Page 9 of The Alpha's Pen Pal

“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “I haven’t opened it yet.”

“Why not?”

I pressed my lips together, deciding how much to tell him about what had happened with Wesley and this pen pal assignment.

“What’s wrong, Haven?” Jack asked, his head looking directly at me now while we waited at a stoplight.

I released my lips, blowing out air from my mouth to keep myself calm and to prevent my voice from shaking. “He wasn’t very kind in his first letter,” I said.

“What do you mean? What did he say?” His brows pulled into a sharp frown at my words, and a tiny part of the walls I had built around my heart crumbled a little at his desire to help me and his need to know how someone had hurt me.

A horn honked behind us, making both of us jump, and Jack muttered, “Shit!” as he turned forward and continued driving. “Don’t tell your mom I said that,” he said, looking at me in the mirror again with a wink.

I rolled my eyes and giggled. Shirley was just as bad as Jack about cursing while driving, and both of them always asked me to keep it from the other. It was hilarious.

“I don’t remember what it said,” I told him. “I threw it away at school.”

That was not actually true. I saved it and took it home, hiding it in the bag I always had ready and packed for when social services came to take me to a new home.

I wasn’t sure why I saved it. I was prepared to tear it up and throw it in the trash. But at the last second, I put it in my backpack instead and took it home to put with the small amount of meaningful, personal items I had collected in my short life.

We pulled into the driveway, and I got out of the car before Jack even put it in park, bounding up the steps to the front porch and racing through the front door. I hung my purple backpack on the designated hook in the entryway, hoping to avoid him asking more questions about Wesley and his first letter.

For some reason, I felt it was important to protect him. If I told Jack what Wesley said to me in the first letter, Jack would tell Mrs. Rodrigo, who would tell her sister, who is the teacher of the class we exchanged letters with, and Wesley would get in trouble.

And, even though he deserved it, I didn’t think it was right for him to get punished for something he didn’t really mean. He was just a kid. Just like me.

As soon as I got up the stairs, I turned right and entered my bedroom, closing the door behind me. I sank to the floor with my back against the door and opened the letter.

My heart pounded in my chest as I read his words, my hands shaking enough that I had to set the paper on my legs in order to read it. I was so nervous about what I might find written there, afraid his words might hurt me again.

I don’t know why I was even reading it, especially after how he treated me the first time, but I couldn’t stop myself. My curiosity had gotten the best of me, and I had to know what he had to say this time.

I read through the letter way too fast the first time, my brain barely processing the words on the paper in front of me. I started it again, this time slowing down to understand what he said to me.

As I reread, another tiny part of the walls around my heart came down. He was sorry. Really, truly, honestly sorry. And he wanted to try again. He wanted be my friend.

And he was kind of funny. The way he rattled on in his writing, his inner thoughts coming out onto the page—I could imagine him talking to himself like that in real life, a constant stream of thoughts and words about everything and anything that happened around him during his day-to-day activities.

A small smile formed on my lips as I read it a third time. I moved from the floor to the full-size bed in the middle of the large bedroom I had been lucky enough to call my own for the last year. I flopped down onto my stomach and grabbed the blanket they found me with, my eyes never leaving the paper in front of me.

When I’d finished reading it, I set it down on the comforter and crossed my arms under my chin on the bed.

My eyes scanned the room around me, taking in every detail. The pristine white computer desk next to the window, the walk-in closet filled with more clothes than I could ever wear, and the much-too-large-for-me attached bathroom, complete with a shower and a separate tub.

Even with these luxuries I had never had access to until moving there, the room still didn’t feel like it was mine. It felt like there was something missing. It didn’t have those personal touches that made it say “this is Haven’s space.”

I thought about the movies and television shows I had watched, picturing the rooms in those stories, and I realized what they all had in common that my room was lacking.

Friends. Or at least tokens of those friendships. There were no photos on the walls, or on top of the dresser, or pinned to the bulletin board by my desk. There were no knick-knacks or trinkets from carnivals or arcade visits. No movie tickets from months ago. No handwritten notes passed during class or at recess or lunchtime.

I’d never made any friends in any of my former homes. Part of it was moving so much and joining classes in the middle of the year when friendships had already formed. But part of it was also because of me. Because I didn’t want to let people in too much, because I was too afraid of having to say goodbye, because I was too focused on protecting my heart from the pain of rejection and the inevitable farewell that would take place. That was why I still couldn’t bring myself to refer to Jack and Shirley as “Mom” and “Dad.”

But maybe… maybe Wesley was my chance. My chance to have a friend, someone who would stick around no matter what, no matter where my life took me.

Maybe he was my chance to heal myself, to let people see behind the wall I had always kept around myself. Maybe, by giving him a second chance, he could be my second chance. Maybe I could find some happiness.

I sprang into action, moving to my desk, my blanket laid across my lap in my rolling chair. I grabbed the first piece of paper and writing utensil I could find—a wrinkled paper with a slight rip and a hot pink felt-tip pen—instead of searching for the perfect pencil and paper like I did the first time I wrote a letter to Wesley.

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