Her Destiny by Monica Murphy

serious?”
    “Where else am I going to stay? I can’t afford a hotel room.” I didn’t plan out this trip as thoroughly as I should have. I assumed Reverie would accept me with open arms and let me stay at her place the moment she saw me.
    Guess that’s what I get for assuming.
    “So you just came here to try and…what? Find me? Convince me we belong together? And stay in your truck like you’re homeless or something?”
    Her words are pissing me off. I feel like enough of an idiot, I don’t need her to make me feel worse. “I’m not fucking homeless. You know I have an apartment,” I mutter as I crank the engine and throw the truck into reverse, backing out of the parking spot so quick, the tires peel loudly against the asphalt.
    She flinches at my words, gripping the handle above her head as she glares at me accusingly. “I didn’t say you were. I just don’t understand why you came all the way here without a plan. You always seem to have a plan.”
    “I wanted to see you, okay?” I hit the brakes at the parking lot exit and turn to find her watching me with a wild spark in her gaze, her fingers still curled around the plastic handle above her head. “I wasn’t thinking. Wasn’t planning. All I wanted was to see you again. You were all I could focus on. I was stupid.”
    Reverie doesn’t say a word and we stare at each other for a long, tension-filled moment. Finally she looks away, averting her face so she’s looking out the window. I pull out of the parking lot, driving aimlessly until she finally says, “We can go back to my place.”
    Relief fills me and she gives me directions when I ask, since I can hardly remember where I went when I followed the bus to her apartment complex last night. Other than her occasional guiding comment, she says nothing and I do the same, afraid I’m going to blurt out something stupid yet again.
    I should’ve never admitted to her that she was the only reason I came to Los Angeles, but she had to know this right? There’s nothing here for me. Only her.
    “Is your brother home?” I ask as we pull into the apartment parking lot fifteen minutes later. It’s starting to sprinkle, the rain dotting my windshield and blurring my ability to see but I still haven’t turned on the windshield wipers. I don’t want to face Evan. He would probably try and kick me out, not that I can blame him. I’m the asshole that took his sister’s virginity and made her cry.
    “No, Evan’s at work. He won’t come home for hours.” She smiles ruefully. “We both work a lot now.”
    “Complete turnaround from a few months ago, huh?” I park my truck and turn off the engine, pulling the keys out of the ignition. I clutch them in my hand, the metal digging into my palm as I turn to face her.
    Her smile turns real and seeing it sucks the breath out of my lungs. “Yeah. It’s kind of crazy, how much my life has changed.”
    “Trust me, I get it. One minute everything is good and then the next, it can all change. In a blink of an eye, all because of what someone else did, not because of your own actions.”
    She contemplates me, tilting her head, her long, wavy blond hair spilling over her shoulder. “You do get it, huh. After everything that happened to you, when your friend betrayed you, were you scared?”
    “Yeah. I was.” More like I’m scared she’s gonna reject me for good and send me away. And I don’t want to get out of this truck. I like the way she’s talking to me, looking at me. Like she trusts me again. “Your parents betrayed you too.”
    “They did,” she agrees, nodding once. “I feel…guilty.”
    “You didn’t do it,” I point out, surprised she’d say such a thing. “You didn’t steal all that money.”
    “But I spent it. I benefited from what my parents did. I lived an amazing life that was funded dishonestly. I wish I could pay all of those people back.”
    “That’s not your fault. You’re just a kid, Reverie.” Giving in to my urges, I