Rage coursed through her, and she whirled on him with her hands clenched into tight fists. “My biological mother, okay?” she said, straining to speak the truth as tears filled her eyes and blurred her vision. “Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Adam stood there motionless, not saying a word, as he stared at her with big, sorrow-filled eyes.

Irritation welled up inside of her. “Don’t you dare stop now. Ask me why. You want to know, right?” Her heart thundered in her chest, and she took a deep, shuddering breath. “You want to hear all about how I went looking for my biological mother, expecting one of those emotional reunions that you see on TV, yet that isn’t at all what I got. Instead, I found the exact opposite.”

“I’m sorry, honey.” He tried to grasp her hand, but she moved out of his reach.

She wouldn’t be able to hold herself together if he touched her right now. “I’d always pictured my biological mom as someone who put me up for adoption because she wanted a better life for me, one she wouldn’t have been able to provide. As if maybe it was a teenage pregnancy situation or something like that. I could’ve forgiven her for that. But what I found instead was a drugged-out woman who had…” She choked back a sob welling in her throat.

After a moment, Adam’s low voice sounded. “Go on.”

She took a deep breath and let out the truth. “Twenty years before, this woman had traded her own newborn baby girl to a drug dealer just to get her next fix.”

The shocking words took him by surprise, and his eyes widened. “God,” Adam said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I was one of the lucky ones. If the person she had traded me to hadn’t been an undercover investigator running a drug sting operation, who knows what would’ve happened to me. Not that she would’ve cared. They put me in foster care, and my biological mother signed away her rights to me while still in jail. Because, in her own words, she had never wanted me, and I had been nothing more than a burden to her.” Her voice cracked.

Fire shot through Adam’s eyes. “That’s unforgivable.”

She nodded. “After telling me all of that, this woman then had the nerve to look me in the eye and ask if there was anything else she could help me with. As if she had done me a favor.” She breathed out a heavy sigh. “The only thing I could say was no…because she hadn’t really helped me to begin with. Then she dared to ask me if I had any money on me, as if I needed to pay her for her time.”

“You didn’t deserve that, sweetheart.”