27. Manila Envelopes Ruined My Life #2
“Today? That’s…okay. Well, I stopped by your house and left you a message, I even went to Maverick’s preschool looking for you…
The reason I wanted to talk to you was I found this in my grandad’s records.
” I handed her the envelope I’d found and explained to her that I’d been to see Blackburn and what he’d said.
The way Felicity was looking at me, like I was a stranger, was unsettling.
Her eyes were restless, uncertain, like she was working a calculus equation in her head and every answer pointed to catastrophe.
I’d watched her face cycle through every possible emotion in the last thirty minutes, and now it was as if she’d arrived at a conclusion so bleak she could hardly get it out.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
Did she not understand she held the cards here?
“It’s just…it’s kind of a big coincidence, isn’t it?”
My brows furrowed. “What is?”
She gestured at the matching envelopes, like this new, hellish version of the Montagues and Capulets exchanging bullets instead of roses. “The day I am given this letter, you happen to find the exact same information. I mean, what are the odds?”
I felt the ground shift under us, and not in a romantic, tectonic plates-colliding kind of way—more like we’d both stepped off the same rotten pier and were waiting to see which of us would sink first.
“What are you insinuating?” I tried to keep my voice calm, but I could feel old instincts firing, protect, defend, fortify.
She didn’t answer for a long moment, and when she did, the words came out in a rush, like she’d been rehearsing them. “Tanner said some things.”
“Tanner?”
After clearing her throat and licking her lips, she continued, “He said that your family hired me, and that you showed interest in me…because…well, you know.”
Defensive didn’t come close to what I was feeling at that moment. “No, you’re gonna have to spell it out for me.”
She took a deep breath. “He basically was saying it was specifically so you could get close to me. That it was all some kind of setup to get me to forgive the loan.”
I heard the words she’d said, but it took a second to process them. When it landed, it hit so hard and so stupidly that I almost laughed. Almost. Except she wasn’t laughing and her hands were shaking in a way that told me whatever this was, it was not a joke to her.
“You honestly think I, that we hired you, and that I started, whatever we are, for the express purpose of manipulating you into forgiving a loan?”
She made a helpless, frustrated sound. “No, I’m not…I mean. I don’t know, but I do know that you showed up the first night I arrived like a cowboy superhero to save the day. I got the job the second day I was here. And then you…we…I mean you’re a heartbreaker.”
I fucking hated that name.
She continued, “You’ve never had a real relationship, but you’re suddenly in love with a single mom with a kid, with baggage?”
“You’re more than a single mom, and Maverick is…he’s not baggage.”
“I know that.” She took a deep breath as she shook her head. “I’m not saying…It’s just…the timing is…I’ve seen what people will do for money, for a few hundred dollars a month. This is millions.”
I could see the pain in her eyes. I knew that her childhood wasn’t the easiest, that her foster families had used her for a check every month. Was she putting me and my family in that same category?
Before I could respond, the sound of footsteps and high-velocity voices came barreling down the hall.
There was a loud knock before the door opened, and my mom walked in, followed by Sadie, my soon-to-be sister-in-law.
They both looked from Felicity to me and back again, eyes bright with battle gossip and the kind of energy that meant whatever they were about to drag Felicity into, the option of refusing was off the table.
“Felicity!” my mom boomed, the name bouncing off the walls. She locked onto Felicity with the intensity of an air-traffic controller on a distress signal. “So glad you’re here! Do you have a minute to go over last-minute wedding plans?”
Dawson and Sadie’s wedding was only a few weeks away.
I’d wanted to ask her to attend as my date, but since she was working it, I hadn’t.
Now, I wished I had. Or maybe that would have just been more proof to her theory.
I had no idea, since that theory was wrong.
My mom didn’t hire her for any reason other than she was qualified, and also probably because she was a single mom new to town, and Walter’s niece.
I hadn’t even wanted to hire her. She’d basically given me no choice in the interview.
And I sure as hell didn’t want to fall in love with her, but that ship had sailed the first time I saw her standing in the doorway with a tennis racket and mace.
I was a goner. But how did you prove that to someone?
During the silence that followed my mom’s question, her gaze swept the room with a general’s suspicion, her eyes lingering on the two battered manila envelopes on my desk, then darting to Felicity’s posture, my own defensiveness, all of it registered in a microsecond.
“It’s not a good time,” I replied.
“Sure!” Felicity enthused, speaking over me as she quickly stood from her seat like it was spring-loaded, looking relieved that our conversation was over. “Let’s go to my office.”
No. I didn’t want to leave things like this with Felicity. I tried to protest but the three women disappeared from my office before I find a reason to keep Felicity from leaving.
The door shut, and I was left in the sudden vacuum.
I sat for a minute, just breathing, feeling the shape of her absence in the room.
That was the thing about Felicity: she flooded a space with her presence, made everything warmer and better and more alive.
When she left, the emptiness was a physical ache.
I looked at the two envelopes, and it hit me how they looked like evidence bags, like the smoking guns of a crime neither of us knew how to confess to.
I thought about what she’d said, about the reason for her being hired and our relationship being some sort of a ploy to manipulate her.
How she’d implied she’d been used before for money.
Her suspicion clearly came from a place old and deep.
That hurt, more than I’d expected, and I wasn’t sure what to do with it.
I put my head in my hands and just sat there, elbows digging into the desk, willing the world to make sense for even a minute.
It didn’t. All I could picture was Felicity’s face, the confusion and anger and something that looked a lot like betrayal.
She was currently being pumped for wedding opinions about floral arches and specialty cocktails, and all I wanted to do was go into her office, tell my soon-to-be sister-in-law and mom to leave, and make her believe it wasn’t true, that none of it was.
That I’d never do that to her. That I what?
Loved her? Needed her? Was stupidly desperate for her to believe in me?
All of the above.