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I reach into my purse and pull out an envelope. “Open it.”
Clint tears into it and scans the check for just under four million dollars, then looks at me with a scowl. “You came here just to return my father’s money?”
“It’s something I had to do. I know money won’t bring him back, but I’m hoping it gives you and your brothers some sense of peace and security.”
“This is a nice gesture. Thank you for your honesty and integrity, but I haven’t doubted you since you left Maui. In fact, I want you to invest this money. My brothers and I already talked about it.” He presses the envelope back into my hands.
Is he for real? “You want me to manage the money he spent his life making? The money my father took?”
Clint nods. “I don’t trust anyone else.”
He’s serious. OMG… My heart floats in my chest as if his face-to-face vote of confidence filled it with hope again. I can only think of one thing he’s trying to say to me with this gesture: that he’s put every reservation he ever had about me to rest. When our gazes connect, I see that same message in his blue eyes.
I smile. “You’re sure?”
“Positive. What I’d like even better is to talk to you, try to alleviate your distrust in me, so we can be together again. Please don’t say no.”
I’m not surprised he’s confronting this head on. We need to. I’m finally ready.
“Clint, what you did to me was deceitful.”
“Horrible and unforgivable. But…” He slides his fingers between mine. “I’m hoping you can find some way to forgive me.”
Now that I’ve been able to move past my own trials and reflect on what he went through, that no longer sounds farfetched. In fact, I almost don’t blame him. Shock, grief, loss—they can do terrible things to anyone’s psyche. And unlike my father, his did nothing to deserve a premature death. I understand why Clint looked for someone to blame—and I was the obvious choice. But we have to talk this out.
“You lied about everything.”
He shakes his head. “Our meeting was a lie. My job at the bar was a lie. Initially, my attempts to be your friend were a lie. Everything else was totally fucking real, sweetheart—especially how hard I fell for you. Even when logic told me I was being selfish and irresponsible, I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted you. I needed to be with you. I love you. I hope you can find some way to believe me.”
He’s been saying these same things via text the last few months. It’s hard not to believe him now, when he has no more reason to lie.
“Tell me, in your ideal world, what would happen next between us?”
“Hey, bro. I’m out. I’ll be back—” When I turn to the other man who just stumbled into the room, his eyes flare wide. “Holy shit. Bethany Banks?”
Standing, I nod, absently thinking how much he looks like his brother—and their father. “You’re Bret?”
He approaches, hand outstretched. “Yeah. Hey, I’m really sorry for being a douche and breaking into your apartment.”
Clint admitted that to me, too.
“It’s okay. I understand.” Honestly, he didn’t destroy or deface anything. If Clint hadn’t told me his brother had been in my place, I wouldn’t have known. “Water under the bridge.”
“Great. Thanks. I’ll, um…leave you two to talk. It was nice to meet you. For whatever it’s worth, I wish you’d put my brother out of his misery and marry him. He loves you. Bry and I would be happy to have you in the family.”
My elation spikes. I expected it would take months—maybe years—for Clint’s brothers to stop hating me. I worried they would resist any attempt we made to patch up our romance. But for Bret to practically beg me to marry his brother…
As Clint and his middle sibling exchange a manly shoulder bump, I can’t stop smiling. Then his younger brother nods my way and melts out of the room.
“Sorry about the interruption,” Clint says. “We’re alone now.”
“Your brother seems like a good guy.”
“He’s made progress lately. In fact, he came down from UCLA to spend the weekend with me. Bry may or may not show up, depending on whether he can tear himself away from his new girlfriend. But even if he does, I won’t see him for hours yet. So let’s talk about us and my ideal world.”
“Please. I want to hear that.”
“You would be the center of it, of course. The only part of our past we’d ever think about would be meeting and falling in love. You’d be wearing my ring. We’d be planning a wedding and finding a place to live together for the rest of our insanely happy lives. Soon, we’d start catching up with your siblings on the baby thing. I want a few of our own, and it would be great if all the kids were roughly the same age so they could play together. I’m glad you’re starting your own financial services business, because I’d like to be working beside you eventually. I’m already registered to take the online classes to become a certified financial planner. Once I’ve completed those, I’d want to learn from you, grow our business together, while I finish my college degree. I would be your full partner—in business and in life. Most of all, I want to show you how madly I love you every day. And I want you to love me back. That world, to me, would be perfect.”
