Page 58 of The Billionaire's Princess

15

Damon

As long as you still love me.

Seven months later and Carly’s throwaway line still chimes through my head at inconvenient and unsettling moments, demanding my attention. Like it wants something from me. Too bad I have nothing to give. Especially on a night like tonight, when my nerves are already frayed and raw from waiting on news about this fucking deal. Ryker is in the middle of a Hail Mary meeting in Tokyo this very second, but it’s not looking good. I’ve already missed my self-imposed year-end deadline to make the billionaire club, but I’ve spent the last couple of weeks assuring myself that it can happen first quarter. But the longer the minutes tick by without word from Ryker, the more convinced I become that my dream is up in smoke. For the foreseeable future, anyway.

So my mood could best be described as tense and shitty as I do a lap around my penthouse, straightening up before Carly gets here in a couple of minutes, and that’s just for starters.

Here’s where it really gets good. This cold and gloomy January evening is also the twenty-fifth anniversary of the night my mother chose my father’s best friend over my father and walked out of our lives without a word to me or my brothers. We went to bed the night before with a mother who kissed us good night like always, told us she loved us and acted like she gave a fuck about us, then woke in the morning to my heartbroken and vengeful father and the rattle of lonely clothes hangers in her empty closet.

I think about her sometimes.

I wonder if we might have seen her again and reconciled if she hadn’t gotten herself killed in that car accident a few months later, when their custody case was in full swing. I wonder what she’d think about Carly. Whether she’d want grandchildren.

Tonight, I even went so far as to dig the old shot of her on the beach out of my drawer and give it a glance. A mistake, obviously. The sight of her happy and carefree, with her long sandy hair blowing and her hazel eyes sparkling, only ever intensifies that dull ache in my chest. That’s why I’ve never framed the fucking photo and put it out where I can see it.

I don’t want to get upset every time I see her face. And she doesn’t deserve a place of honor in my memories, my apartment or my life, anyway.

This time of year, when the days are short, the streets are slushy and my nerves are edgy, always reminds me of the one formative lesson that she taught me:

You can’t trust anybody. Especially the people you’d most like to trust.

As long as you still love me.

I don’t believe in romantic love. Never have. My parents’ nasty divorce blasted the word and the idea right out of my vocabulary. And if, on the off chance that it does exist, it exists for other people. People who have a heart for a heart rather than a smoking crater where their heart used to be.

Which raises the question: what the fuck do I think I’m doing with Carly? Why have I greedily absorbed every second with her these last months? Why does the smoking crater in the dead center of my chest also ache when I think about her and when she’s not with me?

Why the fuck did I give her a key to my penthouse within a month of our officially getting together?

Why do I feel this insane push-pull when it comes to her? It’s as though there’s an elephant inside me that belongs to her and I spent half my time trying to push it toward her and the other half trying to yank it back.

Here’s the biggie:

Why did I just happen to wander by Harry Winston this afternoon and, worse, just happen to glance at the engagement rings? Because today is also Carly’s birthday? That excuse doesn’t really cut it. Not when I’ve planned her gift—and it’s spectacular, if I say so myself—for weeks and currently have it waiting for her in the bedroom.

I don’t believe in love. I’m never getting married. Those two facts about me will never change.

Even if the ongoing effort of keeping Carly at some sort of emotional arm’s-length feels like swallowing a spoonful of steaming dog shit and trying to keep it down. Impossible.

Drained, I sink onto one end of the sectional and let my unfocused gaze slip to my gauzy curtains, which blur the glinting skyline and river. Like my thoughts, I suppose. God knows I’m not seeing straight right now.

Luckily, my buzzing phone snaps me out of my weird altered state. It’s Ryker.

“Yeah,” I say, the knot in my gut tightening. “What’s happening?”

“No dice. It’s over. I’m on my way to the airport now.”

“Shit,”I say, using my free hand to rub my forehead hard enough to make the flesh fall off. “Seven months of wasted effort.”

“Yeah, well. You win some, you lose some. And tomorrow’s another day, Scarlett O’Hara.”

“Fuck that. I’ve got goals to accomplish.”

“You and me both.”

I sit there as the silence turns brittle, my mood plummeting to subterranean levels. So our deal fell through. Happens sometimes. I won’t get that additional zero to add to my net worth by my thirty-fifth birthday. Big fucking whoop. The goal was always a stretch, not to mention the fact that it was self-imposed. What harm is there in not making this extra cheddar right now? It’s not as though I need it. It’s not as though anyone needs this kind of money. It’s not as though someone is on their way to evict me from the penthouse right now and force me to live in a van down by the river. We’ll try again. God knows we didn’t get this far by giving up.

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