I took a sip of my beer, pretending to let that Bailey thing slide. Even though I sure as hell wasn’t.

“Are they in foreclosure?”

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

“They’re behind on the loan payments?”

“The mortgage is in default. They have a few more weeks before it goes into foreclosure.”

In other words, right before Christmas. Fuck.

A sinking feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t even want to go home for Christmas to deal with my catastrophe of a family. And yet, it was all Bailey wanted—but might not get.

“So that’s why they’re selling the house.”

“Yeah, they’re hoping to sell before the bank takes it,” he said.

Double fuck. I was no realtor, but even I knew hardly anyone was buying houses around Christmas. Especially in the midst of an economic recession.

“Can they get out of default before the deadline?” I asked. “Do they have anyone they can hit up for the cash?”

Derek sighed, avoiding my eyes. “Probably not. But they won’t take your charity, if that’s what you’re trying to get at.”

“Would they take an interest-free loan?”

“Doubt it,” he said.

Did he actually doubt it, or did he just not want the help to come from me?

“They could pay me back once the house sells.”

Assuming it did sell and assuming they could afford to pay me back once it did. Hopefully, they weren’t underwater too. But I wouldn’t offer anything I wasn’t willing to part with permanently.

He looked at me warily, studying me with eyes that were a darker, duller version of Bailey’s—more brown, less green. Then he shook his head slightly, like he was ruling it out.

“To be clear,” I said, “unlike your dick friend Morrison, my help won’t come with strings. I don’t want Bailey to have to worry about this. And I definitely don’t want her parents to lose their home at Christmas.”

Derek’s jaw tensed, probably because of the Morrison jab.

I wanted to ask him whether he was aware of the texts that fucker was sending his sister. Or the millions of other terrible things he’d done to Bailey. But covering that would take all night—and those were just the things she’d told me about. They were the tip of the hockey stick.

“B would be pissed at you for going behind her back about this,” he said.

He was right, but the alternative was worse. I hoped Bailey would agree, at least once she forgave me. She’d never been really mad at me before; it was hard to say.

“Let me worry about that,” I said. “How much is the mortgage, do you know?”

“Around three thousand a month.”

“Do you think fifteen grand would help?”

His eyes widened. “You’re going to cut a check for fifteen grand like it’s nothing?”