Page 68 of Acadia Falls

The color in her cheeks burned brighter. “I have to. Remember what we talked about? Even with the fee I earned today, I still have a ton of loans to pay off.”

“Right.” I released her thigh and scratched the back of my neck. “Except you don’t.”

Maran started to look a little concerned. Her brow furrowed as she inspected me. “Jack, did you drink some of that unfiltered kombucha from the street vendor? I warned you that sometimes in New York, they lace it with CBD oil. Someone I knew from law school had a cousin who started hallucinating because of it⁠—”

“I’m not high,” I interrupted her gently. “And I did not drink the unfiltered kombucha from the street vendor.” I wasn’t sure if there was any such thing as filtered kombucha, but that was a conversation for another day.

“Hear me out, okay?” I took her hand. “You did great work for my family on this deal. I can’t ever thank you enough.”

Her eyes were wide. “It was my pleasure. Honestly, I learned so much from this.”

“I’m glad. And it’s wonderful that Everly Reyes paid your fee because you were right. Her team did drag out some of the details unnecessarily, and they treated us like we were hicks. Some of the language in the original deal was ridiculous.”

Maran nodded. “I agree. They were trying to take advantage of your family, and that’s egregious.”

“I don’t know what ‘egregious’ means, but I know that you worked your butt off on this deal and made it so much better for us. We owe you, big time.”

“I charged a high hourly rate for a new lawyer,” she said, a note of pride creeping into her voice. “I got paid quite a bit.”

“But not by me,” I reminded her. “And I know you got paid, but my brothers and my mom agree that we still owe you for the work you did. So… We paid off the rest of your loans. You are officially debt-free, Maran Riley.”

She gaped at me. “But I had⁠—”

“I know what you had left. We paid it. And you are absolutely worth it, Attorney Riley. You made my family a lot of money. It was the least we could do.”

“I can’t…” Maran’s blue eyes were huge in her face. “I don’t know what to say… That’s crazy…”

My mother turned around from her seat near the front of the plane. “You absolutely can take it—besides, it’s already done. It’s crazy what they charge for an education these days! You can’t be saddled with that much debt as a young woman. Pfft.” Rose waved her hand at Maran dismissively. “You earned that money. You deserve a fresh start.”

Tommy and Ryan turned around and smiled at Maran. “It was a unanimous family decision,” Tommy said.

“We’re so happy you helped us. You got us a win—we got to keep our rights and make a boatload of money.” Ryan grinned at her. “You’re worth every penny.”

Maran’s eyes filled with tears.

I leaned closer to her and whispered, “Are you upset that I didn’t tell you earlier? I didn’t want you to fight me. It was really important for us to take care of you the way that you took care of us.”

Maran opened her mouth and then closed it.

And then she promptly burst into tears.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

MARAN

“Oh boy,” Jack said, rubbing my back. “I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m sorry⁠—”

“Don’t. Be. Sorry,” I hiccuped. The tears flowed down my face. “I j-just can’t believe it. I thought it was going to take me y-years to pay off my loans.”

“Nope. Not anymore.” Jack kept rubbing my back. “You’re free. You can do what you want.”

The words hung between us as the plane soared over Boston, then some little towns in New Hampshire, then finally, above the vast forests in Maine. The flight from New York to Bar Harbor was a measly fifty-five minutes—just long enough for me to start crying, stop crying, and start to panic about what on earth I was going to do.

My mind raced as Jack continued to rub my back. I’d been high as a kite about closing the deal with Everly Reyes. Her legal team had been awful to deal with, and I meant that with respect. They’d stonewalled me. They’d bullied me. They’d tried to nickel and dime us into submission, but we held firm. In the end, we got exactly what we wanted: full retention of the family’s fishing rights, a limited-scope license to Everly Reyes to mine manganese, and a boatload of money. Jack’s family would have been billionaires if they’d sold outright, but the licensing deal still made them quite wealthy.

The attorney’s fees I’d earned were significant, but they still weren’t enough to pay off my loans. I’d known I would still have to go to work at Krieger and Krieger in order to pay off my debt, and it had been killing me. New York didn’t feel the same to me anymore. How could I live there when I’d been so spoiled by Acadia’s natural beauty? Every time I’d flown to New York over the past few months to have a meeting, I’d felt heartsick. I hated being back in the city, with all the concrete and skyscrapers. I felt trapped.

I’d once considered myself a city girl, but that was before my summer on the island. The peacefulness of it, the smell of the ocean and the calls of the birds, the way the trees rustled in the breeze, all the stars you could see every night… It was as if I’d discovered everything that had been missing from my life.