AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Precisely. What I did get them to agree to, though, was to have me in as an angel investor, provided that you, and only you, get to decide where the money goes.”
“You’re serious?” I asked, head racing with the possibilities. Raises for the nurses. Another doctor. An EKG machine that wasn’t older than I was.
“Yes. And I also got them to agree to, down the road, allowing me to donate a wing, or whatever you might call it in a clinic. The choice would be yours. A mental health center. An addiction recovery center. A dialysis center. In fact, if I rub the right shoulders, I could probably get some friends to all chip in so that, eventually, this clinic could have all of those things.”
“You’re… serious?” I asked, not quite able to wrap my head around that kind of wealth.
I mean, sure, I knew Teddy was loaded. Owned half of Florida kind of loaded. But, somehow, it seemed like an insurmountable kind of money to just be able to… donate a dialysis center.
Then again, hadn’t the very wealthy been donating wings to hospitals, and libraries, and college campuses for hundreds of years?
“I am very serious. You do an incredible amount of good here. I could donate to a hospital, but that money would not be as carefully handled as you would handle it, and it would not do quite as much direct good as it would here. So, that is my plan. We will be drafting up the paperwork in a week or two. In the meantime, you better start figuring out what you would like to do with all that money first. Oh, and before I forget,” he said, reaching into his pocket, and passing me an envelope across the table.
“What is this?” I asked, feeling like I was spinning.
“Consider that an early wedding present,” he told me. Then, giving me a harder, more penetrating look, “You need to tell him soon, or he is going to guess,” he added before getting off the chair, and making his way out of my office.
I wasn’t sure what I was most shocked at.
The fact that he was buying into the clinic.
Or the fact that he somehow knew I was pregnant when I hadn’t told another soul yet.
Deciding it was probably best to get all the shock out of the way at once, I slid my finger under the seal of the envelope.
And pulled out a sheet of paper.
Declaring that my student loans had been paid off.
When Michael came in a few minutes later, he found me sobbing at my desk.
“I don’t understand,” Michael said when I managed to give him the bare minimum details through my cries. “Why are you crying so hard if this is good news?”
It was hard for Michael, the guy with a pretty normal, pretty decent family, from a common enough background, to truly understand how little I’d had in life, how freaking hard I had to claw my way up, how much I had sacrificed.
And even after all of that, how little progress I made in life.
I’d been broke, living in a crummy neighborhood, taping my shoes together, drowning in debt, alone, and so lonely that it was hard to breathe at times.
Then just like that, Seeley had come back into my life, and everything had changed.
I was no longer alone.
Not only did I have him, but I had the guys and the girls and the club.
I had a home.
We’d been carefully painting and decorating it since we moved in with little but a bed and a card table in the dining room.
And now, on top of all of those changes that I never could have seen coming, and would never take for granted for even a second, suddenly every bit of financial uncertainty was gone.
My debt was paid off.
The clinic would be fully funded.
I would be going into marriage and motherhood more secure than I could have ever anticipated.
“Is it because you won’t be able to bang that hot biker of yours in the break room as often if we have more people working here?” Michael asked, making a snort escape me.
