I make it to Heart’s apartment in under fifty minutes, and he opens as soon as I knock. His eyes are red and his face blotchy. It’s the first time I’ve seen him this raw and disheveled, and it does strange things to my stomach.

“What the hell happened?” I ask as he closes the door behind me.

“Terry showed up,” he says, spitting out his name with as much venom as a cobra.

I recognize the name, of course, having read Heart’s file. Studied it, more like. Terry “Slick” Shaffer is a name I’m all too familiar with.

“What did he want?”

Heart drops himself on his bed. “Reminisce over old times? I don’t fucking know.”

I lower myself on his couch. “Why don’t you start at the beginning,” I say gently, sensing Heart is genuinely thrown by the whole encounter.

“He was there when I walked out…leaning against my car as if he fucking owned it.” He sits up, then props a pillow in his back and leans against the wall, wrapping his arms around his legs. “I told him to leave, but he wouldn’t go. He told me he was sorry I got caught, but that it was an accident…that he had missed me.”

I don’t speak until I’m confident I have my temper in check. “Do you believe him?”

Heart huffs. “I’ll never believe a single word coming out of that motherfucker’s mouth.”

That is strangely comforting to hear. “Then what happened?”

“He spouted some shit that doesn’t bear repeating…so I threatened him I would rat him out to the cops, and then he told me if I did, he’d make sure he’d implicate me as well.” Heart meets my inquisitive eyes. “I told him I’d done my time and that he couldn’t pin anything else on me; his parting words were that he managed to do so last time.”

My head reels with the implications of that last sentence. “He admitted to setting you up?” I ask, my voice filled with disbelief.

Heart, unfortunately, takes it the wrong way. His eyes fire up to blazing. “You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m making it up… God, you think I did it, that I stole that shit.”

He gets up from the bed, his body tight with anger. “Get the fuck out,” he says, but I hear the slight tremble in his voice, and more than anything, that convinces me.

Still, I have to tread carefully here. I’m not his friend, his bestie. I’m his PO, and I have a responsibility here.

“I’m not leaving,” I tell him. “Not until you tell me the whole story and give me a chance to believe you. Tell me the whole story, Heart.”

“You’ve read my file, haven’t you? What more do you need to know?”

“Sit down,” I tell him, and when he doesn’t respond, I say it with a little more force. “Sit the fuck down. We’re not done here.”

He throws himself back on his bed, his face mutinous.

“Do you know how many clients I see in a year? You wanna take a guess as to how many of them claim to be innocent?” I ask.

“I’m telling you the truth,” Heart says stubbornly.

“And I’m telling you that as much as I want to believe you, I’m gonna need more. Talk to me, tell me the whole story…”

He hesitates, but then the fight seems to leave him, and his shoulders slump. “Never mind. What good is it gonna do anyway? It’s not gonna change the past. Hell, it’s not even gonna change the future. It is what it is, and I’ll have to learn to live with it.”

An angry Heart, I can deal with. A sexy Heart is more difficult, but so far, I’ve managed to resist. But a sad, rejected Heart? A man who looks like he’s lost all hope? That, I can’t take, and before I know it, I’m on the bed beside him with my arm around him. He doesn’t even hesitate but snuggles up against me, and dammit, it feels so right. I want to protect this man, though I have no idea how or why.

“Please, tell me what happened,” I all but beg him, needing him to trust me.

He’s quiet for maybe a minute before he relents. “I met Terry when I was sixteen. I was…living on the streets, and he took me in.”

“You were homeless?” That hadn’t been in his file, which only showed how selective that information was.

“Yeah. My dad was killed in Afghanistan, and a year later, my mom died as well. I had no intention of letting the state shove me into foster care or some fucked up group home, so I took off.”

“How did you…?” I start but I realize the answer before I finish my question.

He doesn’t look at me when he answers, apparently not needing a full sentence to understand what I was asking about. “I whored myself out. Hand jobs or let them fuck me, mostly. I tried to stay away from blow jobs because sucking with a condom is nasty but without has too many risks. It was good money, considering how young I was and how good I looked. It’s how I met Terry.”

He says it so factual, but it breaks my fucking heart. Sixteen and prostituting himself to survive. Still, I force myself to hold my reactions back. “He was a client?”

Heart laughs, but it’s a bitter sound. “Yeah. He only paid me twice and after that, it was sort of included in the deal of letting me stay at his place, I guess. He’s ten years older than me, with a thing for young boys…even younger than I was at the time, though I didn’t have the tats back then, and I looked younger. He…collected boys, but I didn’t realize it at the time. He reels you in with sweet words and promises, tells you you’re different and that he wants to make a life with you…”

“What happened?” I ask softly, keeping him pulled close against me. I shouldn’t sit like this with him, but I can’t help myself. He needs me…and on some level I can’t even pinpoint, I need him.

“I knew that aside from pimping boys out, he was involved in other shit. Not drugs, ‘cause I had a strict policy about that. I’m clean, always have been, and I stay away from that shit. Terry did, too, which is why I trusted him, stupid enough. He dealt in fake Louis Vuitton handbags, Ray Bans, Louboutins, stuff like that. I knew it was illegal, but I didn’t think it was a biggie. Then he asked me to pick a friend of his up from the airport, and I stupidly did as he asked. Used his car, picked up the guy, and promptly got arrested because the guy had real Prada purses, all stolen from some store…and I had just become an accessory to grand theft. I kept waiting for Terry to come forward, but his partner took a deal and implicated me instead as the mastermind…and I got three years while Terry walked away.”

“Did he set you up to be arrested?” I ask.

“I honestly don’t know. He must’ve suspected something, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked me to pick his friend up… He’d planned to do it himself, so maybe he was tipped off? I dunno. All I know is that he fucked me over, and he did it intentionally.”

“But they must have had evidence against you to get you convicted,” I push. I can only hope he doesn’t take it the wrong way, like I don’t believe him, but I need more facts to make sense of this.

“Yeah,” Heart says, and his shoulders drop again. “It didn’t look good. He’d put his expensive car in my name for tax reasons, and since I was driving it, it all looked like it really was my car. I had his phone on me because I’d need it to contact that friend I was picking up, but it turned out that phone and the data plan were in my name as well. It showed how everything had gone down with that deal, and they had me. God, I was so stupid, but I never thought he’d fuck me over until he did. Even then, I kept waiting for him to tell the truth, to tell them it was all a misunderstanding, but of course, he never did. He was happy to let me do time for him…”

I let it all run through my mind, the facts he’s telling me, the way his ex screwed him over. “But Heart, why didn’t your lawyer say anything?”

Heart lifts his head, which has been tucked away against my shoulder that whole time, to look at me, his eyes showing that characteristic mix of deliberate disinterest and fire. “You mean the public defender who spent maybe ten minutes to read my file before advising me to take the plea they offered me?”

“You pled guilty?”

“No, of course, I didn’t. I’m not that stupid. It didn’t earn me any favors from my lawyer though, ‘cause it meant more work for him. And for the judge. Neither of which gave a flying fuck about a kid like me and the fact that I kept assuring them I was innocent. Like you said, it’s what they all say.”

“Except in your case, it’s true.”

He freezes. “You…you believe me?”

“Yeah, I do. Color me stupid, but I do. I can’t explain why other than that your story rings true to me…and it fits with what I know about you, and what you told me about your ex just showing up.”

His mouth drops open a little, and then his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “I…Thank you. For believing me. I didn’t think anybody ever would.”

“I’m sorry no one ever did, but I do. Now, I’ll need to file a report about your ex showing up, just to make sure you won’t get into trouble for being seen with a criminal associate if he ever shows up again, okay?”

He nods. “Yeah. That’d be…that’d be good.”

I’ve just written down all the information—Heart even had the presence of mind to remember Terry’s license plate—when there’s a knock at the door.

“Do you think he’s back?” I ask Heart.

“I dunno…” he clears his throat. “Who is it?” he calls out.

“Erm, it’s me.”

The voice sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t place him.

Heart visibly relaxes. “It’s a friend of mine. Can you not…”

“I won’t tell him who I am,” I assure him. “No worries.”