Page 43 of The Alpha's Pen Pal

I wiped my eyes in a frenzy, turning away from him, intent on rebuilding my carefully constructed walls before I looked at him again. I couldn’t let him see me cry. I wasn’t that girl. The girl who cried in front of people. And especially not him. Not after what he did to me.

“I never got a letter,” he said from behind me. “I never… I would have written to you. If I had known where to send it, I would have written to you, Haven.”

I glanced at him, and he was watching me, and I couldn’t understand his expression. “When did you send it?” he asked.

“After I was adopted,” I told him. “I had your address memorized. I showed the letter to my mom—Melissa—and asked her for a stamp. She said she’d take it to the post office for me.”

I crossed my arms and fidgeted with the sleeve of my sweater, hiding my hands so Wesley wouldn’t see them shaking.

“I swear to you,” he started saying, his voice low but sure. “I swear to you, Haven, I would have written back to you. I never would have let you think you were alone. I never… I never got a letter.”

I watched him out of the corner of my eye, and he looked around the apartment, a longing, wistful look on his face. When his eyes landed back on me, he sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ll-I’ll go.”

I nodded and swallowed, and continued to watch him from my spot with my back mostly turned on him. When he reached the doorway, he paused and pointed at the box. “I brought those for you. You can… you can do whatever you want with them.”

Then he left. And I cried. I cried harder than I had in a long time. I covered my mouth with one hand as the other used the wall to keep me from collapsing to the floor, somehow feeling even worse than I had when I thought he’d ignored me.

CHAPTER 17

HAVEN

Once I had composed myself, I pushed off from the wall and walked to the table, where the box Wes brought with him sat. I glared at the offending item. Why he’d left it behind was beyond me. I didn’t want it. I wanted nothing to do with him.

I lunged for it and snatched it off the table, then stomped to the door, ready to take it to the dumpster behind our building. But the force of my movements sent the box flying to the floor as it slipped from my grip, sending the contents tumbling out and across the plank flooring.

I froze in my tracks, staring down at pages and pages of letters, my nine-year-old handwriting in the glittery purple gel pen ink sparkling back up at me.

My throat tightened, and my heart thumped against my ribs. I knelt down on the floor and gathered the pages, taking care to not bend or crinkle any of them.

With slow, precise movements, I stacked them together, putting them in order from the very first letter I’d sent him to the last, while also placing four letters written in his handwriting behind those. The last item on the floor was one of the few pictures I’d sent him—one of the glamour headshots Shirley had done for the auditions and the ballet competitions I was supposed to participate in that spring before my life went to shit.

It was wrinkled and faded, but otherwise recognizable. I had too much makeup on in it, making me look a little older than the nine years I was at the time. I laughed to myself, remembering Jack complaining that I looked way too grown up for his liking.

Another tear fell down my face, but I blinked back the rest, holding back the new torrent of emotions threatening to overtake me. I stood from the floor and walked to the living room, sitting on the plush couch, where I began my deliberate reread of my letters to Wesley.

With each letter, the ice in my veins melted, and I felt my lips beginning to smile. I laid each letter side by side as I finished them, creating a small timeline of one half of our story on the coffee table in front of me.

By the time I got to the final four letters, the ones written by Wesley, doubts were forming in my mind. Why would he keep all of these if he didn’t care?

But that question raised more questions, ones I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answers to. I pressed on, picking up the four letters from Wesley and reading them.

I read through each of them once, and then again, and then again. My lip quivered as I set the last one down, the one where he’d asked me to call him, and for the third time that day, tears made their way to my eyes and down my face.

I buried my face in my hands, pressing my palms against my eyes to stem the water trying to escape. The four letters I’d just read collided with my memories and my convictions about who Wesley really was. Everything I thought I knew was jumbling around in my head, mixing together until I couldn’t tell up from down, right from left, or true from false.

I stood up abruptly and walked to my room to grab my phone from my bag on my bed. I pulled it out and unlocked it, then paused, staring at all the missed calls and ignored texts Wesley had sent me that morning.

I groaned. I wanted to run my hands through my hair. But I couldn’t because of the slicked back and tight bun I had in my hair from class that morning.

I paced in front of the foot of my bed. Back and forth, back and forth, the boxes of my pointe shoes creating a gentle tapping noise on the plank flooring of my bedroom. I didn’t want to. But I knew I had to.

I stopped dead center and dialed my mom’s phone number before I could change my mind.

Ring. I popped my left foot up to the side, pushing over the top of my pointe shoe to stretch out my arch.

Ring. I straightened my leg and brushed it out in adegagé, then closed it in front of my right foot into fifth position, my head tilted down to watch my legs and feet.

Ring. “This is stupid,” I muttered to myself, and I almost hung up, but the line clicked as my mom answered.

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