Everything I’d feared was happening.
The worst part was he was right. I didn’t find it in me to trust him enough.
“Chase, I’m sorry,” I said. The knot in my stomach almost made me want to bend in half. “I wish I could go back and do things differently, tell you sooner. I know I should have, but I just couldn’t.”
We sat near the fireplace, though I didn’t feel the heat. The chill in the room went bone deep for me.
“I need to know, though, Mare. I need this.” His hands shook as he clasped them in front of him.
“What did your father tell you already?”
“He, uh…” His voice cracked as he tried to tell me. “He got to the part where he paid you the night he hired you and you left his house.”
Jesus Christ. It sounded so bad when he said it like that.
“Do you want a drink?” I asked.
“No,” he said bluntly. “I drank too much last night. It’s why I didn’t get here sooner, I needed to sober up. I want a clear head for this.”
There were no more ways to delay this. He deserved answers.
“OK.” I let out a big sigh, trying to gain the courage I didn’t have. “You knew I left home as soon as I graduated. It was basically with the clothes on my back. There weren’t many jobs I was qualified for that paid enough to survive here. The company I signed with said they were a legitimate escort company.” My eyes wandered around the room and back to the window. I couldn’t look at him. “They looked the other way if girls wanted to earn extra money.”
The audible gulp he took echoed in the quiet room.
“When your father hired me, I think I’d been with the company for about four months. He, uh, paid me a huge amount of money that night, for doing absolutely nothing. Enough that I could take off the next couple days. And then he texted me a few days later, asking if I would come back to his house. Considering how much he paid me to just send me off, I figured why the hell not. So, I went.”
Chase leaned forward in his chair with unblinking eyes.
“When I got to his house, well, I guess your house, he invited me in, and we sat at the kitchen table. In front of me were a bunch of documents he had prepared.” I shook my head. “I would come to learn your father truly loved his signed contracts.”
We shared a wry chuckle about the man we both understood.
“He asked me to read them, which I did. And I was thoroughly confused. Because he was asking me to sign a document that promised me a four-year scholarship to college if I got admitted and kept my grades up, paid by him. The catch was he wanted me to come work for him afterward.”
Chase’s eyes went wide as his mouth fell open. “Wait, what?”
“Trust me,” I said. “I felt the same way. This man sitting in front of me was a complete stranger. Other than the wad of cash he’d given me, I knew nothing about him. He could have been scamming me. But when he suggested I have a lawyer look it over, that was when my trust in him started.”
Thinking back to that day, I remembered the excitement mixed with reserved fear that ran through my veins as I sat across from him. The idea that any of what he proposed could be true was such a crazy concept. Nothing good had ever happened to me, especially of that magnitude. But the longer we sat discussing the plan, the more and more it felt real. Like it could happen.
“He told me, since I didn’t have enough money for a lawyer, one of his corporate lawyers would look it over for me. I was too young to understand at the time the idea of a conflict of interest. But the contract wound up being legit. I applied and went to Blue Ridge University.”
Chase continued to sit, stunned, in his chair. It was a most unbelievable story. I knew that.
“Since graduating, I’ve been working for Parker Financial.”
That story has been buried inside me for so many years. Almost a decade. It felt good to let it out. To tell it.
It really sucked that it had to be to the guy I was falling for.
As I watched him digest what he heard, I couldn’t discern how he felt about it. He sat in his chair, looking out the window, staring straight ahead with glassy eyes. He appeared numb.
“So, my father…” Chase started, then stopped, clamping his mouth shut.
I decided to finish for him.
“Your father saved my life, Chase.”
