Raji’s father had paid what the divorce court had mandated he had to: private school until Raji was eighteen years old. Her mother hadn’t had a spare penny, though during Raji’s undergrad, she had managed to send Raji twenty bucks every month despite that. The rest of it—college tuition, dorm fees, food, books, and absolutely every cent for living expenses for her bachelor’s degree and through medical school—Raji had taken out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to cover. She was almost half a million dollars in debt, but at least she’d had a plane ticket to get to college. “That poor girl.”
“I blamed her. We all blamed her. They were all rude to her, shut her out, wouldn’t talk to her, basically destroyed her life by bullying. Everyone did it, but that’s no excuse.”
“How much money are we talking about?”
He shrugged. “Her father took about thirty million from my father and around twenty million from my trust funds.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Peyton! I’d be pissed, too!”
He shook his head. “It was a small percentage of the holdings. We made it up within a few years. Most importantly, it wasn’t Georgie’s fault.”
Raji wanted to stop him from saying any more, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the lines of pain around his eyes or block out the choke in his voice.
“I shouldn’t have listened to them. I should have stood up for her. When she told me that she didn’t know what her father was doing, I should have believed her. I should have believed her above all the others. I should have defended her. I should have been her knight in shining armor, but instead, I was the guy at the head of the mob, wielding the biggest pitchfork. Metaphorical pitchforks, you understand.”
“Yeah. I got that.” Raji’s heart clenched. She couldn’t imagine everyone turning against her like that.
“Georgie ran away. Understandably, she ran away. She ran away from Connecticut and ended up in the Southwest, going to college to be a lawyer so she could pay all of us back, so she could pay me back. Me, like I need the money.”
Raji held onto the smooth, titanium door handle of the Mercedes S-Class, a car that even her father, who had been a highly successful psychiatrist for many years, would have thought extravagant. With that big of an engine, she bet that it didn’t even get very good gas mileage, and the insurance must be exorbitant.
He said, “Because I am also an idiot, after she was gone, I figured out that I should have stood up for her. So I tried to find her. I looked for years. I went to college, to Juilliard for classical piano, like she and I had always dreamed of doing together, hoping she would be there.”
“But she wasn’t there,” Raji said. “You said she was going to go to law school.”
“I didn’t know that because I never asked her. One day after I had finished my Master’s, I was walking down the hallway in Juilliard, and there she was, lying on the floor with a guy standing over her. I didn’t recognize her at first. I thought a guy had hit a woman, and I was ready to intervene. When I finally recognized her, I was ready to do the right thing and be there for her. Instead, she was with Xan Valentine, and she was already in love with him.”
“Yeah, well, she had to go on with her life,” Raji pointed out.
“I deserve every moment of heartache. I have never denied that.”
“Okay. Good,” she said, still wondering where she should come down on this.
“I figured out that they were at Juilliard to find a new keyboard player for Killer Valentine. I had already signed a contract as a soloist with the LA Philharmonic—”
“The LA Phil? I love them!”
“—and so I broke the contract—”
“Oh, my God.” Even Raji knew what that must mean. One does not casually break contracts with major orchestras or surgical residency programs. Peyton was probably blackballed from the classical music world.
“—to go on tour with Killer Valentine.”
“Because you still love her.”
“Loved. I think I should say ‘I loved her,’ not that I still love her. She and Xan are soulmates, if such a thing exists. I gave up a soloist spot for her, but Xan has given up more. Far, far more.” Peyton swallowed hard, like he had almost been sick. “But the thing is, if she’s his soulmate, then she’s not my soulmate, and so I must not be hers. I shouldn’t love her. I don’t have that right.”
“You don’t just stop loving someone,” Raji said. Not that she had ever loved someone. Cold-blooded, lizard-like, cardiothoracic surgeons didn’t fall in love.
“After Georgie disappeared, I didn’t see her for—five years, I think? That’s a lot of time. When I found her again, she wasn’t the same person. She’d changed. She’d grown. She was stronger and deeper and warmer and more beautiful, but she wasn’t my Georgie anymore. I was in love with the girl I’d known when we were sixteen, and she didn’t want to be that person. It was right to let her go. We’re friends, now. I’ll do just about anything for her, including let her go so she can be with a man who’s better for her than I ever was.”