“You loved her.”
“She saved me.” His dark gaze bore into hers. “Whatever followed, all the rest, it doesn’t change the fact that I was dying inside, and she gave me back a life. She was my reason to open my eyes in the morning.”
Avery swallowed. Jon had been bad enough, but she couldn’t imagine the trauma Hayden had lived through. Losing her parents so young and so suddenly would have torn her apart.
“What changed?” she asked.
“I got older. Smarter. I learned about business, and I learned about accounting.”
“Why would you need—” She inhaled swiftly. Had Sophia been doing more than using Hayden as a personal ATM? Had she been milking his company as well?
“We still don’t have a completely accurate count of how much she embezzled. She was very clever. But it was in the millions.”
“Evil,” she breathed. What sort of person could use a young, grieving boy in such a way? How heartless did you have to be?
“Eventually the board came to me. The company was being run into the ground. My father’s legacy. They wanted to oust me and Sophia. I nearly lost everything because of her.”
“What did you do?”
“I confronted her,” he said the words simply, as if he didn’t understand the courage such an act must have taken. “She tried to deny it at first, but there was too much evidence. Then things turned ugly.” He took a swig of his beer. “She’d had years to learn where the skeletons were buried. We could go after her legally, but she’d ensure our reputation was dragged through the mud. We were taking on water as it was. We wouldn’t have survived her smear campaign. Besides, suing our acting CEO for embezzlement would have been an embarrassment to the company. It would have ruined us.”
“She got away with it?” Horror surged through her.
“We made her sign a non-disclosure agreement and agree to leave the country. No more contact with any representative of Wexton Hotels or our competitors. Given her payout, she was more than happy to comply with our requests.”
“No,” she said, hating to think of Sophia somewhere in the world, living happy off of her ill-gotten gains.
Hayden turned back to the forest, and she had a moment of insight.
“That’s not all, is it?” she asked.
A pained laugh escaped him. “You want it all, down to the last sordid truth, hmm?”
“Only if you are ready to tell me.”
Silence stretched before a shuddering exhale left him. “I gave her a choice.”
Avery said nothing, waiting for him to take his time.
“I told her she could leave with the money but she’d be dead to me. Or…”
“Or?”
He looked back at her, his expression so bleak her heart squeezed in sympathy. “Or she could return it and I’d forgive her. For everything. A clean slate, I called it. We could go back to what we’d been. Continue our relationship. Get engaged and build a life together. I told her I loved her and begged her to choose me.”
Empathy welled within her. “But she didn’t.”
“She laughed at the very idea.” He glanced away again. “Who does that? What sort of man begs for someone who nearly ruined him? How could I have so easily forgiven her?”
Unable to stay away, Avery pushed off the porch and crossed to his side in seconds. “You loved her,” she said, cupping his face in her hands. “Real, desperate love. It makes us more than we think we can be. Expands our ability for compassion. You did nothing wrong. All the fault lies at Sophia’s feet.”
“I fell for it all,” he said. “I let her use me.”
“There is no shame in loving someone.”
“There is when she’s a snake who almost ruined a company for the sake of her greed. She targeted me for a reason, Avery. I was weak. I deserved the destruction she nearly rained down on my head.”
She swallowed hard, her heart hurting for him and for the young boy he’d been, trusting in his first love only to have it explode in his face.
“Do you think I deserved it?” she asked. “I believed in a man I shouldn’t have. Ignored the inconsistencies because I wanted to believe in him. Was I asking for what happened next?”
His hands closed around her waist. “Of course not,” he said, heat in his voice. “You deserved nothing like what that idiot gave you. Your man should worship the ground you walk on and give thanks every day to have you in his life. You did nothing wrong.”
“Then why do you think you did just by loving the wrong person? We’re not responsible for the actions of others, Hayden. All we can do is try to navigate this complicated world as best we can. Sophia took advantage of you. All you did was love someone. It’s not a crime.”