Free Lucky Penny by L A Cotton Page B

should have killed me as well. With no family to take me in, the state had no choice but to put me in foster care. At the time, I was too numb to care. My world had been ripped apart, and if that wasn’t enough, it chewed me up and spat me out. I wanted to die. Wished over and over that the accident had taken me as well. But instead, I ended up on the front porch of a run-down house in Lancaster, Ohio. ‘The Freemans are good people,’ my social worker had said to me on the car ride over. I didn’t care if they were the fairy godmother and Santa Claus—no one would ever replace my parents.
    Being all alone in the world is a scary place when you’re a child. But I wasn’t alone for long. Blake was the only other kid in the group home who tried to get to know me. The others were okay, except a mean girl called Amy, but they didn’t want to be friends.
    Blake was different.
    He stuck up for me, made me laugh, and enjoyed my company. He wanted me around.
    He was my best friend at a time in my life when I thought I’d never feel whole again, and in the end, Blake had done the impossible. He had started to piece together some of the brokenness in me. Although he could never replace my parents, he did make living each day a little bit less painful.
    And then one day, he was gone—taking with him a part of me that had never been replaced.
    The day I aged out of the Freeman group home, the social worker had asked me what the first thing I was going to do now that I was an adult. I looked at her, choking down the tears building behind my eyes, and said ‘never look back.’
    And that was exactly what I did.
    I didn’t dwell on what had happened to me at the hands of Derek and Marie. I didn’t allow myself to cry any more sleepless nights over Blake. I lived each day as it came and learned how to navigate the world on my own.
    I became a survivor.
    Even if I wasn’t really living and only existing, I didn’t let myself get close to anyone or put my trust in others. I built walls around me so high that it was virtually impossible to climb over them, and when I did finally let someone in, my anxieties prevented me from taking the next step.
    Or, at least, that was what I had thought until I saw him again. But now, as I sat across the room from Blake, I couldn’t help but wonder if my attempts at relationships had all failed because he was the benchmark. Because the sixteen-year-old guy I had fallen in love with, who understood me like no other, still owned my heart.
    “What are you thinking?” Blake broke the heavy silence between us.
    After I let him into the cabin, I’d returned to the bed and he had taken the rickety chair in the corner of the room. We had been sitting like that for the last twenty minutes.
    I pulled at the frayed hem of my shorts. “Nothing. Everything.”
    “Just like my song, huh?”
    “Yeah, I guess. I didn’t know you played the guitar?”
    “I didn’t. It’s a recent thing. Troy is a great teacher. Listen, I’m sorry if the song was too much. I wrote that a long time ago when things were, well, when things were confusing. I didn’t plan to sing it tonight, but I saw you and it just came out.”
    I dropped my eyes and took a deep breath. Blake seemed to have no problem talking about us, when all I wanted to do was talk about anything but us.
    When I didn’t look back up, Blake whispered, “I never forgot about you, Penny.”
    This was getting us nowhere. Being around Blake made me feel like I was drowning, and if I couldn’t breathe, how was I supposed to articulate all of the feelings rushing through me?
    “I’m not sure I’m ready to do this.” I lifted my head slowly to meet his eyes and replied honestly.
    “Do what? I’m not asking anything of you. I just can’t keep pretending like it’s nothing that we’re both here.”
    What does that even mean? I wanted to yell at him, but my voice failed me. Instead, I said, “And I can’t keep reliving the past. It was a long time