Page 81 of One Wild Ride

“Who is she? You know, don’t you.”

He took a breath before lowering the letter to his side. “The only ‘she’ Alex could be writing about, that I know of, is Alexa Dorton. But I can’t imagine . . . Oh no!”

I snatched the letter out of his hand and made a fist, crumpling it and letting it fall to the ground.

Happy fucking birthday, Aria!

“Oh no? What, oh no?”

“Emma had me intercept Alex’s letters when I first started working here five years ago. He wrote to Alexa once or twice a year. Usually birthday or holiday cards. Nothing I thought was out of the ordinary. Except what he wrote on them. And not just that, but what she wrote back.”

His eyes searched the floor as if looking for answers to Alex’s letter on the hardwood.

“What did they write?” I asked.

“It was weird and made no sense. Like they were using a strange language. Nothing I had seen before. I thought maybe it was old Gaelic or German or Russian, but I couldn’t figure it out,” Bradley said and then held up a finger before disappearing out of the room.

My mind raced with two teenagers making up their own language to send secret messages of love to each other. Was I just something to trick Mrs. Hawthorne into thinking they weren’t in love? It’s not like his mom didn’t want them to marry. So why use me like that?

Bradley ran back into the room out of breath. “Here.” He handed a Christmas card to me. “Alexa sent that to him this past December.”

I opened the card to find two paragraphs of words in a completely different language. The words brought a smile to my face. My heart taking refuge in my throat as I tried to speak.

“Oh my God, I know this. I know what it says,” I said as tears ran down my cheeks.

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