Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Instead, I do what I always do: I try to talk my way out of it.
“Thomas, I swear to god, I never sent it to anyone.” My hands flutter, useless, then clamp down on the strap of my purse. “I didn’t even use it for the bet, I never—”
The billionaire doesn’t move. His voice is so flat it makes the next words worse: “Didn’t use it for the bet? You filmed it. Isn’t that enough?”
I taste bile in the back of my throat. “It was stupid. It was from before I knew you, I mean, really knew you. I thought I deleted it, I swear—”
His laugh is sharp and hopeless, like the click of a broken seatbelt. “You thought you deleted it. But you didn’t because a lot of shit is automatically backed up now.”
“It’s just a fucking file, Thomas. It doesn’t mean—”
He shakes his head. “Stop.” Then, softer: “Just stop, Andie. I don’t want to hear it.”
I want to walk toward him, to touch his hand, to close the space that’s suddenly an abyss. But his eyes are so cold they might as well be made of ice. My knees go weak, so I sit—kneeling, not quite conscious of it, the coffee table biting into my thigh.
“I chose you,” I say. “After everything, I chose you over them, over the bet, over all of it. Doesn’t that count for something?”
He sets the phone on the marble with a deliberate click and crosses his arms. There’s nothing left in his face. “There was no choosing. We made a deal that night at the diner,” he says, low and clipped. “No more secrets, remember? No more hiding in the shadows. You told me everything at the diner. Or you said you did.”
I nod, blinking away tears. “I did, I swear, I forgot—”
He’s already shaking his head, slow, a funeral metronome. “Don’t bullshit me, Andie. If you didn’t want me to see it, you could’ve wiped it from the cloud. You’re not stupid. You know how these things work.” He glances at the window, then back. “You wanted to keep it. For yourself. For later. Or maybe you were just hedging your bets.”
The accusation lands like a stone. I suck in a breath, but it sticks in my chest. “That’s not true! You know it’s not—”
He cuts me off. “I don’t know anything anymore. You were the only thing I thought was honest in this entire city.” He laughs again, but there’s no humor in it. “Fuck me for being that naïve.”
My cheeks are wet, but I barely notice. “Please, Thomas, just listen—”
He picks up the whiskey glass from the table, but doesn’t drink. He just turns it in his hand, watching the way the city lights refract through the cut glass. “You made me into a fool,” he says, almost to himself. “You made me trust you.”
His voice never rises. It just gets quieter, the volume dialed down until I have to strain to hear it. “You should go.”
My hands shake so hard I have to grip the edge of the table to steady them. “I can’t,” I say. “Not like this. Please. Just let me explain—”
He looks at me, and the force of it pins me to the spot. “I don’t want to hear it,” he says, his eyes flat and blue and endless. “I don’t want to see you again.”
I blink, and for a second, everything goes white. “You don’t mean that,” I whisper.
He does. I see it in his face. The same face that bent down and kissed me when I was half-drunk, that whispered secrets in the dark, that looked at me like I was a miracle when he thought I couldn’t see. That face is gone now. There’s just a wall of harshness and regret and wasted time.
He sets the whiskey glass down, wipes his hands on the front of his jeans as if to rid himself of the last trace of me, and walks to the window. The city is at his back now, a thousand little lives flickering behind him, none of them mine.
“Leave now.”
I pull myself up, somehow. The room spins, but I keep going. I gather my bag, my jacket, the broken pieces of my pride. I walk to the kitchen and set my key on the cold marble, the sound of it tiny but absolute.
For a second, I think about saying goodbye. I think about turning to look at him one last time, memorizing the breadth of his shoulders and the mess of his hair and the shape of his hands in the dim light. But I don’t.
I depart without a word.
The elevator is a tomb. The ride down is slow, endless, every floor a countdown to extinction. I see my reflection in the mirror above the buttons—eyes red, mouth chewed to rawness, hair wild—and I don’t even recognize her.