Her comment had me groaning. “You really think I should do it then?”
“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. You don’t have a boyfriend. You have nothing to lose.”
She was making this too easy, making me feel dumb for not immediately jumping at the chance, but something had been lingering in my gut, and it wasn’t until she said the thing about bitches lining the block that I realized what it was. My pride. I cracked my knuckles. “I don’t know how I’d feel about being married and having my husband,” I almost choked on the word, “being with other people during. Even if it was fake. Someone would find out that we’d gotten married, and I don’t want to look like the poor idiot wife whose husband cheats on her and everyone knows.”
Diana hummed again. “Did he date around while you worked for him?”
He didn’t. Ever. He didn’t even have any females saved in his contacts on his phone. I would know. I was the one who had gone to the store to get him a new phone and have his contacts transferred, and I might have looked through them. There had definitely never, ever been any sleepovers at his house, or any women hanging around. There couldn’t be any after away games because, according to Zac, Aiden always went straight back to his hotel room afterward.
So, yeah, I felt a little dumb. “No.”
“So then there’s nothing to worry about, is there?”
I swallowed my saliva. “I can’t date anyone either.”
That had her cracking up and I suddenly found myself insulted at how hard she was laughing. “You’re funny.”
“It’s not funny.” So I hadn’t had a boyfriend in a couple of years. What the hell was the big deal?
Her hysterical laughing reached a peak. “I can’t date anyone either,” she mocked me in a voice that I knew was supposed to be mine. “Now you’re just making shit up.”
It was a well-known fact that I didn’t date much.
Diana sounded like she was covering her mouth with her hands to smother her laughs. “Oh, V. Do it and stop thinking about it so much.”
She wasn’t being any help, and I found myself still torn in half. “I’m going to keep thinking about it.”
“What’s there to think about?”
Everything.
But I thought about it. Then I kept thinking about it some more.
I looked online at how much I still owed on my loan, and I almost threw up. Looking at the balance was like looking at an eclipse; I wasn’t supposed to do it. The six digits before the period that glared back at me from the screen made me feel like I was going blind.
This thing with Aiden was a lottery, and I happened to be the only one with a ticket to it; it also happened to be the winning ticket. This small nugget of uneasiness jiggled around in my chest, but I ignored it as much as I could until I couldn’t handle it any more.
I would be helping someone whose sincerity I couldn’t judge completely.
I would be signing away years of my life.
I’d be doing something illegal.
And I would be doing this all as technically a business transaction. It wasn’t that complicated because I understood what Aiden was doing and why he was doing it, for the most part.
I just didn’t completely understand why he insisted on trying to reel me back into his life.
Regardless of everything else though, a part of me was resentful that Aiden I-get-everything-I-want Graves, had his mind set on me to be the one to help him out. I guess I didn’t feel like he deserved my help or my loyalty when he’d never exactly done anything to deserve it.
But…
My student loan debt wasn’t just a paycheck; it wasn’t payable in five years like a car loan. Plus, if a house would also be a form of payment… We were talking a lot of money, a lot of heartache, and a lot of interest. Thirty years on a mortgage. It would be a massive relief.
Wouldn’t it?
Could I just forgive Aiden and do this?
I knew people made mistakes, and I understood that you didn’t always know what you had until you didn’t have it; I had learned that myself the hard way about small things I’d taken for granted. But I also knew how resentful I could be, how I held on to grudges sometimes.
I found myself driving to Aiden’s house, heart in my throat, risking my life and freedom for a freaking student loan that I couldn’t just forget about or disregard.
The security guard at the gate grinned at me when I pulled in to the community Aiden lived in. “I haven’t seen you in forever, Miss Vanessa,” he greeted me.
“I quit,” I explained after greeting him. “He shouldn’t be surprised I’m here.”
He gave me a look that said he was a little more than impressed. “He’s not. He’s been reminding me every week to let you in if you came by.”
He was either a little too confident or…
Well, there was no ‘or.’ He was a little too confident. I suddenly had the urge to turn my car around to teach him a lesson, but I wasn’t egotistical or dumb enough to do it. With a good-bye wave at the guard, I drove passed the gate and toward the home I’d been to too many times to count.
I knew he’d be home, so I didn’t worry about the absence of cars in the driveway as I parked on the street like I had every time in the past, and marched up to the front door, feeling incredibly awkward as I rang the doorbell.
I wanted to turn around, walk away, and tell myself I didn’t need his money. I really wanted to.
But I didn’t go anywhere.
It took a couple minutes for the sound of the lock getting tumbled to let me know he was there, but in no time, the door was swung open and Aiden stood there in his usual attire, his towering body blocking the light from inside the house. His expression was open and serious as he let me in, and led me over to where everything had begun—the big kitchen. It didn’t matter that his couch was incredibly comfortable; he always seemed to prefer to sit in the kitchen at the island or in one of the chairs of the nook to eat, read, or do a puzzle.
He took a seat on his favorite stool, and I took the one furthest away from him. It was weirder than it should have been considering what was at stake.
I was a person, and he wasn’t any more or any less special than I was, and regardless of what happened, I had to remember that point.
So I sucked in a breath through my nose, and just went for it. Honesty was the best policy and all that, wasn’t it? “Look, I’m scared,” I admitted in one breath, taking in his familiar features, the slants of his cheekbones, the thick, short beard that covered the lower half of his face, and that ragged white scar along his hairline.
For two years, I’d seen his face at least five times a week, and not once had we ever had a moment remotely close to this. I couldn’t forget that, because it mattered to me. It would be one thing to have a stranger ask me to marry him because he wanted to become a U.S. resident, but it was a totally different thing to have someone that I knew, who had never cared for me, ask.
Honestly, it was worse.
Aiden’s long lashes lowered for a moment, and the man who was as greedy with his attention and affections as I was with the red and pink Starbursts, lifted a rounded, hunk of a shoulder. “What are you worried about?” He commanded the words.
“I don’t want to go to jail.” I really didn’t want to go to jail; I’d looked up marriage fraud on the internet and it was a felony. A felony with up to a five-year prison sentence and a fine that made my student loans seem like chump change.
Apparently the male version of my best friend said, “You have to get caught to go to jail.”
“I’m a terrible liar,” I admitted because he had no idea how bad of one I was.
“You knew you were planning on quitting for months before you did. I think you might be okay with it,” he threw out suddenly in a slightly accusing tone.