Chapter 25
Andie is quiet as I drive through Atlanta’s busy streets. When she called me from the alley outside, I told Cassidy I had a work emergency. She was pissed, but I don’t care. Anyone who looked could see Andie was crumbling at the dinner table. Steve must know how helpless I feel, because one touch and a murmured exchange with Cassidy saw me on my way, camera-free.
Andie’s been working herself to the bone trying to get this fashion line put out to keep her business in the black, and then her mom blindsides her with a marriage announcement of her own at dinner? On camera?
My blood simmered under my skin as her mom left the table to talk to her in the bathroom. I barely managed polite chitchat with Jim for a few minutes before my skin began to feel too tight. I had to get out, and I had to take Andie with me.
She didn’t question me when I grabbed her hand and pulled her to my SUV, a block away. I don’t have a plan beyond getting the hell out, but seeing her like this reminds me of the night she showed up at my door crying over her mom’s divorce.
I change lanes so I can turn toward Georgia State. I don’t really know what to do, but in my bones, it feels like we need to go back to go forward. I park in a random lot, not caring if I get a ticket, and we both climb out into the humid night air.
Andie closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, turning her face toward the sky. When she looks at me, I nod my head in the direction of a walking path.
Without a word, she slips her hand in mine. We walk for a few moments before she says, “Thanks for breaking us free.”
“Any time.” The campus is mostly empty since school is out for the summer. It’s not long before we find ourselves heading toward the old arts building. Our story started there; it only makes sense, I suppose.
When we make it to the building, Andie gives me a mischievous smile and heads toward one of the side doors. I frown, not sure what she expects to find. It’s summer and it’s after hours. Every door in this place has to be locked.
She lets out a squeal of delight when the door she tries creaks open. I’ll be damned.
As I slip inside, she tells me, “The art students used to find ways to keep the locks jammed, because they never knew when their muse would strike.”
The door shuts behind us, and she slips her hand back into mine. I don’t question it, too afraid she’ll realize her mistake and let me go.
We wander down the hallway as Andie tests a door here and there. She breathes out a triumphant curse when one gives under her push. I’d be a fool not to follow her inside.
It’s not the room where we met, but it’s close enough. Easels folded and stacked against a far wall, a couple of large tables, and a counter along one wall, where extra supplies live during the semester.
In the privacy of an art studio, I finally get the nerve to ask, “You said a lot happened after I left. Do you want to tell me about it?”
I think she’s not going to say anything at all as she runs her hand along the counter. Then she says in a quiet voice, “Well, there was my mom’s divorce.”
“You were hurt by that, I remember.” I slowly walk toward her, needing to be closer. “Have you spoken with your dad since?”
She lets out a puff of laughter and hops up to sit on the counter, demurely crossing her ankles. “Keith isn’t my dad.”
I lean on the counter next to her and frown.
“I’ve never met my dad. Honestly, I’m not sure my mom is positive who he is. Keith was husband number three.” She looks over at me, her teeth sinking into her lower lip. Her eyes flick down to my chest. “Take off your jacket.”
Heat slices through me at the suggestion. I don’t argue, slipping out of my suit jacket. Before I can toss it aside, she takes it from me and shuffles the fabric in her lap until she can see the cuff of one of my sleeves. Her fingers pull at a loose thread.
She shifts so she can reach into her dress pocket and pulls out a sewing kit, of all things. I cover my mouth with my hand to hide my smile. Fucking pockets.
“Always prepared, sweet potato?”
“What would you do without me?” She holds a needle between her teeth while she digs for some thread in the same color as my jacket.
“I don’t want to find out.”
She gives me a look, eyebrows raised. “Noted.”
The flicker of a smile that crosses her face won’t get her out of this conversation. She was truly broken that night she came to me. If Keith was just husband number three, I wouldn’t have had to hold her against my chest for hours while she cried. “Was Keith important to you as a stepdad?”
Andie threads a needle with the confidence of a seasoned professional, then shakes her head. “Not really. It’s just … my mom married him, and they were together longer than the others, and I thought maybe she’d found love and happiness and comfort. The things you’re supposed to want out of a marriage, you know?”
I slip my hands into my pockets and nod. “I take it she didn’t.”
“Nope.” Andie pops the P and pulls her needle through the cuff of my jacket. “What she found was a man with a flush bank account who didn’t have the foresight to ask for a prenup.”
She meets my gaze from under thick eyelashes. This view of her is one of the best I’ve ever witnessed—freckles across her nose, hands at work, eyes asking me a silent question. My hands itch to capture it, somehow. I don’t want to pull out my phone and snap a picture—that would ruin the moment—and there’s nothing to draw on nearby. So I settle for letting my eyes map her lines and constellations, inking them against my rib cage for safekeeping.
Andie lets out a small sigh and turns her attention back to her work. “Jim is husband number six.”
I swallow, fully understanding her mom’s inquiries into the nature of my job and where I live.
“You want to know the worst part?” she mutters, placing stitches with a steady hand. “Every time she gets married, I think to myself, maybe this one will be different. Maybe this one will stick.” She shakes her head. “She did it to keep us safe the first time. After husband number two left when I was a kid, we lived out of her car for a few months. Keith gave us a home, if nothing else.”
Her words are a fist straight to the gut. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t,” she scoffs, eyes still on her work. “What would you have thought if I told you I was homeless in junior high?”
“That we have more in common than I thought.” The words tumble out without my permission. She stops fussing with the jacket and looks at me, her lips parting gently.
I push off the counter and pace in front of her. “Andie, I grew up in a single-wide trailer. I know what it’s like to not have anything.”
“And your parents?”
“Loved each other very much.” When I steal a glance at her, her shoulders have curved inward, and she’s staring at my jacket again. My heart rages against my chest—I just told her I had the one thing she never had: a loving family. I can’t tell her I left because we had too much love, the loss of it nearly broke us.
So I offer her another piece of me. “Every time I go home to see my mom, all I can think of is how they would stay up after I went to bed. The walls were thin, so I could hear them discussing what they were going to give up this week so they could afford a new jacket for me, or shoes, or breakfast.” I rub my jaw with my knuckles and stare at the linoleum floor. “They gave up a lot for me. Sometimes I wonder if they should have.”
“It sounds like they loved you.” She pauses her work to look me in the eyes.
I shrug. “It’s clear your mom loves you, too.”
She nods, then finishes the last few stitches in silence before producing the tiniest scissors I’ve ever seen. “When Keith left, my mom had nowhere to go, and divorce proceedings take a while. So we rented a little apartment together until she could find her next victim. I dropped out of school because I had to work so I could eat. Keith had been paying my tuition, anyway.” She sighs and sets my jacket to the side, folding her hands in her lap. “I got hired at a dry cleaner, and the owner’s mom taught me how to mend things and do small alterations. When they closed down because they couldn’t pay on their business loans, I got work at a bridal shop as a seamstress.”
I stop in front of her and meet her gaze. There’s my missing piece—how she went from a driven business student to a dress designer. One of life’s more humbling moments. And it explains why even her school email address was unreachable at the time.
“You were meant to make dresses,” I whisper. “You’re incredible at it, you know?”
Her lips tilt into a half-smile. “You’ve never even seen one in action.”
She’s right. I saw some half-finished dresses at her studio and poked around her website. “I’d like to,” I admit.
She chews on her lip, brows pulling together in thought. “Is that why you only own three suits?” she asks. “You’re not used to having much?”
“I—” I want to argue, to say it’s just an economical choice. But she’s just seen the truth more clearly than anyone. Besides, last week she said she wanted me. Sort of. So I step closer. I place my hands on either side of her hips and look her in the eyes. “I never want to forget where I came from.”
The muscles in her throat work, and her gaze falls to my mouth. “Do you think we can ever really move on?”
“Andie.” I can’t stop myself from saying her name with so much yearning I should be embarrassed. But if she wants me, this is it. The yearning is part of it.
“How can you look at me like that?” she whispers.
“Like what?”
“Like you still—” She clamps her mouth shut and shakes her head. “I’ve just told you my mom marries to divorce for money, and you know I plan to—”
Something sharp lodges under my ribs at her point. She’s going to divorce me for money, too.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” I murmur, begging her to see it my way. She can stay with me. I’ll help her achieve whatever she wants to. As the idea comes to me, I offer. “You said you needed investors, right? I can do that; I have the means to invest in your company.”
The look that crosses her face is painful. She averts her gaze. “Kit, you don’t understand.”
“Help me understand, Andie. Please.” I want nothing more than to understand. “I’m on your team, remember?”
“I have to do this on my own.” She turns her eyes back to me. Steely determination lights them up. “My mom relies on the graces of whoever will say I do. Her life is in their hands, and at their whims. She did the best she could with what she had, but I—I won’t do it. I won’t leave my life up to anyone but me.”
“You know I wouldn’t do that to you,” I insist, hoping she sees how serious I am.
“Do I?” she asks, determination giving way to something softer. The rawness in her voice reminds me of how we used to be—fearless and fiery and together. Until we weren’t, and it was my fault. I broke more than her trust that night. She rearranged me on a molecular level, and it seems my leaving did the same thing to her.
“I do think we can move on from the past that shaped us.” My voice is stretched thin, and I’m desperate to hold onto this tenuous truce we’ve reached. “I think we can build the life we want. You can travel with me and make dresses for brides around the world. I can help you build your business, and we can eat dinner together every night. Make a family that doesn’t have to worry like we did as kids. I know it feels unimaginable after everything we’ve been through, but I believe we can do it. Let me help you.”
Her voice breaks. “Kit—”
“What do you need from me to know I’m in this with you?”
She runs her finger down the buttons on my shirt, and her lips tilt into a small smile. “You saved me from the horror show that was dinner. It’s a good start.”
I rest my forehead against hers. “Are we really still at the start?”
She sighs. “I feel like we’re getting—”
A door slams in the hall. Shit. If we tripped some sort of silent alarm and the police come searching, we can’t stay. It takes everything in me to push off the counter and let her slide to the floor.
She holds out my jacket. “Let’s just … go home.”