I thought about her all the time. Couldn’t dream without her voice haunting me. Couldn’t move around my house without remembering her there.

I hadn’t even had the balls to move her desk from my office. It just sat there. One of the few physical reminders of our time together.

I flagged a waiter, grabbing another glass of whiskey and downing it in one go.

Letting her go that first time had been hard.

Now, the giant, lonely hole she’d left in my chest seemed insurmountable, and I had no idea where to go from here.

36

ADDISON

“This can’t be right,” I said as I looked over the hospital bill they had handed me.

Paid in full.

I had come to the hospital, ready to pay for all of it with my new two million. But then the administrative assistant told me I didn’t owe them anything. And the doctor caught me right as I was walking out and confirmed it had all been paid off.

About a month ago.

Did that mean…

“Take your mom and go live your life,” the doctor said with a kind smile. “You deserve it, Ms. Mercer.”

I had so many questions, but I couldn’t get a single word out of my mouth. I was just stuck there, frozen, staring at the bill. I couldn’t stop looking at the bright red stamp that indicated it had been paid.

The mountain of debt that was suffocating my mother and me was gone, just like that. We were free.

Happiness bubbled in my chest. I couldn’t stop the smile from my face or the tears from filling my eyes.

A gift. But who could have⁠—

I knew who.

I remembered walking out of my mother’s hospital room and seeing Warren talking to the doctor. My mind was so busy with my mother’s admission and the truth about my father that I hadn’t even thought twice about it.

But that had been days ago. Not a month.

He paid for it long before I gave in to him.

It had to be him. No one else in the world would do something like this for me.

But why?

You know why, a little voice in my head said.

My heart threatened to break in two inside my chest. Even after everything, he was still taking care of me. Not only had he given me the money, but he had wiped out my mother’s hospital debt. A woman who meant nothing to him.

Yet he still did all that. For me.

Go.

That word and the cold way he’d said it had hurt me, but the longer I removed myself from the situation, the worse I felt about how I treated him the last time we’d been together.

I knew there was something more between us. I loved him.