Page 126 of This Beautiful Lie
He tilted his head toward the back door. “Go outside and see for yourself.”
My pulse spiked. “John, what did you?—”
“Go.” His voice softened. “Trust me.”
The moment I stepped into the backyard, I stopped, and my mouth dropped open.
Jake, Katie, and Tuesday were standing in the middle of the deck—along with Dean’sentirefamily. They stood like a wall. Mason. Blair. Thomas and Trisha, little Emma…every single one of them, at least twenty, and at the center of them all was Mr. McHenry—the heartbeat which held them all together.
I froze, and my stomach dropped. “Oh, my god.”
I spun back toward the door, but John was right behind me. He caught my shoulders, turned me around, and gently nudged me forward.
“You deserve happiness, Em. More than anyone I’ve ever met.”
I swallowed hard, unsure how my happiness hadanythingto do with this.
“Emily,” Mr. McHenry began, his voice warm and steady.
He used my real name—oh, God he used my real name.My chest twisted, yet I forced myself to hold still.
He stepped closer to me, his smile soft but weighted. “Dean told us everything.” He nodded, giving me a moment to let the information settle.
My throat worked. I was having a hard time breathing. “He did?”
Mr. McHenry nodded. “He did.”
Dean’s grandmother came forward, her eyes bright and shining. “It’s awfully romantic,” she announced. “LikePretty Woman!”
A wave of laughter circled the crowd, but Mr. McHenry lifted one hand, and everyone quieted again.
“I’ll admit,” he chuckled under his breath, “I was a bit stunned to hear Dean had hired an escort… but not nearly as stunned to learn the reason why he did it.”
Heat crawled up my neck, embarrassment threatening to choke me, but Mr. McHenry’s gaze was steady, kind.
“The boy was so afraid of losing Pine Ridge—and the firm—that he built an entire story just to keep it safe.”
He moved closer to me, slow and thoughtful, as though any wrong move may scare me off.
“At first, I was sick over it. Truly. I thought,My God, what have I done?I’d backed the boy into a corner—made my grandson feel like the only way to protect our legacy was to lie—about a fiancée of all things—about a future that didn’t exist.”
His voice wavered, hand pressing briefly to his chest. “But then I started to think. Do you believe in fate, Emily?”
My breath trembled, because I could already see where he was going with this.
“If all of this hadn’t happened exactly how it had… if I hadn’t pushed, if he hadn’t come up with this elaborate lie… if one of his clients hadn’t given him that picture frame of a woman with short hair…” He shook his head slowly, eyes bright with conviction. “What began as a story?—”
A throat cleared somewhere behind him—loud enough to make Mr. McHenry stop mid-sentence. Heads turned. Bodies shifted. A subtle ripple went through the crowd, like everyone felt it before they even saw him.
And then Dean stepped through them.
“I’ll take it from here, Grandpa.”
My breath caught?—
Because he looked… different.
Not just tired—though the shadows beneath his eyes told me he hadn’t slept—but he looked lighter in a way that made something inside my chest loosen and ache all at once. As if he’d been holding the whole damn world together with his bare hands and, for the first time, had finally let someone help him carry it.
