Page 47 of All the Ugly Things
“No, Lilly. Thank you for this opportunity. Truly. See you soon, okay?”
I said okay and hung up, feeling that strange sensation in my chest again and that weird warmth spreading through my blood.
Hudson hadn’t been lying. It made Mr. Valentinehappyto help me.
What kind of manwas he?
“Only one way to find out,” I muttered.
After a quick stop at Target to buy myself a dress—hopefully on the clearance rack—I headed to Valor Holdings.
12
Lilly
Istepped off the bus one stop early to give myself time to relax and prepare. Throughout the late morning and early afternoon, I questioned this decision so many times my head started to hurt. After a quick trip to Target where I found two dresses, I bought them both without trying either on. A twelve-dollar dress on an out-of-season clearance rack had never felt like such a glorious splurge. Thankfully, I had a gray cardigan in decent shape to cover the spaghetti strap sleeves, making it almost weather appropriate.
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.
