Curvy Girls Can't Date Bad Boys - Kelsie Stelting Page 0,76

looked over the top of my phone screen at my room. It wasn’t the sanctuary it had once been, but it was well past midnight. “I think I'll stay here. It's late.”

She nodded. “You're welcome anytime.”

“Thank you. You have no idea how much that means to me.”

She lifted up the corner of her mouth in a smile. “So tell us what happened after the police got you. Has Ronan called you?”

I shook my head. Unfortunately, his was not one of the names I had seen on my screen.

Rory smiled at me and said, “My mom saw you on the news. She said that you were amazing.”

I grinned back. “I can’t believe we did that.” But it had been so much easier than I had thought, speaking to a bunch of people under pressure. Maybe public speaking could be in my future. But I didn’t want to talk about me. “Did you guys all make it back okay? Was someone able to tell Ronan?”

“None of us saw him,” Rory answered. “Or I mean, we did; we just couldn't talk to him. They were base jumping from the needle factory, but when we heard your shouting and the police sirens, they stopped and turned around.”

A huge sigh of relief escaped me. It had worked. My feeble attempt at helping them had succeeded. I don't know whether they would get caught tomorrow or months from now. But at least I had helped them today.

Forty-Six

When I woke up in the morning, Dad asked if I would stay home from school. We had a lot to figure out.

I agreed, because even though there were only several weeks left in the school year, everything seemed to be up in the air. We sat at the dinner table, eating cereal and milk, talking about everything. For the first time, I felt like he spoke to me as an adult and not as one of his employees or someone he needed to shelter. I found out that he had been paying his employees’ paychecks before putting anything toward the mortgage, and we either had to find a way to make money for back payments or find a new place to live.

The business would be okay at least until the Alexander film released this summer and he could make some of his investments back, but we would eventually have to downsize our own life.

“So what do you think we should do?” he asked. “I can file for an emergency loan to cover the mortgage payments.”

I shook my head. “No. Let's find somewhere else.” I thought of the last place that felt like home to me and smiled. “Actually, there are these cute townhouses…”

By the end of the day, he had called a realtor and signed a lease on a three-bedroom townhouse just a few rows down from Jordan’s.

After signing papers, we walked into the empty place, and I could see my father’s shoulders sagging. I put a hand on one and said, “We made the right decision.”

He covered my hand with his and shook his head. “How did I have a daughter who is so wise?”

With a smile, I shrugged. “Maybe I got it from Mom.”

Laughing, he said, “You definitely did.” His face turned somber again. “We have a lot of work to do.”

“We do,” I agreed.

And we got busy. For the rest of the week, we marked everything that we wanted to keep in our house and arranged for Beth to sell the rest of it. Telling her that we would have to let her go once the estate was taken care of was the hardest part of all. She hugged me tight, and I cried into her shoulder.

Patting my back, she said, “Don't you cry for me, sweetie. It's been the greatest blessing of all watching you become the woman you were meant to be.”

I wondered how I was even close to who I was meant to be, but as our apartment came together over the next week, I realized that I was ready to step into my new phase of life. Even if it came with a lot of boxes and baggage.

Jordan and her mom were lifesavers through it all. While my dad worked long hours at night to help the business catch up, they spent time with me and even made a few videos for her mom's YouTube channel about how to clean and organize a new apartment.

All of my friends came over Friday night after school to help us unpack. Even their boyfriends and