And negotiations suddenly came to a screeching halt. For a moment.
Then I made myself think about it. Taking a few years to pay off the loan would look an awful lot less sneaky than if it was done in one or two big payments. If I made a few payments here and there, that would look a lot better too, wouldn’t it? Like if we waited a few months until after we signed the papers and everything? I had to think so.
“Okay.” I nodded. “That works for me.”
“My lease on this house is ending in March. We can rent another house afterward or sign another lease here. When my residency comes through, I’ll buy one that you can keep afterward. ”
Afterward was the second thing I paid attention to.
The main thing I didn’t miss was the beginning of his statement and the ‘we’ in the following sentence.
“I’d have to move in with you?” I asked slow, slow, slowly.
That big, handsome face went a bit squinty. “I’m not moving in with you.” I couldn’t even find it in me to be offended; I was too busy processing whether he’d made a joke or not. “You’re the one worried about making it believable. Someone is going to check our licenses.”
He had a point. Of course he had a point. But… but…
Breathe. Loans and a house. Loans and house.
“Okay. All right. That makes sense.” My stuff. What was I going to do with it? My apartment with all my things that I’d collected over the years….
I was going to have a panic attack at some point.
I’d known I wasn’t always going to live there—at least I’d better not. But that didn’t change anything. This house wasn’t mine and it didn’t feel like mine. It felt like Aiden’s place. Like the house I’d worked in for years. But I could move in if I needed to, especially if it was the difference between making this hoax of a marriage seem legitimate and not.
I had to. Had to.
“When do you want to do this?” I pretty much croaked.
He didn’t ask me. He just said, “Soon.”
I was going to have a panic attack. “Okay.” All right. Soon could be a month from now. Two months from now.
“Fine?” Aiden raised his eyebrows in what seemed like a challenge.
I nodded dumbly, finding myself becoming more and more in tune with the idea that we were really doing this. I was going to marry him to get his papers fixed. For money. For a lot of money. For financial security.
Aiden stared at me for a while, the bobbing of his throat the only sign that he was thinking. “You’ll do this, then?”
I would be an idiot if I didn’t, wouldn’t I?
That was a dumb question in itself. Of course I would be an idiot, a massive, gigantic idiot who owed a lot of money.
“Yes.” I gulped. “I will.”
For the first time in two years, The Wall of Winnipeg’s face took on an expression that was as close to joyous as I had ever seen. He looked… relieved. More than relieved. I’d swear on my life his eyes lit up. For that one split second, he resembled a completely different person. Then the man who wore a jockstrap on a regular basis did the unthinkable.
He reached forward and put a hand on top of mine, touching me for the first time. His fingers were long and warm, strong, his palm broad and the skin rough, thick. He squeezed. “You won’t regret this.”
Chapter Nine
I didn’t call Aiden and he didn’t call me.
I couldn’t blame the lack of communication on him not having my cell phone number; I’d given it to him before I left his house the day I’d agreed to do what we were doing.
A week passed, and when he hadn’t bothered getting into contact with me, I didn’t think much of it. The Three Hundreds were in the middle of preseason games according to the news. I knew how busy this time of the year was for him.
Plus, there was the small chance that maybe he had changed his mind. Maybe.
Well, I didn’t know why else he wouldn’t call, but I made myself not think about it more than I needed to, which I figured wasn’t much, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stress about it.
The reality that there was a chance he had found some other way of getting his residency petition filed wasn’t as crippling as I would have imagined, considering there was over a hundred thousand dollars riding on our deal. I wouldn’t even say I was disappointed but…
Okay, maybe by the fifth day into the week I might have accepted that I was a little, tiny bit disappointed. Having my loans paid off would have been… well, the more I thought about having that amount of money resting on my shoulders, the more I realized just how repressing it was. It would be one thing if I owed that much money on a house, but in freaking school loans?
If twenty-six-year-old Vanessa could talk to eighteen-year-old Vanessa, I wasn’t sure I would have still gone to such an expensive school. I probably would have gone to community college for my basics then transferred to a state college. My little brother had never made me feel guilty for leaving; he’d been the one to tell me to go. Every once in a while though, I regretted the decision I’d made. But I was a stubborn jackass idiot who wanted what she wanted come hell or high water, and I’d done what I wanted to do at an incredibly high expense.
By the seventh day into our no-communication spree, I was more than halfway through coming to terms with the fact that I would be in debt the next twenty years of my life, and that I’d already assumed that would be the case the instant I’d gotten that first statement in the mail after graduation.
So why cry over it?
I had told him the truth. I didn’t need him or his money.
But I would have taken it because I was an idiot, but I wasn’t that much of an idiot.
* * *
I was in the middle of uploading a Facebook cover file to DropBox for a client when my phone rang. Peeking over at it sitting on the coffee table behind my work desk, I couldn’t help but be a little surprised at the name appearing on the screen.
Miranda P.
I should probably change the contact information since he technically wasn’t my version of Miranda anymore.
“Hello?”
“Are you home?” the deep voice asked.
“Yes.” I’d barely finished pronouncing the ‘s’ when a now familiar, heavy-handed knock banged on my door. I didn’t have to check my phone to know he’d hung up. A moment later, the peephole confirmed who I thought it would be.
And, yep, it was Aiden.
He barreled inside the instant the deadbolt was turned and slammed the door shut behind him, locking it without a second glance. Those dark eyes pierced me with a look that made me frown and freeze at the same time.
“What is it?”
“What the hell were you thinking moving here?” he pretty much growled in a disgusted tone that immediately put me on the defensive.
Sure, I knew my complex was slightly scary, but he didn’t need to make it seem like I lived in a slum. “It’s cheap.”
“You’re kidding,” he muttered.
Where the hell did this smart mouth come from? “Some of my neighbors are nice,” I claimed.
The expression on his face was dubious as he said, “Someone was getting jumped right next to the gate when I pulled in.”
Oh. I waved him inside to change the subject. He didn’t need to know that happened on a weekly basis. I’d called the cops a couple of times, but once I realized they never actually showed up, I stopped bothering. “Do you need something?”
Walking ahead of me toward the living room, he answered over his shoulder, “I’ve been waiting for you to let me know when you’re moving in.”
That had been one of the first things I’d stopped wondering back when I began considering that he might have changed his mind. So hearing it again was like having ice thrown on me. Almost. I didn’t bother telling him I’d thought we weren’t going through with it anymore. “Were you... did you…” I coughed. “Was I supposed to do it soon?”
Turning around to face me, he tipped his chin down before crossing his giant biceps over his chest. “The season is about to start, we need to do it before then.”