Chapter 27
Maryellen
The beach in winter was a dichotomy. The blue skies when you gazed out the window tricked you into believing it would be nice when you walked out the door. When you did, you were blown away by the winter winds.
So instead of going out by the half-frozen bay waters, I made myself comfortable by the fire.
Gage and Harper’s shore house was nothing short of exquisite.
The couple trips I made down here to help with its design were all before the decorating was completed.
The final product turned out better than I could have imagined.
The drive down Saturday night felt longer than it actually was because I was such an emotional wreck. The guilt I felt for leaving the way I did lingered into today. But I had to escape. I couldn’t face the truth of my own past.
Not yet.
The number of texts I had ignored became so overwhelming I resorted to shutting down my phone. The purpose of coming here was to think about my next steps, and the constant pings were distracting. Especially since I knew most were from Chase. But I needed to figure out how I was going to tell him.
Because I knew I needed to.
He deserved the truth. There was no more hiding it from him. My fear about how he would react to it couldn’t keep me from telling him any longer.
It really wasn’t a question of how I was going to tell him, but where and when.
And getting up the nerve to do it.
As I sat cozied up in the chair, sipping on my drink, I gazed out the expansive windows to the slushy water out back. It was almost easy to forget your problems when looking at the radiant colors of the sunset on the horizon. The fact was, I only created more problems by running from them.
I knew that.
It was weak.
I was weak.
And I wasn’t proud of myself for doing it.
The driver, Tommy, who brought me down last night, said he’d be staying near the island and to call when I was ready to return to the city. Apparently, he had a family member who lived nearby, and he looked forward to these random trips.
The call should be happening now, I knew that. But the pit in my stomach prevented me from turning on my phone and making it. Instead, I poured myself another drink.
That was when the doorbell rang.
It startled me, considering Tommy would be the only one in the area who knew I was here. I assumed Harper or Gage told him to bring me back to the city. As I made my way to the door, I conjured up an excuse to give him that would buy me some extra time here, prolonging my return.
I tore the door open, ready to plead my case.
But it wasn’t Tommy.
“Chase.”
The high pitch of my voice surprised me.
Seeing him surprised me.
His red-rimmed eyes and unshaven face combined with the disheveled suit he wore from last night was a painful sight. He let out a breath when he saw me. One that seemed to have been pent up for hours.
I stumbled back a few steps as my own tears blurred my vision.
“Thank God you’re OK.” His gravelly voice was low as he stood in the doorway.
Time stopped as I stood there, staring at the man I was falling for.
But was scared to talk to.
“Come in, it’s freezing out there and you don’t have a coat on,” I said.
The tentative steps he took once inside were unlike him. He was usually brazen in his approach to things, uncaring of the outcome.
This time, he seemed scared as well.
He followed me deeper into the house. Once we made it to the massive family room, I looked around, not sure where we should go or what we should do. Chase seemed distraught as he rubbed his face. I doubted he slept at all the night before.
That was on me.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked.
He shook his head slightly as he stumbled around the room. When he finally turned around, his broken look gutted me. His glassy, bloodshot eyes stared through me as he seemed to deflate into the chair behind him.
With his face in his hands, his words were mumbled, but I heard him.
“I spoke to my father.”
There was suddenly a lump in my throat the size of an apple, and I couldn’t breathe or swallow. My vision went blurry and my legs weak as I reached for the chair near me. The tears welled up of their own volition, spilling down my cheeks while I remained silent.
As we both sat there, two shattered versions of ourselves, I knew this was only the beginning.
The start of either our healing…or our end.
“Chase, I can explain…” But he didn’t let me.
“Mare, let me finish.” His words were short and gruff as he said them. A voice that was tired.
All I could do was nod.
“My father didn’t want to tell me. He knew it was something you’d prefer to do.
” He paused and shook his head. “Although I’m not sure about that.
I think you’ve been avoiding it since we’ve started seeing each other, am I right?
” He waved his hand in the air and at me before getting up from the chair and moving to the window.
“I’m sorry. I made a promise to myself and you, I wasn’t going to do that. ”
He continued taking in the view. The sun was almost down, the reds and oranges like fire along the skyline.
“I had no idea salt water could freeze like that,” he said.
I went to stand next to him, sharing in the scene. “The Hudson is partially frozen, the bay and the river, so it does happen.”
His hands were in the pockets of his pants. Mine were wrapped around my middle. We stood side by side, each of us fearful of what was to come.
“Mare,” he said as he turned to look at me. The green of his eyes sparkled in the light from the window.
I made sure to look directly into them and give him my undivided attention.
“You need to finish what my father started. I need to know what happened.” He reached out, unwrapped my arm from my waist, and took my hand in his.
“You also need to know I’m not here to judge you.
And…” His words were choked on a sob. “That it hurt me…so much that…you couldn’t trust me enough to tell me any of this yourself. ”
The sound of his cracked voice as he tried to talk destroyed me. My floodgates opened and the tears flowed freely.
Everything I’d feared was happening.
The worst part was he was right. I didn’t find it in me to trust him enough.
“Chase, I’m sorry,” I said. The knot in my stomach almost made me want to bend in half. “I wish I could go back and do things differently, tell you sooner. I know I should have, but I just couldn’t.”
We sat near the fireplace, though I didn’t feel the heat. The chill in the room went bone deep for me.
“I need to know, though, Mare. I need this.” His hands shook as he clasped them in front of him.
“What did your father tell you already?”
“He, uh…” His voice cracked as he tried to tell me. “He got to the part where he paid you the night he hired you and you left his house.”
Jesus Christ. It sounded so bad when he said it like that.
“Do you want a drink?” I asked.
“No,” he said bluntly. “I drank too much last night. It’s why I didn’t get here sooner, I needed to sober up. I want a clear head for this.”
There were no more ways to delay this. He deserved answers.
“OK.” I let out a big sigh, trying to gain the courage I didn’t have.
“You knew I left home as soon as I graduated. It was basically with the clothes on my back. There weren’t many jobs I was qualified for that paid enough to survive here.
The company I signed with said they were a legitimate escort company.
” My eyes wandered around the room and back to the window.
I couldn’t look at him. “They looked the other way if girls wanted to earn extra money.”
The audible gulp he took echoed in the quiet room.
“When your father hired me, I think I’d been with the company for about four months.
He, uh, paid me a huge amount of money that night, for doing absolutely nothing.
Enough that I could take off the next couple days.
And then he texted me a few days later, asking if I would come back to his house.
Considering how much he paid me to just send me off, I figured why the hell not. So, I went.”
Chase leaned forward in his chair with unblinking eyes.
“When I got to his house, well, I guess your house, he invited me in, and we sat at the kitchen table. In front of me were a bunch of documents he had prepared.” I shook my head. “I would come to learn your father truly loved his signed contracts.”
We shared a wry chuckle about the man we both understood.
“He asked me to read them, which I did. And I was thoroughly confused. Because he was asking me to sign a document that promised me a four-year scholarship to college if I got admitted and kept my grades up, paid by him. The catch was he wanted me to come work for him afterward.”
Chase’s eyes went wide as his mouth fell open. “Wait, what?”
“Trust me,” I said. “I felt the same way. This man sitting in front of me was a complete stranger. Other than the wad of cash he’d given me, I knew nothing about him. He could have been scamming me. But when he suggested I have a lawyer look it over, that was when my trust in him started.”
Thinking back to that day, I remembered the excitement mixed with reserved fear that ran through my veins as I sat across from him.
The idea that any of what he proposed could be true was such a crazy concept.
Nothing good had ever happened to me, especially of that magnitude.
But the longer we sat discussing the plan, the more and more it felt real. Like it could happen.
“He told me, since I didn’t have enough money for a lawyer, one of his corporate lawyers would look it over for me. I was too young to understand at the time the idea of a conflict of interest. But the contract wound up being legit. I applied and went to Blue Ridge University.”
Chase continued to sit, stunned, in his chair. It was a most unbelievable story. I knew that.
“Since graduating, I’ve been working for Parker Financial.”
That story has been buried inside me for so many years. Almost a decade. It felt good to let it out. To tell it.
It really sucked that it had to be to the guy I was falling for.
As I watched him digest what he heard, I couldn’t discern how he felt about it. He sat in his chair, looking out the window, staring straight ahead with glassy eyes. He appeared numb.
“So, my father…” Chase started, then stopped, clamping his mouth shut.
I decided to finish for him.
“Your father saved my life, Chase.”