Just as I could never imagine breaking her heart for any reason, on her part I knew she was more than protective of mine – and this warmed my heart.

“Umm…. Let me start from something in my past that’s now come back to bite me, and,” I paused as I came to terms with what I’d realized. I closed my eyes and saw my beloved’s beautiful face, and teared-up slightly.   Dad, you were right. I should never let anything or anyone come between me and the one I love, once I found this love.

When I opened my eyes and smiled at them, a slow smile broke across each of their faces. The worried looks and frowns on their faces slowly went away as I squeezed each of their hands, in turn.

“And I need to tell both of you something that I’ve only shared with Aerin, since all of this goes back to my past,” I continued, in a surprisingly clear and strong voice.

“Philip, I told you that I’d been shielded from whatever had happened to my dad,” I started, deciding I needed to go further back to my past. “Legally, that was true, but in reality, I hadn’t been. He was great dad, but whatever he’d been caught doing quickly caused things to unravel for our small family. Even after he’d died, and …” I paused and swallowed. Matt gave me a glass of water and I took a sip from it.

“I never told you that he’d died while in custody, before he was sentenced,” I continued. Philip nodded and gave me a small, sympathetic smile. “I still needed to make restitution because he’d asked me to start arranging for all of that, and he’d died while I was in the middle of selling assets, and hunting down all of his accounts, and squaring the origins of all his funds. In the end, to settle possible suits, that whole process ended up cleaning us out. What I told you and the others during my interview with the firm was true, that I was on the verge of being hired as an associate in Percy’s law firm in New York at the time all of this unraveled, and that I didn’t take the offer at that time to take care of family business.”