My mouth hangs open. “And then Uncle Matthew needed some info on someone. What I’m saying is, I need you to be honest with me.”
I put the cup of coffee down, finally realizing what he is saying. “Or you’ll find out yourself.” I swallow down the lump in my throat. There really isn’t anything for him to find out that he doesn’t already know, except for the fact my credit score is shit and I’m in debt up to my eyeballs, but I’m slowly working my way out of it.
“In not so many words.” He makes sure he stares in my eyes when he says the next part, “Or I’ll have someone do it from my team so I don’t feel guilty.”
“Someone from your team?” I ask him and he nods his head.
“Yeah, a couple of guys from the same class as me decided to open a firm and, well, now we are the most sought out firm in the world. There are different divisions in the company. We started with
just the three of us, and now we have over one hundred people working for us.” He looks down and then looks up again. “I’m sorry for leaving you to do it all by yourself.”
My hand flies out to put on his arm, the way his voice cracked rocks me to my core.
“You didn’t know.”
“But now I do, and it’s time to do my share,” he declares to me. “You don’t live the high life, and I can’t even think about the struggle you had without hating myself. So, I need you to be honest with me.” He blinks away the big tears. “And tell me about what you owe.”
“I’ve got it under control,” I reply, not really sure what else to say. “Now, I do.” I avoid looking into his eyes as I hold the cup and look down in it. “But it wasn’t always like that.”
“I want to know,” he nudges, and for the first time I finally let someone in.
“Well, after I made my stance that I was not going to give up the baby or terminate my pregnancy, all financial aid from them stopped. My allowance didn’t come one month and I was like whatever, but then I got a nice notice from the school that I owed them for the tuition, which was fourteen thousand dollars.” I shake my head. “And then, if that wasn’t bad enough, when I went to the doctor the month after, I found out my health insurance wasn’t going to cover Avery. For the first time in my life, I was literally alone.” I see his hands clench into fists. I’m back to feeling the despair like I was that day. I felt like I had nowhere to turn, feeling like the world would swallow me up. Every day I got up and wondered how I would go on, but I fought for everything we have. I worked my ass off, and it’s finally coming back to me. “And then she was born premature, so there was six weeks in the NICU.” I wipe away the tear. “But I’m on a payment plan,” I say, proud of myself. Proud that no matter how my parents told me I would fail, I didn’t.
“How much?” he asks the big question.
“It doesn’t matter.” I finally look up at him. “It’s fine now. We’re doing okay.”
“How much, Addison?” he repeats, and this time his teeth are clenched.
“It’s not much,” I try to lie, but then his words play back in my head, I can find out anything. “It’s a little over three hundred thousand.”
stefano
. . .
I listen to her as she says how much she owes. I hear the sadness in her tone and I also see she is trying to keep it all together. I can’t even fathom how she did it for four years all by herself. All of this happens and all I want to do is throw something against the wall and kick my own ass for not being there. I lean forward off the couch to the notepad in the middle of the coffee table. Picking it up, I spot the check under it I started to write before she even told me the total. I grab it and then look over at her. “I’m giving you this,” I tell her and she looks at me confused, “and if you don’t take it, I’m going to have it deposited in your account.”
I hold out the check for her and all she does is look down at my hand, the top of the check with her name on it, and also for the amount of four hundred thousand dollars. “I can’t take that,” she squawks, and her eyes go big as she hides her hands behind her back.
“Fine,” I say, putting down the check by her coffee cup. “I’ll pay all your bills. Either way, you will be getting that money.”
“I don’t need it,” she says to me, and I side-eye her with a glare.
“I don’t care,” I tell her. “After everything…” I try to calm down my heartbeat and the way I just want to lash out at everyone, me included. Her family, her fucking family is going to pay for what they did to her, for leaving her without anything. Who does that? Who? “Everything you went through, it’s never going to be enough.”