“You’re back!”

Natalie stood up from the couch as I entered our apartment, but quickly sank at the look on my face.

“Jess, I’m so sorry. Ben swore he wouldn’t say a word.” Her arms trembled as she approached me and her cheeks shined with tears. “Please believe me.”

I softened when I saw how upset she was over it. She still should have kept her trap shut. “You told him when I asked you not to tell anyone. I made you promise.”

She gave a frustrated sigh and brushed her hair back with her right hand. "I know I fucked things up for you both. I'm sorry."

When I looked at her hands, I saw she wasn’t wearing her engagement ring.

Whoa. “What happened?”

Natalie's eyes watered and then before I knew it, she had launched herself in my arms. She sobbed into my shoulder, and I reached around to pat her back.

“I don’t know if I’m ready to marry him.”

Wow. “Seriously? You guys are perfect together.”

“I was sure before we were engaged, but then he got his new position at the law firm. Now…eh. We barely see each other.”

“What are you talking about? Don’t you hang out every weekend?”

“No. He works on weekends. Damn it, Jess. I was so lonely when you left, and then he had to start this whole mess with your foster parents.”

I didn’t even consider how she must have suffered. “I don’t want you to break up with him because of me.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”

A small amount of guilt wormed its way inside my heart.

I do not want this. If Natalie and Ben weren’t meant together that was one thing—but I didn’t want her to break up over this. What if she regrets it years down the line and resents me for it?

I gently disengaged myself from her arms and sat down at the kitchen table. As I did, a wave of exhaustion slammed into me. I didn’t realize how tired I was from all the traveling.

“What about Luke?”

I was a lot less willing to discuss him. “What about him?”

Natalie rolled her eyes. “What happened between you guys?”

“It’s over.”

“Oh—because his father found out?”

I looked at her, debating whether to tell her the truth. "I walked out on him."

“What? Why?”

I’m wondering that myself.

My hands gripped the splintered edge of the crappy kitchen table. “I didn’t want him to lose his fortune. He shouldn’t have to choose between me and five billion freaking dollars.”

“Are you telling me he turned down the money for you, and you rejected him?”

Fury smoldered from Natalie’s eyes. “Well, yeah.”

Her hand whirled across my vision as she slapped my head. “Are. You. Completely. Mental?”

Jesus.

“It’s not just the money, Nat. It’s his job. Probably his house, too. He’s—”

“He’s perfect for you, you bleeding idiot!”

I'd never seen her so upset. She slammed her fists on the kitchen table and shook her head, gazing at me like I was something under her shoe.

“I know he is. He was the best thing in my life. When we first started out, I thought he was just going to be a typical spoiled rich boy, but he’s not at all like that. Luke made me feel like I was normal. He made me feel cherished, and I’ve never felt that.”

“Then why the fuck would you ditch him like that?”

“His dad called and demanded that he stop seeing me, or Luke would never see a cent of that money. He wouldn’t leave me. S—so I left him.”

She stared at me, slack-jawed with shock. “I don’t get it.”

“I can’t live knowing I’m the cause that everything went to shit around him.”

She looked up as she heard the tremble in my voice. “How are you holding up with all this?”

I covered my face with my hands. I tried to shrug it off, but my breath choked, and Natalie's warm hand touched my shoulder. It hurt. A lot. I wanted him more than anything in my life—more than I wanted to breathe.

Is Natalie right? Am I going to regret this forever?

“I told him I didn’t want him if he was broke.”

She made a small gasping sound. “Jesus, Jessica.”

“I had to!” I said, lifting my head. “If I wasn’t a complete bitch to him, he would have never let me go.”

And I love him too much to see him grow to resent me.

I thought of the old saying, “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Whoever came up with that was full of shit.

It was far worse to have a brief taste of true happiness, only to have it ripped away forever.

Ignorance is bliss.

Natalie’s gripped my shoulders and hugged my back. “You need to talk to him. Tell him you were talking out of your ass.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will. He’s not a guy you throw away!”

“What’s the point? He would’ve tossed me aside to marry a high-society girl, eventually. You know I’m right.”

“How the fuck is he going to do that now he has no money?”

 “It doesn’t matter. I can’t live with the fact I’m the reason it’s all gone. Don’t you get that?”

The fire receded from her eyes as she nodded.

“I get it. I just think it’s a mistake.”

“It was a Cinderella arrangement, not a mistake. It would've ended at some point.”

* * *

I spent the next day in a jet-lagged stupor. I felt like shit. The best thing I had in my life was gone, and the money in my bank was dwindling. I sat in my computer chair, staring at the four-digit number in my bank account.

I would give it all just to have him. More than anything, I wanted to fall into his arms. I opened my phone, hoping to see a text, but there was nothing from him.

What do you expect? You ripped his heart out.

I promised Natalie I wouldn’t Google him, but it was too easy for me to type his name into that white bar and hit ‘enter.’

Luke Pardini takes red-eye to Chicago without blonde escort

I balked at “blonde escort,” but at least they weren’t mentioning me by name. I clicked on the link as my stomach fell through.

Did he leave already?

There was a picture of him dressed in the same clothes I’d seen him in yesterday. His suitcase was in his hand as he dashed across SFO. Another picture showed him arriving in Chicago. Had his father taken a turn for the worse? Is that why he left so abruptly?

“Stop reading into it. He’s done with you. Get over it,” I said to the empty room.

My email blinked, and I realized I had several unread emails. Recognizing neither, I clicked on the first.

Holy shit!

I scanned one. They were offering me an interview at a place I had applied to before I left to London. It was in a few days. I shot them an email, agreeing to the time.

Finally!

I tried not to get my hopes up, but I couldn't help but grin as I reread the email. A horrifying thought popped into my head: What if they Google my name and find all these escort articles?

I headed to the bookmarked sugar baby website and typed in my username and password. I was determined to delete everything, but something happened.

Error: that username does not exist

I tried it again. Nothing. Then I logged into the email I created for the account, but that vanished too. Finally, I searched for myself on the sugar baby website. Then I looked for Luke's. Nothing. It was as if everything disappeared.

Luke must have paid someone to do this. To hide the evidence.

The euphoria at getting a job interview evaporated. I needed to get out of the stifling apartment. Natalie was at work, and I hated the silence that permeated the walls. I grabbed my purse and flung open the door as a crowd of people surrounded me, screaming.

What the fuck?

I blinked in the bright, winter sunlight.

“Miss Knight!”

They elbowed each other in their attempts to shove huge black cameras in my face. Flash. Click.

“Miss Knight, what did you and Luke do together? Would you like to sell a story to Huffington Post?”

The woman shoved a microphone under my nose. I stared at in shock for a second, refusing to look at the video camera aimed at me, and smacked it away. Didn’t they understand that I didn’t want to be harassed?

“No. Get off of my lawn.”

None of them budged. When I was with Luke, he always shoved through the paparazzi like moving through a packed concert. I edged through them to get to my crappy car parked on the street. They followed me like a strange, nonthreatening mob and encircled my car. All their requests were drowned by the car's engine, and they moved out of the way when it lurched forward.

They took pictures through the windshield; some of them still screaming requests. Jesus. How long is this going to last? Surely, people would tire of reading about the blonde hooker—escort—or whatever it was they were calling me.

I didn't feel like going to the store because I knew I would have to drive back home with the groceries where they were camped out. So I veered my car into the highway and headed instead toward the soup kitchen.

I wasn’t scheduled to come in, but I couldn’t handle sitting in my apartment alone all day. As I walked across the parking lot, I saw that half the soup kitchen's windows were smashed.

“What happened?” I asked the men sweeping up the broken glass.

They shrugged. “I don’t think you’re supposed to go in there.”

Ignoring him, I pushed through the door, and my shoes crunched over shards. Inside was a scene of devastation. Black graffiti covered the yellow walls in high arches. I bent over and righted a chair. As I walked through to the kitchen, a sick feeling descended over me.

Shelly was there with a clipboard in her hands, shaking her head. “Our inventory suffered a huge loss. They took our best pots and made a mess out of the pantry.”

“Who did this?” 

“You haven’t even seen the worst of it.”

She beckoned me to the back that led to the small garden I helped build. I stared in dismay at the lumps of brown earth everywhere and pushed the door open in a rage. There was nothing left but tatters of green. All of our herbs—gone. The bok choy and the cabbage lay on the ground like headless corpses. 

“It doesn’t matter,” I croaked. “We’ll just have to do it again. Re-plant everything.”

“I’m not sure Carol will want to. It’ll be hard enough replacing all the supplies we lost. There’s no money in the budget for the garden.”

I felt the familiar sting of frustration at Carol’s rigid policies until I remembered: I have money. I could pour thousands into this place.

Ok, it wasn’t like I had thousands upon thousands, but the money Luke gave me would help repair most of the damage.

Giving your money away is such a stupid idea.

But the money was making me sick. I didn’t want it anymore. The articles written about me made me feel ashamed, even though I had done nothing wrong. It reminded me that at its core, our relationship was represented by dollar signs. I knew that it meant much more than that, but I had to get rid of it. All of it.

I cried when I got home and wrote the check, clutching an eight thousand, five hundred and sixty-two dollar check. I couldn't empty my entire bank account—I still needed to eat and pay my bills—but at least most of it was gone.

You are so fucking stupid. Just shoot yourself now.

It would be the most generous, dumb thing I ever did.

Natalie will freak.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Carol looked at me as if I was on the edge of sanity, which I probably was.

Just take it before I change my mind. “Yes, on one condition, though.”

She folded her arms. “What?”

"I want more authority in the kitchen. There's also got to be a security system so that this never happens again. We need cameras and padlocked gates enclosing the backyard."

“Fine.”

Carol stuck out her hand, and I grabbed it.

Fine?

I was expecting a fight, but I guess once I waved money in front of her face—nothing else mattered. I turned around and tried to ignore the screaming voice in my head, calling me an idiot for spending the majority of my nest egg. What would happen when another disaster hit and the soup kitchen ran out of funds?

As I got in my car, I turned the volume way up in the hopes it would drown out the voice in my head.

* * *

At the end of another workday, the BART ground to a halt at my stop, and I stood, following the rush of passengers into the frigid air. I walked down the steps and thought back to the time when I hurried up these steps in a borrowed dress to meet Luke in the city.

I had a job. Health insurance. All was well, except that I still pined for Luke.

“There are plenty of other guys out there,” Natalie repeated over and over. “Tons.”

Except there was only one man, I was interested in. He saved me—he changed my life. I was almost sorry to see the paparazzi dwindle from my lawn. It was a testament to time. The scandal of our brief relationship was ebbing away. No one cared anymore. I wondered if Luke thought of me as often as I thought of him. Was his father still alive? Was he catering to his every demand?

Once or twice, I wanted to call him, but I didn’t want to be that girl. I would not be pathetic—I would not chase after a man. I made a choice, and I needed to stick to it.

Wherever he is, I hope he's happy.

My gloominess hung around me like a cloud as I shoved through the front door. Easter was next week, and Natalie was going home to her parents. She and Ben were taking a break.

"Natalie," I called out as I opened my apartment door and shut it behind me. "I hope to God we have booze because I'm feeling the need to do some drinking."

“In here.”

Her voice sounded strange. Did Ben call? I hung up my scarf and coat rather quickly. I walked into the kitchen and halted.

He was there, sitting around our crappy kitchen table. His back faced me, but I recognized his dark brown head. He wore a black cashmere sweater and ironed dark jeans. His head turned and those lips I had fantasized about every day, spoke.

“Jessica.”

Behind him, Natalie stood and retreated to her bedroom. I was still too stunned to register he was here, in my apartment.

“What are you doing here?”

I thought of running into his arms while sobbing, but that wasn’t my instinct. I was numb.

He rose from the chair but didn’t come any closer. 

“These past few months have been the worst in my life. I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said—”

“I’m—I’m so sorry.”

He pushed himself off the table and walked to me, and my heart sped as he came closer.

“I heard what you did with my money."

"How?"

"I was thinking about you one night, and I looked up your kitchen's website. Then I saw your name on the front page, and I knew what you had done."

He touched my face and a torrent of emotion boiled up, like the burst of liquid from a shaken soda can.

“Then I got a call from Natalie.”

“Y—you did?”

“She told me everything.”

Tears slid down my face. “Damn her.”

I love you, Natalie.

“Don’t be angry with her.”

“I wanted you to be free.”

He grasped my hand and squeezed it, willing me to be silent. “These past few months have been so goddamn miserable. You didn’t set me free.”

“I was trying to do the right thing!”

“I miss you. I want you and I will not let anyone else get in my way.”

“Luke, it’s too m—much. I can’t ask you to give everything away.”

“It’s my decision,” he said in a hard voice. “I don’t need the fucking money, but I’ll die if I don’t have you.”

I choked into the hands that cradled my face. I don't know which of us started forward, but we both launched ourselves, and our faces joined, the salty tears dripping into my mouth as he held me so tightly against his chest I couldn't breathe. Then I felt like I was in one of those romantic comedies, those silly movies where the man picks up the girl in his arms and kisses her like it's the last one he'll ever have.

He came back for me.

I broke off the kiss and laughed in utter joy as Luke’s smile spread across his face.