65. Chapter 65
“Without a legitimate medical excuse—which I don’t have—I’m going to lose my job.”
“That’s it? No other options?” Lindsey asked.
“I’ve been gone for weeks.” Helen glanced warily through the doorway at the men around the kitchen table. “If I don’t want to get fired, I have to go back and shore things up in person. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to lose the money, but…”
“But what?”
Helen looked away and shifted in her sandals.
“What, Helen?” Lindsey pressed.
“What if this whole thing with Graham blows up in my face? I don’t think it will,” she was quick to add, “but what if it does? What if I lose this job and then Graham and I break up—it’s not unheard of, it’s happened before—and I’m left with nothing again?”
“He—he—” How did Lindsey end up the voice of reason for Helen and Graham’s relationship? “He loves you.”
“And I love him more than anything. More than my work, honestly, it’s just different. You know him. You know how fast things can fall apart.”
“I don’t know him the way you do,” Lindsey said.
“I don’t think I’m wrong to be cautious.
If I didn’t love my job, then the decision is easy.
This all happened so fast. First the trips, then coming here.
I kept rolling with it, thinking it would end soon.
Who’s to say at the end of two weeks there’s not another letter or video or something else we have to do to get the money? ”
Lindsey opened her mouth and shut it, knowing Helen might be absolutely right.
“How can I give the university any answers about what I’m doing if I don’t even know?” Helen demanded.
“Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?” Lindsey asked.
“I’m trying to be rational.”
“Which doesn’t work in Jason’s messed-up world.”
“I didn’t know what I was signing up for.”
“Neither did I, and there were plenty of times I should’ve left too.”
Helen paused, leaving Austin hanging in the air between them.
“You can’t fault me for considering it,” she said finally. “Do you really think Jason wouldn’t give them the money if I left? He didn’t even know I’d be here. What gives him the right to mess with my future?”
“Six million dollars,” Lindsey said plainly.
“You really think if I leave, the money leaves with me?”
“You heard what he said in the video,” Lindsey said. “And I think a lot more would go than that.”
“This is so unfair,” Helen groaned. “I don’t want to be in the position to decide anyone’s future besides my own.”
Fair didn’t seem to factor into Jason’s thinking. He was dying when he made the rules, and there was nothing fair about cancer either.
Lindsey forced herself to ask the burning question: “How long did they give you to decide?”
Helen bit her bottom lip. “Two days. I have to be back in Austin no later than Monday.”
Two days. There were still four days remaining of Jason’s required fourteen.
If Helen left, there was no money.
If Helen left, it was all over.
Two days…
“What do I do?” Helen asked, grabbing Lindsey by the elbows. “This isn’t what I wanted. How am I supposed to fix this?”
Lindsey blinked hard a few times and latched on to a passing idea that was slightly more hopeful than the taillights of Jase’s bike shining in her eyes.
“Couldn’t you fly early on Monday, save your job, and get back before the end of the day? Wouldn’t that work?”
“It all depends on whether I can convince them to give me a few more days to satisfy Jason’s will. From the way it sounded today, I don’t know.” Helen’s chest caved with a deep sigh. “What would you do?”
“What would I do?”
What would she do? She’d never loved a job in her life. Helen’s willingness to jeopardize both love and money for a career was beyond Lindsey’s very limited understanding of passion for one’s work. She had no passion. She—
I have no passion.
Her stomach hollowed with the realization.
Luke had been forced into a career by a father who was passionate about being a doctor, whereas Lindsey flitted around as if the clock wasn’t ticking, pretending she didn’t feel left behind by her high school friends who stopped checking in on social media and her college friends who stopped coming by the college bar she worked at once they got busy starting careers, getting married, buying houses, and making babies—doing all the things she was supposed to want to do herself.
In a year with Graham, her longest relationship, he wasn’t the only one who never mentioned engagement rings or suggested moving in together.
Helen was passionate about her work and her fiancé. Lindsey had never loved anyone or anything enough to run wildly toward them.
Until, maybe, now.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. What do you want? What’s your big dream?”
Helen had asked Lindsey the same question at her apartment. Helen’s answer now was firm.
“I want to find a way to have it all.”