Chapter Sixteen
ANDIE SAT NEXT TO HER mother in the bank manager’s office, her hands clasped so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had gone white.
The office was small. Ordinary. A desk cluttered with papers, family photos in cheap frames, a wilting plant on the windowsill. The kind of room where nothing extraordinary should ever happen.
But the words coming out of Mr. Henderson’s mouth were shattering her world.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Jackson.” His voice was heavy with genuine regret. “Your accountant—he scammed you. The retirement fund, the savings, all of it. Gone.”
Andie couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t think.
Could only stare at the man’s tired face as he delivered the final blow.
“If you can’t pay the outstanding mortgage by the end of two weeks...” He spread his hands helplessly. “You’ll lose your home.”
The bus ride back was silent.
December had frosted the windows, turning the Kansas landscape into a blur of white and gray. Andie pressed her forehead against the cold glass, watching farmhouses and bare trees slide past without really seeing them.
Fifty-five thousand dollars.
That was what they needed.
Fifty-five thousand dollars in two weeks, or her mother would lose the house she’d lived in for thirty years. The house where Andie had taken her first steps. The house where her father had died. The house that held every memory that mattered.
Gone.
All of it, gone.
Unless she could find a miracle.
Her mother’s hand closed over hers.
Warm. Steady. Inexplicably calm.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Dolores’s voice was soft, peaceful in a way that made no sense given what they’d just learned. “God will make a way for us.”
Andie forced herself to smile.
She didn’t say anything.
Couldn’t say anything, not when her throat was tight with all the words she wanted to scream. Words like “how” and “when” and “what if He doesn’t.”
Her mother had changed lately.
Dolores Jackson had always been nice. Proper. The kind of woman who baked casseroles for sick neighbors and never missed a Sunday service. But she’d also been stressed. Worried. Carrying the weight of single motherhood and medical bills and a life that never seemed to get easier.
Ever since she’d started attending that new church, though...
Something had shifted.
Her mother had become inexplicably peaceful. Content in a way Andie didn’t understand. Even now, facing the loss of everything they had, Dolores wasn’t worried.
Not even a little.
Andie bit her lip, her mind racing.
Her mother had never talked about her younger sister. Never mentioned Joyce at all, not once in Andie’s entire life. But small towns had long memories and loose lips, and Andie had heard the gossip.
Joyce had run away from home at seventeen. Said Dolores was too strict, too religious, too suffocating. Said she would never help her sister with anything.
Not even if it killed her.
The words echoed in Andie’s mind as the bus rumbled on.
What if...
What if she went to Joyce?
Because another thing she learned from the local gossips was how rich her aunt was now. Richer than anyone this town had seen. And definitely rich enough to give—not lend even, but give—Andie $55,000...for the right reason.
She racked her brain for anything and everything else she heard that pertained to her Aunt Joyce...like the fact that she could be really vindictive.
Right, right, she had heard the others confirm this multiple times.
With one of them even going as far as describing her aunt as perversely vengeful because of how Joyce had flirted with Dolores’ first boyfriend and made him cheat on her, and all because she was pissed that her older sister refused to help her obtain a fake ID.
Someone that vindictive...would indeed rather die than help Dolores with her problem. But what if it was the other way around?
What if Andie played the rebel like her?
What if...what if she claimed to need the money for something Dolores would absolutely loathe, and thus something Joyce would surely find delightful?
It was crazy.
Far-fetched.
Desperate.
But since desperate was exactly what she was...
MEMORIES OF THE EVENTS that led to this pivotal moment flashed in her mind as she watched Paul’s expression turn stoic at her silence.
She wished she could speak, but what was there to say?
And did she even have a right to say anything, considering that she had lied, not just to Paul but to Joyce as well?
The mere thought of Paul walking away from her for good had her entire body shaking. But all she did was clench her fists against her sides, telling herself that this was what she deserved.
And so she forced herself to wait.
For Paul to call her a liar.
Ask for a divorce.
Maybe even lose his temper, to the point that he’d be tempted to lift a hand against her.
And if he did...
She wouldn’t hold it against him.
Because this...
This was her fault.
Her fault for not believing in Dolores when her mother told her that God would help them.
Her fault for thinking that there was a “right” reason to lie and deceive people, and that asking for money for false reasons wasn’t stealing.
All this was her fault.
And so...
Why was he still there?
Was he waiting for something?
Could it be that he wanted his pound of flesh, and that included her begging for his forgiveness?
Her throat tightened as she slowly raised her head. She steeled herself for anything and everything...but when her gaze finally lifted to his—
I don’t understand.
Paul stood before her, jaw clenched tightly, and rigid tension outlining his powerful figure.
She had been prepared to see hatred in his eyes.
But what she saw instead had her heart shattering into pieces—
God, I’m scared.
Help me.
Please.
Because she was scared. Terrified even. So, so terrified that in her pain and desperation, she had finally lost her mind and was now seeing things that wasn’t there at all.
Please, please, please—
Joyce decided she had waited long enough and let out a little cry of dismay. “I simply can’t believe this.” It was time to stab a knife straight into her niece’s heart, and have her bleed to death, right here and now. “Tell me it’s not true, Andie. Tell me you were completely honest—”
“Will you excuse us for a moment?”
Joyce had been ready to have her words cut off. But what she had not imagined was that the person doing the interrupting would be Paul himself.
She opened her mouth to protest—
“I would like to speak to my wife in private.”
—but felt her courage wilt at the way Paul’s gaze turned steely as he stared at her.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
Rage and frustration warred inside of Joyce, but because she did know Paul well enough to know that he would only find a way to make her pay if she refused—
Joyce managed a smile, not wanting to lose face in front of a crowd like this. “Of course.” Afterward, she forced herself to turn and walk away, smile in place even as she cursed her niece to perdition.
Andie didn’t know what to feel, much less think, as she watched Paul dismiss her aunt with a few choice words.
She might have only been with Joyce for a couple of days, but she had seen enough to know that her aunt normally wouldn’t take that lying down.
It just showed how much influence Paul wielded over other people—
“Look at me, Andromeda.”
—and now, for better or for worse, it was her turn to pay.
Just bear with it, she urged herself while fighting back tears.
Because it was possible that she had indeed imagined what she thought she saw earlier.
And so whatever he throws at you—
Whatever it was that she had to pay for being a stupid, greedy, shameless liar—
Just bear with it, Andie. Silently. Humbly. Repentant—
Oh God.
Because she had finally mustered the courage to look into his eyes again.
God.
And it seemed like she was hallucinating again.
Oh God.
“Let me ask you one more time.”
I just don’t understand—
“Is there anything you want to tell me?”
Just don’t understand why his words were gentle, his tone quiet, and his eyes, oh God—
“I’m s-so sorry.”
It had her choking the words out because what she saw in his eyes hurt so, so much.
“I didn’t just lie to you. I lied to my aunt as well. And my own mom.”
And then the truth came tumbling out. All of it.
The bank manager’s office. The scam. The mortgage.
Her mother’s impossible faith and her own impossible fear.
The gossip about Joyce, the desperate plan, the lie she’d told to extract money from a woman who would only give it if she thought it would hurt Dolores.
“I...I obviously h-have no plans opening a-any kind of clinic, but I know that doesn’t make me any l-less horrible. After w-what you shared on stage, I u-understand if—”
“I love you still.”
—he hated her.
That was what she had thought he would say, but instead he had said something else.
Something that perfectly matched the look in his beautiful gray eyes.
And it was that, oh God—
It was that she just had a hard time understanding and believing.
“You’re young. Innocent. Desperate. So you lied. And now—”
Andie nearly stopped breathing. Was this...was this it then? Was this finally the part he would give her what he deserve like—
Telling her to get lost.
Having her arrested.
“You regret it.”
Making her question her sanity because surely, oh, surely—
“It can’t be that simple,” she whispered.
“It can.”
A choked laugh escaped her, but this quickly turned into a sob as all she could do was shake her head while trying to make sense of things.
“You’re supposed to think I was an idiot—”
“You were.”
“To come up with such a horribly, disgustingly, tasteless plan for scamming my aunt.”
“It was that, yes.”
“So why don’t you make me pay?” she cried out.
“Because I don’t want to.”
“You’re s-supposed to h-hate me!”
“And yet all I want to do is to love you.”
God.
Oh dear God.
Please.
Could this truly be real?
Andie searched his face, searched those gray eyes that had terrified and tantalized her from the very first moment they met. And what she saw there...
It made her breath catch.
Her heart stop.
And her soul become absolutely still.
Because the way Paul was looking at her...
It mirrored the way God loved her.
Deep.
Unconditional.
Forgiving.
A love that saw every broken piece of her—every lie, every fear, every desperate shameful thing she’d ever done—and chose her anyway. Not because she deserved it. Not because she’d earned it. But simply because that was the nature of real love.
It didn’t keep score.
It didn’t demand payment.
It just...loved.
“And maybe...”
Paul’s voice was rough now. But also strained and ragged, which was something she’d never heard from him before.
“I’d like to hear my wife tell me she loves—”
Andie didn’t let him finish.
She threw herself into his arms—his already waiting arms, like he’d known, like he’d been ready to catch her all along—
“I l-love you.”
This time, the sob that clawed out of her throat was equal parts grief and joy and overwhelming relief.
“I love you.”
The words poured out of her, unstoppable.
“I love you, I love you, I love you—”
Neither of them noticed how everyone at the charity brunch had stopped what they were doing.
How servers stood frozen with trays in their hands.
How society matrons clutched their pearls and tech billionaires paused mid-handshake.
How the entire room had turned to watch them like they were live theater.
“I love you,” Andie choked out again, her face buried against his chest, her fingers fisting in the fabric of his jacket. “I love you so much, and I’m so sorry, and I—”
The rest of her words disappeared into his kiss.
And as Paul’s mouth claimed hers, soft and fierce and full of promise, the ballroom erupted into applause.