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“They’re not going to fire me.”
Grace smiled. “I gathered that. Does that mean I bought you a hot dress and threatened your cousin for nothing?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll pay you back.”
“Girl.” Grace gave her a quick hug, but for once, Merry was the one to break away, too restless and distraught to stay in one place.
She crossed the hall to knock on Shane’s door one more time. Maybe he’d somehow slipped past them. But he wasn’t there. She even tried the doorknob, more than desperate enough to violate his privacy, but it was locked.
When Grace’s phone rang, Merry bounded back into the apartment in three huge strides. “What? What is it?”
Grace shook her head, said a few words to Cole and hung up. “Shane still isn’t answering. He hasn’t responded to texts, either.”
“Damn it.” She didn’t know why she felt such urgency. What he’d done was done, after all. Seeing him wouldn’t change that. And what explanation did she want, exactly?
But somehow she felt she’d feel better if she could just hear why. Why.
Her head popped up. She stared at the window. “The letter.”
“What?”
“He wrote me a letter this morning and I just tossed it on the floor of my car.”
“Good girl,” Grace said, then winced. “I mean… Sorry. I guess he wasn’t as big of an asshole as I thought. So maybe you should go ahead and read it.”
Merry was already out the door, running toward her car. If she’d had any light at all to see by, Merry would’ve stood next to the car and read it, but it was too dark. She sprinted back into the apartment and started reading.
“What does it say?” Grace asked.
Merry shook her head and sank slowly down to the couch as her eyes flew over his words. His apology. His explanation about a father who’d disappeared and a grandfather whose only tie to Shane and his brother had been a need to control. The last, final demand he’d made of Shane, and the last, final humiliation he’d dealt.
Gideon Bishop had funded the trust out of spite, and Merry could understand perfectly why Shane would fight that. The money should have gone to him. She’d give it to him if she could. In fact, the letter made it more shocking that he’d dropped the lawsuit. He had an emotional justification for wanting that money, so why had he changed his mind? There was nothing here about that.
The letter was just an apology, and a halfhearted explanation, and a promise that he’d never say a word to anyone about what she’d confessed to him.
I didn’t know you when I decided to deceive you, Merry. I didn’t know your heart and soul and body. What I did was wrong, and I can’t excuse it, but I never meant it to be a betrayal of all the beautiful things I know in you now. I didn’t mean that, and I wish I could take it back.
My God, had he given up two million dollars because of her? That was…awful. Amazing and humbling, but still awful. She couldn’t let him do that, not even for the sake of Providence.
Handing Grace the letter, she replayed the brief conversation they’d had that afternoon. He hadn’t said anything about dropping the lawsuit. Then again, she’d cut off any conversation he’d wanted to have.
“Did Cole tell you about his family?” she asked Grace. “About his dad abandoning them? About his grandfather?”
Grace shook her head and glanced up from the letter. “No. Nothing.”
Merry stood and walked to the window to stare up into the dark sky. She couldn’t even be angry with him now. She couldn’t be relieved. She couldn’t be anything but torn and confused and tormented. She’d gotten everything she’d wanted tonight. The truth from her mom. Security at her dream job. Even triumph in the face of Crystal’s bile.
But all of that felt uncertain. In fact, it felt almost unimportant. Because Shane hadn’t just given up millions of dollars. He’d given up so much more than that, and Merry needed to know why. But the phone didn’t ring, and Shane never came home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SHE HADN’T SLEPT AT ALL. She’d meant to. She’d pulled out the sofa bed and lain down and forced herself to close her eyes. But at five-thirty, she’d given up and taken a shower. After fifteen minutes standing with her head und
er hot water, the only ideas she’d come up with were to break into Shane’s apartment, search out his mom’s phone number and stalk a man who may or may not want to see her.
Or she could just be patient.
“Fuck that,” she muttered as she got out and toweled off. She couldn’t be patient. She couldn’t do nothing. She also couldn’t break into Shane’s apartment, if only because she had no idea how to. Although… She shot a look toward the closed bedroom door. Grace would probably know.
