Page 163 of Grumpy Billionaire Bad Boy

"Do you need anything else?"

"I need you to listen to me. This family needs you.You,Archer, not the ghost of you, not some shell of a human pretending to be him. We need you."

A knock ripples through my apartment. "Ivy, I've got to go, someone's at the door."

"Don't lie to me, Archer."

"I'm not lying." I grab the phone and head in that direction. "I'll talk to you later." I hang up and toss it onto the table near my door, right next to the one that London left behind. I have half a mind to give it back to her but I'd be too compelled to track her and I don't want the ease of making that happen.

I open the door, not bothering to check and see who it is first, not caring at all if it's the fucking grim reaper ready to take me away.

London is standing there in fitted black jeans, tall heels, and a tight corset-looking top with lace. She's wearing a tan trench coat and holds a boom box above her head, with the song "In Your Eyes"by Peter Gabriel playing quietly. Her gazemeets mine and she steps forward, my body almost immediately reacting by moving back, but I stay in place.

"London, this isn't necessary," I tell her, not wanting her to make a spectacle.

"Archer, please, hear me out." London sucks in a breath as if to prepare herself for the speech she's about to make. "I don't have money, not like you do. I can't shut down a restaurant or redirect traffic lights. I don't know how to hack into your phone and track you, or pull up camera feeds to figure out everything you want or desire. I've been racking my brain on what to do, some grand gesture, to tell you, to show you, just how sorry I am. I've wanted to march over here so many times, to bang on the walls, just to see if you're still there. I hate that I hurt you. I hate that I can't make it right.

"There isn't anything I wouldn't be willing to give up to change what happened. I'm sorry, Archer. From the bottom of my heart. I have regretted what I did every single second. I made a mess, and it's up to me to clean it up, to repair what I've broken. I can't sleep. I can't eat. There isn't a thought in my head that doesn't involve you. What you did for me? No one in my life has ever put me first. I didn't know what to do with that. But I do now. If you'll give me a chance. I'll do anything to fix this, just please give me a chance." Her eyes glisten but she keeps the tears at bay this time.

I watch her carefully, her words coursing through me as I process everything she said, coming to the same realization that I have for a week now. I can't do this. I can't be with her. Not when it hurts this fucking badly just to be near her, to see her, to breathe the same air she is.

"I'm sorry, London. Some messes can't be cleaned up." I shut the door without another thought, closing myself off to her forever.

Chapter 39

London

The five days following my embarrassing gesture to Archer are filled with mostly self-loathing and ignoring my responsibilities. I call out of work, using the excuse that I'm still recovering from the gunshot wound, some aches and pains lingering that prevent me from going in. Grace doesn't buy it. She shows up anyway, and despite my best efforts, she forces herself into my apartment with the key I gave her and pokes around.

"You can't live like this," she says while turning up her nose. "This place is a disaster." Grace uses a pair of tongs from the kitchen to pick up a shirt hanging on the back of a chair. "Where's your hamper?"

"I don't have a hamper." I plop onto the couch, not caring at all that she's disrespecting my personal space. With Grace, those things don't matter, and I don't exactly have it in me to put up a fight.

"You're going to shower." Grace goes over to the bathroom, turns the faucet on, and then goes into my room. "Don't you have any clean clothes? Ah, there we go." She has a pile of my belongings in her grasp as she goes back into the bathroom,returning a minute later to drag me from the couch. "I'm going to order Chinese food, and you're going to wash your ass. When I get back, we're going to make a plan, an actionable one. A how-to of sorts."

She shoves me into the bathroom but I just stand there as it fills up with steam.

Grace groans and comes inside, reaching for the hem of my shirt.

I smack her hand. "I can undress myself, Grace, I'm not completely helpless."

"Could have fooled me." She makes her way to the door, turning around to face me. "I'll be back in half an hour. I've let you mope enough. This ends today." Grace shuts me in and I know if I don't do exactly as she says, she'll bathe me herself and never let me live it down.

So I strip out of my clothes, tossing them into the pile heaped on the floor, and step into the piping hot water. Closing my eyes, I'm grateful my tears have a place to escape as they're washed down the drain. I wash my hair, breaking momentarily here or there to sob, my back against the wall. I do what I can to clean my body well, not wanting to leave it to Grace to verify I followed through. Once I'm done, I sink onto the shower floor and bring my knees to my chest, hugging my body tightly. The hot water spills onto me and I lower my head, considering what it would take to accidentally waterboard myself to death. It's not that I want to die, I just don't exactly want to be alive, not when everything reminds me of the life I gave up when I finally had it all. I was an idiot for thinking what I was risking was worth it, and by the time I realized it, it was too late. Too late for me, for Archer, for us.

A loud knock fills my bathroom, but I don't move. If it's Grace, she'll use her key, and if it's anyone else, I can't be bothered to find out what they want. The only person I want tohear from wants nothing to do with me, and I can't even blame him. I lectured Archer about telling me the truth and then I went behind his back to put his entire family in danger. He has every right to hate me, and honestly, I'm surprised he didn't kill me just to make sure it never happens again. I can't get the image of him out of my head, shutting the door on us forever after baring myself to him in a way I never had with anyone ever. I've relived that moment over and over, and reworked that speech a million different ways, but each one ends with the same outcome—Archer shutting me out.

Why couldn't I make him change his mind? Why couldn't I fix what I had broken?Why couldn't I just make him love me?

But Grace is right, I have to move on from what can't be changed, because if I continue to sit in this state of misery, I'm going to go completely mad.

I wipe away my tears and climb out of the shower, towel-drying and throwing on the clothes that she had picked out for me—nothing special, a pair of jeans I bought the first week I lived with Archer and a fitted black top. I slide my palm across the steamed-up mirror and take a look at myself, my eyes red and puffy, my hair in wet ringlets on my shoulders.

A booming sound rattles my walls and my first instinct is to reach for my phone, to call Archer, but those days are behind me, and I have to figure out how to move on without him in my life, even if I'd prefer nothing less.Not to mention I haven't gotten a phone since I left mine at his place and I haven't had it in me to figure out where to even do that. I'm sure Grace would help me, but I don't want to, not yet, not when I'd have to step out into a hallway that we share, walk down steps we walked together, exist in the world without him.

What we had was temporary but it was the first real thing I'd felt in my entire life and I let it go up in smoke because I was tooafraid it would consume me like everything else had up until that point.

I follow the rattling that fills my apartment, stepping out of my bathroom with caution, another blast crackling loudly. The hung pictures shake and the glassware rattles in my kitchen cabinets. Is this an earthquake? We had plenty of those on the West Coast but none of them were quite like this. Maybe this is how they are in New York, something else I'm going to have to get used to if I'm going to be living here.

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