“But,” she said, “all that work stuff is going to have to wait. Santiago wants me to fly to Puerto Rico to meet his family. I think he might be gearing up to ask me to marry him. The one problem is Daddy has all my money and I don’t have access to my air miles or the private jet. I don’t know what we’re going to do to get there.”

“Fly coach,” I told her, shaking my head. She was in for a very big surprise, and she had managed to make me smile and feel slightly better. It was like the old saying—you could lead a horse to the airport, but you couldn’t make her fly commercial.

We chatted for a while longer, mostly about her excitement about possibly getting engaged to Santiago. She mentioned overhearing Vanessa and Gilbert arguing about her being the one to run for senator, and I had to admit that it surprised me that she might actually do it. But I was glad because I knew it would be good for her. Then it was really, really late and Violet told me she’d call as soon as he asked, and to both of our surprise, we hugged.

“Travel safely! And good luck and a preemptive congratulations!” I said, walking her to the door. I hoped flying coach wouldn’t put her off airline travel for life.

When I shut the door, I was swamped by thoughts of Tyler, thoughts I’d been able to keep at bay while my sister was there. How could I have ever doubted him? When the entire time I’d known him, he’d always been honest with me. With everyone. He never wanted to fudge or tell a half truth about anything. And I had actually believed that he’d spent all these weeks lying to me? Using me?

Now I felt incredibly dumb. Part of me wanted to run to him and beg for his forgiveness, but the other part thought I didn’t deserve to just waltz back into his life and say, “Whoops, sorry, my bad.” Thanks to all those dysfunctional years in my family and a lying, cheating boyfriend, I was seriously lacking in my interpersonal communication skills. I didn’t know how to talk to Tyler or how to apologize. I’d accused him of something pretty awful and refused to believe him when he told me the truth.

I’d compared him in my mind to Brad, which was totally unfair.

I hadn’t even given Tyler a chance. I’d just cut him out of my life. The way that my parents had cut me out of theirs.

It was wrong.

But even knowing all that, I wasn’t ready to face him yet. More accurately, I wasn’t really ready to face how untrusting and awful I’d been toward him.

My mother had wanted me to think the worst of him and I had.

That was not the person I wanted to be.

Regardless of who I wanted to be, I currently felt a bit like a hermit/coward. Shay had told me that I could stay as long as I needed to, but I didn’t want to go back to staying on her couch. I needed to move forward. I didn’t tell her what Violet had told me, because I had to work through it and figure out what my next step would be. I would have to start looking for my own apartment, now that I knew my aunt had deliberately steered me away from decent places that I could have afforded. I decided my next step was to go back to the apartment and get my clothes and my car and my toiletries.

So I waited until the day after New Year’s Day, knowing that Tyler would be at work, and went at noon to his place.

Gerald didn’t stop me, just waved, and I felt a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been told not to let me up.

When I got upstairs, Pigeon was waiting for me, her tail happily wagging. Seeing her broke my heart all over again. I was so happy that she was okay and back to her old self, but I was going to be leaving her once more. I crouched down to pet her and tell her what a good girl she was.

“Madison?”

I straightened back up. Tyler was here. Surprised as I was, I drank in the sight of him. His hair was ruffled and there were dark bags under his eyes. As if he hadn’t slept.

He was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

“I’m sorry.” My words were little more than a whisper. “I thought you’d be at work.”

He walked into the living room, his arms folded, and went to stand by the couch. “That would be a little strange, considering I don’t have a job anymore.”

“What? You quit?”

“Right after you walked away at the party. No matter what your mother says, I didn’t know. I never would have been involved with some scheme like that. I never would have hurt you that way. And for them to lie and claim that I was? That’s not someone I want to be working for. So I quit.”

He’d quit his job for me. My throat started to ache as my eyes welled up. “But what about your mom?” He needed that job to take care of her.

“I called her and told her things had to change. That I wasn’t going to be in investments any longer and was going to one of those boot camps for coding and, as a result, would be making a fraction of what I’m making now. Her lifestyle’s going to have to change pretty radically. She wasn’t happy about it.”

“That’s not hard to imagine.” I was so proud of him for standing up for himself, for following his dreams. For not letting his mother take advantage of him any longer.

We stood there, neither one of us sure what to say. I pointed at the Christmas tree. “You didn’t open your presents.”

“It wasn’t Christmas without you.” He said it in a way that tore my heart up all over again. “Do you want to open them now?”

“Okay.”

Not sure where this was going or what I should be doing, I sat on the floor next to the tree. He sat with me and Pigeon came to settle herself between us. “This is the one I got for Pigeon.” I handed it to him.

He showed it to her, but she yawned her disinterest. So he opened it, carefully, as if he didn’t want to rip it. “A pigeon?” he asked in delight.

“A girly pink pigeon. With a bow. I thought she might like it.”

Tyler handed it to her and she put it between her paws, laying her head on top of it. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said.

I handed him the photo book next. He opened it and looked at the title. It was the same hashtag he used in his Instagram posts, #ohtheplacesyoullgo. He gave me a look of confusion as he began to turn pages. He laughed when he saw the pictures, flipping through each carefully until he got to the final one. He grinned with delight when he saw the Pokémon-filled one.

“I thought when you finally get to take Pigeon to all these places, you might like to catch some Pokémon while you’re there,” I said when he stayed silent.

He nodded, clearing his throat. “I love it.”

It was so close to I love you that for a second I couldn’t breathe. I forced myself to start sucking in oxygen and handed him the envelope. When he pulled out the check, he furrowed his eyebrows at me. “What’s this?”

“It was what I was able to save up this month thanks to your budgeting advice. I wanted to start paying rent.”

“Does that mean—” Then he shook his head, as if he’d caught himself before he could say more. Instead he picked up the lighter package and handed it to me. “Here.”

I opened it up and it was a purple T-shirt that said TEAM TYSON on it. “Thank you?”

He let out a chuckle, understanding that I didn’t get it. “When we put up the tree, we decided we made a great team? Tyson is our names put together. Tyler and Madison.”