by Lexi Ryan
“The way to get rid of you.” He pulls something from his back pocket and hands it to me. It’s a white envelope. There’s no writing on it, but it’s sealed. “You don’t need to look at it now. Unless you want to leave, which I would consider an anniversary gift.”
I stare at the envelope in his hands while my heart races faster and faster in my chest. “Are you trying to trick me into taking money?”
He laughs. “No, your chance to profit has passed.”
People are starting to stare, so I snatch it out of his hands. “Whatever is in here, I’m showing to Mason.”
He raises his brows. “My son hates me either way, but at least this way I can ensure Bill will give him a good career and stop benching him. Knowing your filthy hands will never end up with my money is an added bonus.” He waves to someone behind me. “Mike! Good of you to come!”
I rush to the bathroom and lock myself in a stall, where I open the envelope with shaking hands. I should wait and do this with Mason, but it feels like a trick—as if Christian knows some terrible secret about me that even I don’t.
When I unfold the paper, I’m confused. It’s the bank copy of a processed check for five thousand dollars to Nic Mendez. Why did Mason’s dad write a check to Nic?
But then my eyes land on the signature line. Christian didn’t write this check. Mason did.
With the exception of my parents, who I’m saving for last, I think I finished making the rounds with everyone while Bailey was in the bathroom. Now we can enjoy our dinner, dance to a couple of songs, and politely excuse ourselves for the rest of the evening.
But first I have to find her.
I wander around the party looking for her and run into Lindy.
“Did your wife go missing?” she asks, a knowing smile on her face.
I frown. “Where is she?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Last I saw her, she was talking to your dad. Seemed like important business, so I didn’t butt in.”
What was she talking to my dad about? Why would she even want to talk to him?
I turn around, walking away from Lindy without another word.
My phone buzzes with a text from Owen.
Owen: She was going to get a cab and leave, but I talked her into letting me take her. We’re at the hotel bar. Don’t know what’s wrong, but it’s bad. Did you tell her about the money?
I don’t bother telling anyone or even getting my car from the valet. I grab a cab to the hotel, my heart racing and my stomach in knots.
I find her in the bar, drinking with Owen.
“You trying to steal my girl?” I ask Owen, trying for lightness.
Bailey’s jaw goes hard. “What if he is? Do you have enough money to pay off a veteran NFL player?”
“Oh, damn,” Owen whispers.
Did he say something to her? Did Ron get to her? I thought she blocked that fucker’s number, but he could have found her online like he did me.
She turns to Owen. “How much would he have to pay you to stay away from me? Five grand? Sixty? What does a ho like me go for these days?”
“Bailey,” he says softly. “Come on.”
My stomach drops. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “Let’s go somewhere and talk,” I say quietly. I don’t want to have this conversation here.
“Your dad was right,” she says, pulling an envelope from her purse. “He knows just how to get rid of me.”
I take the envelope from her hands and pull out the paper. It’s a photocopy of a canceled check. I feel like I just took a helmet to the gut, and I want to puke.
I never told my father about what I did, but he was still on my accounts back then, and why wouldn’t he monitor them? He micromanaged every other aspect of my life.
“You paid him off,” Bailey says, her voice shaking. “You paid off Nic to stay away from me.” She shakes her head. “Who made you God and told you that you could meddle in my life? Who did you think you were?”
I swallow. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“We are somewhere,” she says. “Talk.”
“I’m gonna get out of here.” Owen looks between me and Bailey helplessly, then backs away from the table. “You both know where to find me if you need me.”
“Please?” I offer her my hand, and she stands without taking it.
The silence in the elevator is suffocating, but it’s nothing compared to when we get to the room, and she flinches at the sound of the door closing behind her.
“Don’t you see, Bailey? You want me to be the bad guy, but it’s not that simple. If he’d loved you? If he’d given two shits about being with you? He wouldn’t have taken my goddamned money.”
“You say that with such surety. As if you have any fucking idea what it’s like to have nothing. You don’t know. You’ll never understand.” Her cheeks bloom red with anger, and she balls her hands into tight fists at her sides. “You stand there all holier-than-thou about a decision you’ll never have to make.”
“Like I didn’t have hard decisions to make? The woman I loved was dedicating her life to a criminal.”
“He served his time.”
“And then he got out and picked up right where he left off.” Confusion flashes over her face. “He was dealing, Bailey.”
She flinches, and I see the surprise in her expression. The shock. Like I smacked her with the truth. “That’s why I wanted him away from you. I didn’t want him pulling you down.”
She rubs her bare arms and meets my eyes. I’ve broken her heart. I see it, and for the thousandth time, I wish we could start over. I’d lie to my parents about the name of my girlfriend so they couldn’t look her up and bribe her. I’d get her drunk in Vegas before Nic was ever released from prison.
“You’re just like your father. So sure that your money will get you anything you want. And I guess it worked for a while, didn’t it? You paid Nic for me, and instead of sucking his dick, I was sucking yours.”
I flinch. “It wasn’t like that. I knew you didn’t want me, but I didn’t want him ruining your life. I’m not my father. When he convinced Lindy to give up the baby—”
“This isn’t about Lindy.” She squeezes her arms so tightly that I can see the red fingerprints forming. “Your dad paid me to stay away from you. Fifteen thousand dollars in exchange for my promise that I wouldn’t let our relationship become anything more than physical.”
I stagger backward and blink at her. “No. I asked my mom. I . . . She promised.” Did she say he offered her money, or that she took it?
“It was your dad’s deal. Not hers. At the time, I thought it was so crazy that he could do something so disgusting. I didn’t have a choice. I needed the money. Your dad had a choice—whether he was going to offer it or not, whether he was going to accept me as a human being or make me be part of your life in only the cheapest way possible.”
“What do you mean, you didn’t have a choice? Everybody has a choice. Nic had a choice when I gave him that check, and he didn’t blink. You had a choice.”
I turn away. Looking at her face hurts too much. I’m sinking, being sucked deeper and deeper under the surface, and the only thing that can pull me back up is if she tells me this is all some sort of awful joke and she didn’t take the money for him. “Was it for Faith?” My voice cracks. “Did she need it?”
“What?”
I close my eyes. “Was Faith the reason you took the money? You were stripping to help her. Was this more of the same? Was she sick or—”
“No. I was trying to keep Nic out of trouble. He owed some bad guys money. Not taking it was like sentencing Nic to a life of crime. It was his ticket back to prison.”
“Nic? You took their money for Nic?”
“I couldn’t watch the father of my child fall right back in with the people who’d gotten him arrested to begin with. He was released owing them money.”
“He was dealing anyway. You didn’t save him.”
“I didn’t know that!” Her voice is hoarse, raw. “
But you know, you’re right. I had choices. Maybe I should have taken the choice behind door number two and slept with Clarence for the money instead. He promised he’d make it real good for me, and you never would have known. I could have spread my legs for him every night before climbing into bed with you. I could have let him fuck me until he was tired of me. I guess I didn’t really give that option as much consideration as I should have.”
“He wasn’t worth any option.” I draw in a breath, and it fucking hurts. “It’d be different if you did it for her. It would still hurt like a bitch that you never told me, that you let them manipulate you and me, but it would be different. But the money was for him, so that’s not the situation we’re looking at.”
“I did do it for her. Don’t you understand?” She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand, as if she’s angry with the tears for appearing. “I did it for him, too. It’s true. But I did it for her, because one day, one way or another, she was going to know who her real parents were, and I didn’t want it to be Bailey the stripper and that drug dealer Nic, who’s back in prison.” She reaches out and then pulls back, shaking her head. “I told you we were too different. Our worlds too different.”
“Don’t. Bailey, I’m hurting too, okay, but don’t—”
“I can stand here and tell you I’d do something different with what I know now, but what does that even mean?” She backs toward the door. “If I had to make the same choice with the same information I had then, I’d do it again.”
“Me too,” I whisper.
She squeezes her eyes shut and bites back a sob, then she’s gone, the water pulling away from the shore and leaving me behind, an empty shell.
“How are you doing?” Mia opens her arms, and I rush into them. She wraps her arms around me, hugging me tightly. I curl into her chest, my body shaking, my face wet with tears, and her hand smooths over my hair. “It’s gonna be okay. I promise. It’ll be okay.”
I blew way too much money on a last-minute red-eye to Chicago and didn’t even text Mia to let her know I was coming until I was in the cab here from the airport. A couple of hours later and we’re in her living room in big fluffy robes and slippers, two spoons and an empty carton of ice cream on the coffee table in front of us.
“If I tell you something, you promise you won’t hate me forever?” she asks.
“I don’t know if I can handle any more secrets today, Mia.”
“It’s not a secret, and you’re allowed to be angry, just not allowed to hate me forever.”
I grimace. “I’m not sure I’m past the point where you’re allowed to say anything but how much of an ass Mason is.”
“That was before the ice cream. Now, we’re both going to be five pounds heavier in the morning, and the payment is honesty.”
I blow out a breath. I’m not sure I’m ready for honesty, but maybe it’s what’s been missing in my life. “Okay. Hit me.”
She straightens as she draws in a long breath, her chest rising. “I loved Nic, and I really believed that one day he’d shape up. But I also knew him well enough to see that a straight life wasn’t going to be easy for him. He was so angry with the world for dealing him a bum hand.” She shakes her head. “But even though he was my brother and I loved him, if I’d had the money and known he was dealing again, I would have done exactly what Mason did.”
“If you’d done something like that, you would have told me. And then I could have called him on being a sellout.”
“Maybe,” she says. She reaches out and tucks my hair behind my ear as if I’m a little girl. “I’m saying that I understand what Mason was doing. I don’t have to like his choices to be able to see that his intentions were good. I hated Nic dating you. I always believed you deserved better, and he was my brother.”
I lay my head in her lap and close my eyes as she plays with my hair. “All this with the money and his father? It just proves that Mason and I are too different.”
“But Mason’s never been a snob. Not really. Don’t you remember the night you and I were catering that dinner party at Arrow’s house, and Mason was hiding in the kitchen because in the dining room they were talking about the year of the wine? He can’t stand that crap. He was raised with money, but it’s not fair to hold that against him when money has never been everything to him.”
“The worlds we come from are too different.”
“But the only world he wants to live in is the one you’re a part of.”
“I’m not sure if that’s true anymore. I’m not sure he’s going to be able to forgive me for taking that money from his dad.”
“I think he will.” She points to my phone, which has been buzzing since I arrived, the notification LED flashing madly. “I bet he already has.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetie.” Mom has been slathering on the apologies since I walked in the door this morning. “You have to believe me when I say your father did what he did for you out of love.”
Dad’s in his office. He’s chosen not to come out and take part in this conversation. Coward.
“I’ve heard this speech before, Mom. You can’t make all the shit you don’t like in my life disappear.”
“One day you’ll have a child, and you’ll understand.”
“I do have a child. Don’t you remember? On my way to college, and my girlfriend disappears to have my baby? You took it out of my hands, just like you tried to take this out of my hands. Disapproving of something in my life doesn’t grant you the right to make it go away.”
“What about us?” Dad asks, emerging from his den for the first time. “Maybe I didn’t do it for you. Maybe I did it for us. I didn’t work this goddamned hard to have my son throw away his life becoming the next Teen Dad. And I sure as fuck didn’t work this hard to watch him marry a whore.”
“Christian!” Mom shouts. “Enough.”
I jump forward, and Mom grabs my arm. My chest puffs. “Call her that again.”
“People don’t change,” Dad says.
I release a puff of air. “Yeah. You can say that again.” I back up, because I’m afraid if I’m this close to him much longer, I’ll take a swing and it’ll feel fucking amazing.
I walk out of the house, straight to my car. I came here to say my piece before leaving town, but I was an idiot if I thought my father was going to admit that he was wrong. When I start the engine, Mom’s standing right beside my door. She’s got her arms folded and her shoulders up around her ears as if it’s thirty degrees out here and not eighty.
I roll down my window and rub my forehead, where an epic headache feels like railroad ties pounding into my temples.
“What he did was wrong and unacceptable. I would have stopped him if I’d known. That’s probably why he never told me about it.” She takes a breath. “I can stand here and apologize until I’m blue in the face for what your father did, but I know it means nothing unless it comes from him, so let me apologize for my part.”
I stiffen. “I thought you didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“I didn’t at first.” She drops her arms and swallows. “But after you asked me on the phone, I confronted your father about it, and he admitted what he’d done. I should have told you, maybe, but I went to her instead. I asked her to keep it quiet, and she refused.” Mom gives me a sad smile. “For what it’s worth, she won me over in that moment, which was hard, because I knew you might not give us a second chance, but I loved her for wanting to do right by you.”
I close my eyes. Bailey has always been afraid of my parents, and the twisted knots in my chest loosen a bit at the knowledge that she stood up to them.
“I hope you’ll forgive your father, Mason.”
“I don’t need him, Mom.” I shake my head. “I don’t need love that’s contingent on me being a certain person or living my life a certain way. That’s not love.”
“No, it’s not, which is why when you leave here today, he’ll still love you.” She lets out a long breath. “I don’t know if that counts for
much given what he’s done, but it remains true.”
“You know what the hardest part about this is?” I turn away from her and grip the steering wheel. “Realizing I’m no better than him. I screwed up. She had this boyfriend, this piece-of-shit guy she followed around. I gave him money to stay away. Just like Dad would have done. I must have made him so proud when he found out.”
“Mason—”
“Don’t.” I shake my head, because I don’t want to hear her defend him again today. “We all think our reasons justify our actions. But anything we have to keep secret from someone we love is a problem. Bailey left, and I don’t know if she’s coming back.”
“Don’t wait for her.” Mom reaches out and her fingertips graze my arm. “Go after her.”
“When are you coming back to Seaside?” Emma asks. “Keegan and I were hoping you could do our engagement pictures, and my friend Becky is pregnant and looking for someone to do artful maternity pictures.”
Leave it to Emma to make me feel like my business is about more than knowing how to get men off. What sucks is I really want to do it, but I’m not sure I can handle going back to Seaside right now. “I’m not there anymore, Em.”
“What? What about Mason? Please don’t tell me you’re still pretending you’re not in love with him.”
“I think we broke up.”
The phone is muffled, and I hear her tell someone else, “Bailey and Mason broke up.” Then she chirps, “Keegan, I wasn’t done talking to her.”
“What did he do?” Keegan asks. “Tell me now so I can go beat him up. You’re the best thing he ever had.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. I really don’t want to tell my friends the truth about what I did, but it’ll get back to them one way or another, and it’ll be better coming from me. At least, I think it will. “His dad gave me money back in college in exchange for my promise to never let my relationship with Mason become anything serious.” I wait for his outrage, but he’s silent. “I shouldn’t have taken it, but I needed it, so I did.”
