“Because I needed to fix what I broke.” His voice was rougher than I remembered. “I know it doesn’t undo anything. I know it doesn’t bring your father back or give you those years. But I needed to try.”
“Try what, exactly?” I moved closer, needing to see his face clearly. “Try to ease your guilt? Try to buy your way back into my life?”
“No.” The word came out firm. “I did it because those families deserved their home back. Because you were right about everything you said in my office. Because I finally understood what I took from you and from them.”
I studied him, looking for the lie, for the angle. But his eyes were steady, honest in a way I’d never seen before.
“When did you figure it out?” I asked. “When did you understand?”
“The day you left.” He straightened, his posture still carrying that unconscious confidence he’d always had. “You said you felt disgusted with yourself for being with me. That every time you closed your eyes you saw me signing those papers and then touching you. That broke something in me that I didn’t know could break.”
“Good. You should have been broken.”
“I was.” He looked at me directly. “I still am. But I’m trying to put myself back together into someone different. Someone who actually helps people instead of just claiming to.”
I glanced around the cramped office, taking in the cluttered desks and overflowing filing cabinets. “This is what you’ve been doing?”
“Legal aid work. Tenant rights mostly. Helping families fight displacement.” His mouth curved without humor. “I know it’s ironic. But it’s what I understand now—what displacement actually costs.”
“You gave up everything.” It wasn’t a question. The articles had been clear about his spectacular fall from grace. “Your company, your reputation—everything.”
“I walked away from a system that was built on harm.” He was quiet for a moment. “Sold my shares, set up the nonprofit trust, funded the building project. Used what resources I had left to do something that actually matters.” He looked at me.
“This work doesn’t pay what I used to make, but that was never the point. I chose to be here because this is where I should have been all along.”
“My mother cried when she saw the deed,” I said quietly. “She kept reading it over and over like she couldn’t believe it was real.”
Something passed across his face—relief maybe, or gratitude. “Is she going back? To the building?”
“She’s thinking about it.”
His eyes went bright with tears he was trying not to let fall. “That’s all I wanted. Just for it to matter. For something good to come from all of this.”
“It matters.” I needed him to hear that, needed him to know. “More than you realize. Those families will have stability now. Protection. A chance to rebuild their lives in the place they never should have lost.”
“But not redemption.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “It doesn’t give me that.”
“No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t.”
He nodded like he’d expected that answer. “I don’t expect forgiveness, Gianna. What I did is unforgivable. I just hope someday you can see that I’m genuinely trying to become someone different—someone worthy of the trust you gave me before I destroyed it.”
“Do you still love me?”
The question came out before I could stop it. Direct and vulnerable and exactly what I needed to know.
Archer looked at me like I’d asked whether the sun would rise tomorrow. “I never stopped. I think about you every day. Wonder if you’re okay, if you’re happy, if you hate me less than you did six months ago.” He paused. “Losing you broke me in ways I’m still trying to understand. But your happiness matters more than my pain. So if you need me to stay away forever, I will.”
Tears were building in my eyes and I couldn’t stop them. “What if I don’t want you to stay away?”
He went very still. “What?”
“What if I want to try again?” The words came out shaky but certain. “What if I think maybe we can survive this?”
“Gianna—” He whispered fiercely. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to forgive me just because I rebuilt a building. That doesn’t erase what I did.”
“I know it doesn’t.” I moved closer, closing the distance between us. “It’s me saying I’ve watched what you’ve done. I’ve seen how you destroyed everything to fix one broken thing.”
I was close enough now to see the tears in his eyes. “And maybe love can survive this. Maybe we can—if we’re both willing to try.”
