I’d been too shocked to have to count to ten after that.
All As and a couple of Bs hadn’t been good enough. Yet I’d still been horrified and disappointed when I got accepted to every decent school I applied to, but received no financial help other than a federal grant I qualified for because of my financial need, but that only covered 10 percent of my total yearly tuition.
And, of course, the school I wanted to go to was out of state and incredibly expensive. I’d loved it more than I loved any other one I’d gone to check out with my friends the fall of my senior year.
So, I did the unthinkable. I took out loans. Massive student loans.
Then I did the next most unthinkable thing in the world: I didn’t tell anyone.
Not my foster parents, not my little brother, or even Diana. No one knew except me. There was no other person in the world who carried the burden of nearly $200,000.00 on their conscience but me.
In the four years since graduating with my bachelors, I’d been paying off as much as I could from my loans while also attempting to put money aside in savings to eventually be able to dedicate myself full-time to my dream. A debt as large as the one I had was a bottomless pit that you had to accept like it was Hepatitis—it wasn’t going anywhere—but it only served to make me work harder, which was why I didn’t mind going to work for Aiden, and then doing my design work well into the middle of the night afterward. But there was only so much you could take, and I’d saved and paid off a significant enough of a chunk to get to the point where I felt like I could breathe for the first time in years… as long as I didn’t let myself look too closely at the loan statements I got in the mail every month.
But…
“What do you think?” the big man asked, leveling his stare right at me as if he hadn’t just busted out the greatest secret in my life.
What I thought was he was out of his damn mind. What I thought was my heart shouldn’t have been beating so quickly. What I also thought was no one else should have known about how much money I owed.
Mostly though, a small part of me was thinking there was a price for everything.
“Vanessa?”
I blinked at him before looking down at my poor, contaminated sandwich sitting in the sink. Then I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and opened them once more. “How do you know about my loans?”
“I’ve always known.”
What? “How?” I felt… I felt a little violated honestly.
“Trevor did a background check on you.” That sounded vaguely familiar now that he mentioned it, even though it was disturbing to hear they knew something I’d tried so hard to keep to myself. “There’s no way you’ve managed to pay them off,” Aiden stated.
He was right.
Vomit. Vomit. Vomit.
“Whatever you owe, I’ll pay it.”
Just like that. I’ll pay it. Like $150,000.00 was no big deal.
I liked to watch that show on television where bosses went undercover at their businesses and then at the end, they surprised their employees with some crazy amount of money to go on vacation, or to pay off whatever it was they owed money on. More often than not, I got teary-eyed watching it. The employees would usually always cry and say how they never expected something like that to happen to them, or they would talk about how much of a blessing the money was going to be for their families. Or how much the gift they were being bestowed was going to change their lives.
Yet here I was.
My hands shook. The ability to breathe was stolen from my lungs.
My loans were my Achilles heel.
I was only slightly ashamed of myself for not immediately thinking his offer was preposterous. Why wasn’t I kicking him out or telling him to go eat shit? Why wasn’t I laughing at his idea? Or telling him to get the hell out because he couldn’t buy me? He hadn’t treated me well. He didn’t deserve for me to do him a ‘favor’, and put my life on the line for him.
Clenching my hands at my sides, I let the sensation of being overwhelmed wash over me. He was offering to pay off this thing that weighed on my soul like a cement block in a pool. Who did that?
Better yet, who said no to an offer like that? I liked to think I made wise decisions; that I did what was the best for me, or would be the best for me in the long run. But $150,000.00? Holy shit.
“I’m willing to compromise,” Aiden offered, his eyes even, his voice steady, which didn’t help any.
I sputtered.
Shut up, Van, I told myself. Shut up, shut up, shut up and just say yes, you idiot. Don’t talk him out of this. Don’t be that dumb. You can get over anything for that much money. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, even if he hurt your feelings, even though it’s stupid and illegal, and doesn’t make any sense because there are a million other women in the world who would do it for less.
But I couldn’t shut up. I just couldn’t. It was that nagging little part of my personality that I’d had to hone over the years—the one that didn’t know how to keep quiet sometimes.
I lifted my eyes and looked at the bearded man standing in my apartment offering me a lifeline, an opportunity. A felony, I made myself remember. He was asking me to do something that was essentially illegal. This man that had never given two single shits about me until now that he needed something, and he had no one else to ask. “Aiden….”
The most muscular man I’d ever known took a step forward, and dropped his hands to his sides, pinning me in place with his gaze alone. “It has to be you. I’ve thought about it. No one understands my schedule the way you do. You don’t get on my nerves, and you’re…” He shook his head and crucified me on the spot. “I’ll do whatever it takes. Tell me what you want and you’ll have it. Anything.”
The headache that had been hanging around my temples from hunger suddenly intensified.
Tell him no, the smart part of my brain said. I could pay off my loans eventually. I still had time.
But the other part of my brain, the logical one, told me it would be dumb to waste this opportunity. All I had to do was marry the guy, right? Sign a piece of paper? Save a fortune worth of interest?
Oh, hell. I couldn’t seriously be changing my tune from one minute to the next. I’d just been telling him how we weren’t friends and how much he’d hurt my feelings, and how dumb he was being for even bringing it up… and now I was thinking about his offer all in a matter of a few minutes. Then again, over a hundred thousand dollars was riding on this offer. This wasn’t nothing.
It was when my hand started shaking worse than before that I had my temporary answer, and even then, simply wanting to consider the option made me feel like a prostitute.
I might be thinking of myself as being a prostitute, but at least I’d be a prostitute free from debt, wouldn’t I?
His gaze was totally fixed on me standing there, in my tiny kitchen in baggy Dr. Pepper pajama pants and a spaghetti strap tank with no bra. This incredibly handsome and intimidating man wanted…
There was something wrong with me. There was something seriously wrong with me.
Tell him to screw off. Tell him to screw off.
I didn’t.
“Let me think about it,” I said, my voice breaking, unsure.
He didn’t cry victory at me not immediately telling him to go to hell, which was surprising. Instead, Aiden said very calmly, “That’s fine.” He hesitated for a second, rocking from one foot to another. “I am sorry I messed up.”
A knot formed in my throat at the expression on his features.
“I’m used to being on my own, Vanessa. Nothing that I did or said had anything to do with you. I want you to understand that.”
Without another word, the man known as The Wall of Winnipeg let himself out. The only sound signaling his departure was the door slamming shut behind him.
I was going to think about it. Going to think about marrying a guy for money when I’d walked out on him a month ago for not defending me to his manager, for not upholding the tiny bit of a bond I thought we shared. What the hell was I doing?
Being smart, that logical part of my brain whispered.
* * *