Page 55 of The Wrong Heart

“No.”

“Not one?”

“Not one.”

Bree doesn’t count. She’s just stuck with me.

Owen considers this, worrying his brows together, his tongue poking out to wet his lips. “I don’t either. Maybe… maybe we can be friends?”

This fucking kid might actually raise my cold, decrepit heart from the dead. I swallow, shifting from one foot to the other. “Yeah, okay. You can be my very first friend.”

Jesus, who am I?

It must be the cupcakes. She laced them with her happy sunshine juice.

“Cool,” Owen beams, setting down his car with an extra bounce in his step. “I think my mom wants to be your friend, too. She was watching you paint the other day.”

Yikes.

“Was she?”

“Yeah, and I heard her talking about you to her lady friend. She said she wanted to take out a second mortgage on the house just to hire you as a live-in contractor. Then she did that weird giggle she does sometimes.”

I almost laugh. “You remember all that? Those are big words.”

“Yep. I like to listen.”

Nodding, I take a quick step back and click my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “Hey, wait here. I have something for you.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right back.”

A few minutes later, I traipse back up the staircase with the container of cupcakes from Melody—minus one. I devoured it in my truck the second I hopped in, and goddamn, I have no fucking regrets.

Owen is sitting on the edge of his bedspread when I return, kicking his legs forward and back. His big chocolate eyes light up, only, he hasn’t even noticed the cupcakes yet. He’s just smiling up at me, overjoyed. “You came back.”

“Of course I did. You thought I wouldn’t?”

He shrugs, and it’s a little dagger to my chest. I wonder what this kid has been through.

“What are those?” he wonders, his attention finally landing on the treats. His irises sparkle with excitement when he makes the discovery. “Are those for me?”

“Sure.”

“Wow… thanks, Parker!”

Owen jumps off the bed and reaches for the confections, and when he takes them from me, I feel something shift. A little weight lifting. It makes me uncomfortable, unsettled even, but it also prompts me to snatch the sticky note off the top of the plastic container and stuff it into my pocket before I trudge out of the room. “I need to finish up, but I’ll see you around, okay?”

He bobs his head, his lips already dusted in peanut butter frosting. “Okay!”

Once I’m alone again, about to finish up my paint job, I reach into my back pocket and uncrumple the pink paper square, then scan the girly handwriting staring up at me:

Parker—

I have my starting points.

Now, I have my turning point.

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