Kiss Her Once for Me (93)

“Andrew,” Lovey says in a low, shocked voice, clutching at her throat. “Why? Why would you put our family through this?”

“Yes, why?” Katherine demands. “Don’t we provide enough for you?”

“The money wasn’t for me!” Andrew finally drops my hand so he can pinch the bridge of his nose for a second. Then he releases a breath and the final truth. “I found out Grandpa wrote Jack out of the will. The trust that was supposed to go to both of us—he changed it so I’m the only beneficiary, and he added a stipulation that says I have to get married to claim the money. I did this whole thing for Jack!”

The entire family turns to look at the woman sitting on the couch in her quiet fury. I was already looking at her—already memorizing the lines of hurt and disappointment and rage on her face—so I already know better than to expect Andrew’s declaration to change anything.

“For me?” Jack echoes, like she must have misunderstood the cruel irony of that claim. “You lied to me for me?”

“Yes!” Andrew says, but I can tell he knows he’s losing the moral high ground already. We both are, and my arms feel numb and my chest feels heavy and I know—I know—that this is what it feels like to fail. “When you decided to open the Butch Oven, you thought you had the trust to fall back on, and I didn’t want you to go bankrupt trying to go after your dream.”

Jack rises from the couch slowly and ominously. “I didn’t think I had the trust to fall back on,” she says.

Andrew blinks. “What do you mean? You did. We both did.”

“No,” Jack says firmly, her teeth grinding together. “I didn’t. You think I don’t know Grandpa wrote me out of his will after I dropped out of college? That motherfucker? Andrew, I knew there was no money waiting for me. I always knew. I just acted like I had a safety net because it was the only way to get you all to trust me. I took out the business loan for the bakery because I believe in myself. And all I’m hearing right now is that you didn’t believe in me.”

“I do believe in you!” Andrew shouts, rushing toward his sister. “JayJay, I completely believe in you! But starting a business is always a risk! I know! I work in investments! I didn’t want you to fail!”

He reaches out for her, and she bats his arms away.

“The two of you really don’t get it, do you?” She jabs a finger at me, too. “I didn’t need you to try to save me, Andrew. I just needed you to support me. And you assumed I would fail, just like Dad did.”

“I didn’t—” Andrew starts, but the rest of his defense dies in the back of his throat. Because he did, and I did. We both screwed everything up.

“Was it all a lie?” Lovey asks in a sad squeak of a voice. She’s looking at me.

“No,” I say, crying harder now, crying in the middle of the living room in front of the entire family. “No, only our engagement was a lie. Everything else—who I am, and how much I fell in love with all of you—that’s all the truth. I loved being part of this family!”

“How much?” Jack asks the silent room. She is staring right at me, burning straight through me.

“What do you mean?” I ask, even though I know.

“I didn’t get to that part of the webcomic, but I want to know what this was all worth to you. How much?”

I drop my head. “Two hundred thousand dollars.”

Jack pivots in her boots—the same ones she’s been wearing since yesterday—and barrels out of the room.

“Wait! Jack!” I shout after her, following her out of the house, out the back door, out into the snow. “Jack! Please!”

She stops in her tracks a few feet from the porch and looks at me with eyes like fire, eyes that want to reduce me to ash. “You were pretending to be his fiancée,” she says, like that’s it. Like that’s the end of us.

“I didn’t know!” I gasp. “I had no way of knowing you were his sister when I agreed to go along with Andrew’s plan, and then I was here, and—”

“And what? What? What is your excuse for not telling me the fucking truth the second you saw me?”

“I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“How? How could you ever think that?”

I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll never stop being sorry.”

“Do you have any idea how guilty I felt all week?” She’s crying. Jack is crying in the snow because of me. “The fact that I wanted you, even though you were with my brother,” Jack lashes at me. “The fact that I couldn’t stop flirting with you, couldn’t stop finding excuses to touch you. The fact that I was so desperate to kiss you under the mistletoe. I was so angry at myself for betraying my brother like that, and it turns out this entire time, your relationship with him was fake. You let me believe I was a terrible person!”

“I’m so fucking sorry!” I fall to my knees in front of her because I don’t know what else to do. “I was going to tell you the truth!”

“When? When I told you the truth about Claire, you made the choice to keep lying to me. And when I asked you point-blank about your relationship with Andrew at the bar, you made the choice to keep lying to me. And when we saw Andrew and Dylan together, you made the choice to keep lying to me!” She bends forward, so she’s bearing down on me like a cyclone of anger and hurt. “And when we had sex, you made the choice, then, too. And for what? For the money?”