto my lap.
He cut me a glance, but my voice wouldn’t work. He backed out of his chair, faced the cinder block right behind him, and ran his fingers down the concrete. “You have any idea what it’s like to be closed in four walls every day?”
I fiddled with my coat’s zipper, lost for what to say.
He turned and looked at me head on. No pretenses. Just straight, gut-wrenching vulnerability. “When you have no future, alls you see is your past.” He shook his head. “Worst part is, it don’t never change.”
He returned to the table but didn’t meet my eyes this time. He toyed with the corner of his jumper sleeve. “I know Dee would’ve—”
“Don’t.” I bolted up. My chair fell backward and clanked against the tile. Just hearing him say Dee’s name ignited a flare inside me. “Don’t act like you’ve changed. Like you care about Dee.”
I wanted to launch the entire table at him, but all I could do was stand there, anger quivering down my body. “You think I don’t know about you blackmailing our landlord?” Did he think I was stupid?
“What you talking about?”
Why did I ever think he’d be willing to undo the damage he’d caused? I yanked my chair up from the floor and shoved it against the table. “Don’t bother with the act.”
Someone set a hand over my trembling shoulder. “Think it’s time to leave.”
A guard had already reached Tito’s side when I turned to face Trey. He stretched his arm across my shoulders and prodded me forward.
I peered behind me right as Tito and the guard approached the door leading back to his cell. Another geyser of anger went off and whipped me around.
Trey held a hand in front of the guard escorting us out. “Give her a minute,” he said with more authority than he had. The guard nodded to the one at the opposite end of the room, who stopped Tito at the door.
I marched straight up to him. No restraint. Nothing standing in the way of giving him a piece of my mind.
Until I got close enough to see in his eyes.
I stopped short. Everything did. Time. Movement. Nothing hung on but a piercing look of hopelessness. One I’d seen before. From Dee. The moment closed in on me, and all I could say was the only thing I hadn’t planned. “I forgive you.”
Confusion tore across his face the same way it had over Dee’s when he’d received an offer of grace instead of judgment.
Fragmented memories of Dee blurred into the scene in front of me, flooding in one by one until they ended with his last word to me: “Courageous.”
The guard withdrew a set of keys. I blinked away the tear-stained memories but couldn’t erase their impact. “I forgive you,” I whispered again.
With our eyes fixed on each other, Tito and I both flinched at the sound of the heavy door unlocking. He stopped over the threshold and gaped back at me until the door closed between us.
I stayed still a minute longer, staring past walls of judgment into eyes of grace Dee’d never let me forget. I’d clung to his plea to be courageous this whole time, but I never thought it would include forgiving Tito. Was that what he’d meant? Had he known all along?
I retraced my steps across the square tiles toward Trey’s intuitive smile.
Dee’d known I had to come here. So did Trey. And now, so did I.
Unlike when we arrived, I only halfway noticed the surroundings leading back to the car. Trey didn’t say a word all the way home. He didn’t need to.
His Honda idled beside the curb in front of my apartment. I opened the door but stopped, leaned across the seat, and gave him a hug. “Thanks.”
He patted my back. “All I did was drive.”
“And help me face things I couldn’t see on my own.” I shook my head at him. “Just an ordinary day with Trey Williams.”
His laugh filled the entire car. “It’s all about—”
“Perspective, I know.” Speaking of which. I waved a finger at him. “I think we should really put some parameters around this whole perspective mantra thing.”
Another throaty laugh. “You have it down more than you realize, kid.” He tipped his head at my building. “Now, go on and get some rest.”
Hard to argue with that. How could one afternoon have been so draining?
I plodded out of the car and up the sidewalk. A hundred questions from the day had circled through my mind by the time I reached the door. I couldn’t shake Tito’s comment about the past never changing. But what if the future was just as unforgiving? While he might’ve been losing his future, I was losing my past—one I still wasn’t ready to let go of.
I filed into the stairwell behind a girl who lived across the hall.
Riley lunged up from the steps, looking like he’d been holed up in a hospital waiting room or something. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
My floor mate squeezed around him and jogged up the stairs.
I angled my head. “You been waiting a while?”
He leaned against the railing and rubbed the back of his neck. “Just wanted to be here when you got home in case—”
“I was a blubbering mess?”
He laughed as he dropped off the last step. “Better than a worried fiancé, kicking himself for not going with you.”
Something about seeing him waiting for me, knowing I’d need him, set off another round of the day’s already-wired emotions.
I stumbled into his chest and sank into the comfort his arms always provided.
He kissed the crown of my head. Rather than say anything, he simply held me close and let me linger in the one place that silen
ced everything else.
“Sorry. I think all that’s been going on is catching up to me. Reminding me how easily time can be stolen from you.” I nuzzled my face close to his neck. “I just don’t want to take any of it for granted.”
His grin brushed against my hair. “You’re the last person who needs to worry about that.”
I leaned back. He had to be joking.
His steadfast smile deepened. “The first time we passed each other on campus, you know what I saw in your eyes? Life. Everything I’d almost given up on ever finding again.” He rested his forehead to mine. “You don’t take life for granted, Em. You live it with purpose.”
Purpose. That was what I wanted more than anything. To make a lasting impact. Not to live in fear of what I could lose.
With my hand in his, I held on to the truths life never stopped teaching me. No matter what it cost me, I’d sow all I had into what mattered most. Even if it meant confronting my own fears.
chapter nineteen
Credentials
Three weeks of staying busy with classes and schoolwork would’ve been a nice distraction if the fast pace weren’t driving the semester closer to deadlines I wasn’t ready for.
Being less than a month away from our lease termination was bad enough without wondering what kind of backlash Nick had in store for Riley now that his intended February tour start date had passed. And I didn’t even want to think about Jaycee and Trevor moving off-campus soon. All of it wrung my stomach in knots as we pulled up in front of the center.
Riley cut the engine. “Ready to take the spotlight, Miss Business Degree?”
I unbuckled my seatbelt. “You had to go there, didn’t you?” Like I wasn’t nervous enough. Why had I agreed to this? “I’m not sure I’m even qualified to teach. Graduation isn’t for another three months.”
Riley tilted his head at me. “Graduation shmaduation. Having a piece of paper to mount on the wall isn’t what makes you a good teacher.”
I lifted my book bag from the floorboard and hugged it in my lap. “Yeah, well, experience might help.”
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