I mean, logically I remembered some of what I said the day that I told Boone this wouldn’t work. But I couldn’t remember exact words. I’d said a lot of stuff. That, and I’d been highly emotional and refused to talk to him at all after I’d made the announcement. Mostly because I knew that if I heard him out, I’d stay. And I couldn’t stay. Not for my mental health.
“You said ‘she’s not who you think she is.’”
Yeah, I remembered saying that.
“Okay.”
“Dad had already been looking into her for a while,” he said. “But I hadn’t realized that at first. I was so broken inside that it took me a while to pull my head out of the darkness. I think it was about a year after you left that my mother said something that caught my attention.”
“What?” I breathed, my heart pounding.
“She made a comment to one of her doctors. She said, ‘just because you helped me out once doesn’t wipe the slate clean.’”
My stomach rolled.
The baby inside of me fluttered.
I placed my hand against my belly, then immediately removed it because I was even keeping this secret from my own sister.
Though, I had been planning to tell her today while we were at lunch.
“Okay.”
Boone’s eyes studied mine for a long second before he said, “I did some of my own research in between classes. Vet school kicked my ass. Plus, I was trying really hard not to take any of the money Dad allotted me those first few years.”
“Why?”
“Because you called me a spoiled rich kid.” He snorted. “And I was trying to prove that I could make it on my own. I could pay my own way and fund our life together if you ever decided to come back.”
My stomach somersaulted again.
I had said that.
I hadn’t meant it, of course.
Boone was the least spoiled rich kid in the world.
I’d met him while he was volunteering at the wildlife preserve where injured wildlife were sent to recuperate after they were hurt. He not only volunteered there, but he volunteered at the public library on Wednesdays, helping some of the senior citizens of Jesper County work their electronics. He also volunteered at the soup kitchen to feed the homeless.
He didn’t drive a flashy car, though his mother berated him constantly for embarrassing her with his old “rust bucket.”
I fell in love with him in that rust bucket.
It made my heart happy every time I saw him driving in it these days.
“I spent all my extra money to first look into my dad.”
I looked over to Sawyer.
He shrugged. “It was something I would’ve done. I mean, we were very close. He had to know that he could trust me.”
“And I could,” Boone sighed. “It took me another year to figure out that I could trust him. And when I finally came to him about my suspicions about what my mother had done to you, he’d been shocked, but not surprised.”
“I knew that she was already doing some things that she shouldn’t have been,” Sawyer murmured. “I had my own private investigator on her. Mostly because I was gathering evidence of her dalliances so that I could file for divorce and not have to pay her half of my company since she was with me when we started it.”
“Whoa,” I said.
“I fired my private investigator because he was obviously not doing a good enough job. Then I hired a retired SEAL to do the investigating.”
