Page 65 of The Billionaire's Beauty

“But I don’t want to be gone too long, because we still need to interview and train my replacement, and we only have three weeks left. Oh, but I have my orientation for law school, too. I forgot about that.” She stares off in the distance for several beats, brow furrowed, then snaps back into my trusted Girl Friday. “Don’t worry. I’ll get it figured out. I’d never leave you in the lurch.”

I say nothing. My brain is too full of images of Bellamy flying back and forth while she tries to manage my life and her father’s while also closing up her apartment here, getting settled out west and getting her mind right for the beginning of school.

I may be a demanding SOB of a boss, but even I’m not that bad.

That’s when the second moment of clarity of the night hits me with the force of a lightning strike to my soul. It’s time for me to do the right thing. Not the right thing for me, which would probably involve something wildly possessive and permanent, like handcuffing us together and swallowing the key so that Bellamy can stay on my right side forever, but the right thing for her. Time for me to recognize that the end of the summer brings the end of my own personal paradise with it. We had our time together, but we knew going in that this thing had a deadline. Like all deadlines, it came a whole lot quicker than I’d have liked, but it’s here now. Time for me to free Bellamy up to live her best life out west.

I just hope I have the balls to do it.

As for me? I’ll be okay. Eventually. There’s no need to act like I’ll be cursed with loneliness for the rest of my life. I managed to live for thirty-two years without her and I did fine. Hopefully, the skill is like riding a bike.

“You okay?” she asks me. “We need to get this figured out. I just want to do the right thing by you at the office.”

“And I plan to do the right thing by you,” I say, suddenly unable to meet her gaze. “No matter what.”

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