me expecting m

d on Jessica's phone just as she st

en lowered the phone

r stomach was empty, and the last money in her purse would barely cover the

to survive in a house where her ow

ss was faded, her hair was untidy, and exhaustion had settled beneath her

ad no

sav

to tu

or her: another accusation, another cruel comparison, and another re

into her handbag and loo

"I don't know how much

r feel safe. He had called her his princess, listened to her dreams

was g

, home no longe

ard the road, forc

ended, someone she had never met would make a

world had no idea that the girl he wo