The moment I say it, her face relaxes, her shoulders falling away from their tense position up by her ears.

“You don’t?”

“No. I think it’s very possible that you did what you did because you thought it was your only option.”

Angelica turns red, bites her lip. “It was stupid to think that.”

“Maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know, because you haven’t told me the whole story.”

She looks up at me, eyes flashing. “I wanted to, but—”

“But I was an asshole.” I scoot closer to her on the sofa and take both of her hands in mine. She doesn’t pull away. Her breath hitches in her chest when our skin makes contact. “No matter what the reason is, I should have given you a chance to explain.”

“You didn’t have to then, and you don’t have to now.”

“Do you remember that night at my office?” She nods, narrowing her eyes slightly. “When you told me you had feelings for me, were you lying? Was that part of a plot?”

Angelica glances down at our hands, wound tightly together like our lives depend on it. “I wanted to tell you something else.”

“What was it?”

“I was going to tell you about Charlie. About all of it, but then...I couldn’t. So I told you I had feelings for you instead.”

“And was it true?”

“It’s still true.”

Her voice is barely above a whisper, but the words send a warmth to my heart that radiates out to my fingertips. This is all we need. We still have a shot.

“Tell me what happened, Angelica. All of it.”

She takes a deep breath and turns, letting go of my hands, so that the side of her body is pressed up against mine. I wrap my arm around her shoulders and hold on tight.

“This is embarrassing.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. Start at the beginning.”

“My brother Adam called me one day. He doesn’t usually call, and he sounded pretty shaken up. He wanted me to come to his apartment.” Angelica focuses on some spot in the air in front of her. “I’ve bailed him out a few times since he moved to the city, so I thought it was more of the same.”

“Rent?”

“Yeah, or groceries. Once he got a job, he wanted to spend all his money on going out. I couldn’t blame him. We didn’t get much of a chance to cut loose back home growing up.”

“I see.”

“The only weird thing was that it had been a few months—maybe six?—since he’d called me for that kind of thing.”

“Getting on his feet.”

“So I thought.” Angelica tightens one hand around her knee. “When I got to his apartment, Charlie was there.”

“This is the guy he owed money to?”

“Yeah. And Charlie—” She shakes her head. “He’s tall. Taller than you, and strong. He looked like he came from the military or something like that, but....” She searches for the words. “But evil. He told me that to pay back Adam’s debts, I needed to help them with a project.”

“Getting access to my computer?”

“I didn’t know who it was at the time. But that’s what he said I had to do. Then he told Adam that he was lucky, because he and his guys could have…” Angelica swallows hard. “He said they could have taken me for payment.”

My stomach flips over. No wonder. “What a disgusting piece of—”

“Adam didn’t like it either,” she interjects. “He started to say something, and Charlie punched him. It was sick, Jett, the sound it made. He needed stitches.” She turns to look at me. “I couldn’t let anything like that happen to him again.”

I pull her in close and kiss the top of her head.

“After that,” she says, after taking in another deep breath, “I tried to go to the police. I didn’t want to talk my way into some guy’s penthouse and steal from him. But Charlie had a guy waiting for me. He pretended to be one of those guys selling CDs on the street, and he gave me a message.”

“What was the message?”

“One chance.”

My hands clench into fists. “So you came to my penthouse.”

“Yeah.”

“That day in the elevator, you were supposed to go up there.”

Angelica laughs, sounding a little bitter. “There was a whole plan. He knew you were moving in that day, and I was supposed to pose as one of the movers and pretend to deliver a portable scanner. I had it in my purse.”

“A portable scanner?” I can’t help but laugh at that. “That was your cover?”

“Yes, and then you blew it all to hell when you got in the elevator!” Despite the heavy tone of the conversation, Angelica’s eyes sparkle. “All he told me was the last name. Brandon. I thought you’d be some crotchety old man.”

“Hardly.”

“Hardly.”

She looks deeply into my eyes, smiling at the memory. Happy for the first time since I walked in the door.

“That was real, right then.”

“It was,” she agrees. “When I got out on the eighth floor it took me a while to get myself together. I wanted to follow you up to that penthouse and...you know.”

“I do know.”

“You remember the rest from there. I downloaded the information Charlie wanted once a week and met up with him to pass it off. That’s where I was that night at three in the morning when you caught me sneaking in.”

“I figured.”

“I wanted to tell you so many times. I wanted to make it so clear that I was only doing it because I thought my brother’s life was in danger. It still might be. I don’t know if they’ve caught Charlie or his people yet. But every time I worked up the courage, Charlie would threaten me again. He even found out where my mother lives.”

Her eyes are wide, tears collecting in the corners.

“I would have done the same thing.”

She swallows.

“I’m sorry, Jett.” Her voice drops and her eyes fall to her lap.

I could tell her that it’s all right, that I’ll give her the rest of our lives to work this out, but the words escape me.

Instead, I put my fingers under her chin, tilt her face toward mine, and kiss her until there’s no doubt she’s forgiven, completely and totally.