The address Augustsent me took me to the construction site Matt had mentioned during ourrun.
I shut the car door so hard it lifted the hem of my white eyelet dress. So many emotions whirred inside me as I stomped toward the site that I didn’t feel the ground beneath my feet or the sun in my hair. I felt like a livewire, jumpy and ready to electrocute anyone who came in between me and my target: AugustWatt.
I walked around the work site until I locatedhim.
The man who’d looked at a traffic light instead of at me and yet who’d deposited an ungodly amount of money into my bankaccount.
The man who hadn’t taken any of my calls and yet had sent me hislocation.
The man who was wearing a hard hat even though he’d crashed in a helicopter andsurvived.
The man who made my heart sprint and my navel burn and yet who was no longer mine tohold.
“August Watt!” Iyelled.
I must’ve called out his namereallyloudly because every single worker swiveledaround.
August looked up from a blueprint stretched over a work table. Unhurriedly, he exchanged a few words with one of his men before strolling toward me, hands in the pockets of a pair of fadedjeans.
His body ate up the sun and the land and the sky and all of the ambientnoise.
Once he stood in front of me, I craned myneck.
“Yes?” His husky voice brushed over the tip of mynose.
I swallowed because my mind had gone blank, and I couldn’t remember why I’d come. And why I was mad. Was I evenmad?
Oh, yes. I waslivid.
I narrowed my eyes. “What the hell’s gotten intoyou?”
“Funny.” He crossed his arms, making all of his muscles pop. “I could ask you the samething.”
“I didn’t deposit”—I dropped my voice to a hiss—“five hundred thousanddollars into youraccount.”
“No, you put your life on the line for your ex. Your fucking ex who then proceeded to tell me to fuck off. So let me turn that question on you; what the hell’s gotten intoyou?” His jaw clenched so hard it sapped all the curves from his face. Even his full lips looked etched in steel instead ofskin.
“I hope you didn’t give me all your money, because you’re going to owe your mom a whole bunch for all thecursing.”
His mouth didn’t even twitch, which alerted me to the fact that he was well and trulymad.
I sighed. “Why?”
“Why did I give you that money? Because it was owed toyou.”
“Owed to me? What are you talkingabout?”
“When we bought your family’s business, we got it at a bargain price. Dad never felt right for paying your mother such apittance.”
My jaw slackened but then snapped shut. “Mom never thought you guys underpaid,August.”
“But the fact is wedid.”
“No you didn’t. You paid the amount it was worth at thetime.”
“Why does itmatter?”
“Because it’s half a million dollars,” I whisper-shouted. “You can’t just go around gifting that much money topeople.”
