Page 90 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

“So says every dickhead who hasn’t changed ever.”

The smile faded. “I hope you’ll give me a chance. But I’ll understand if you can’t.”

He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a business card, and offered it to me. I let him hang there awkwardly for a second or two—telling myself I really was conflicted—and then took it. After all, he was right: I could lose his damn card the moment I got home if I wanted.

“And”—words came out of my mouth before I could stop them—“if I don’t get in touch, you won’t come looking for me?”

“Never.”

“O-okay then.”

I hadn’t agreed to anything, really. Except I ended up feeling as if I had. Jonas gave me one last look, like he was trying to fix me in his mind, then turned and walked off. He didn’t glance back. Didn’t hurry or linger. It was amazing how quickly I lost track of him in the crowd. How he could have been anyone, my hand sweating around his business card. I shoved it into my wallet. Maybe I should have thrown it away. But I told myself I could do that whenever.

I tried not to think about him on the way home. Impossible not to, though. I’d had enough familial love to last me a lifetime, so it wasn’t as if I’d suffered for the lack of a biological father. But I couldn’t say I’d never…wondered? Wondered pretty intensely, actually, even making a fucked-up teenage attempt to find him before Hazel had brought me to my senses. It had hurt her badly, not only because she was scared for Mum, but because if anyone was my dad, it was her. It wasn’t about that, though. It was about the…not knowing. As if, in not knowing the man who had been partially responsible for making me, I might not know myself. I mean, what if I was like him? How could I tell?

I had memories, of course, not good ones, of a shadow on the wall, and secrets with Mum, and the sound of her crying when she thought I couldn’t hear. That long, long drive, all through the night, Mum’s fingers white on the steering wheel. I remembered the unpredictability of his comings and goings. The buzz of his voice in the next room but never the words. And the hush when he was home, as if the house itself held its breath.

Mum didn’t like to talk about him, and I didn’t like to ask. Hazel had told me he was a sociopath. And so I’d buried my not-knowing down deep and piled the years on top of it until I’d almost forgotten it was there—my little lockbox of doubt. But now it was neither buried nor little. In fact, it was wide open and spewing questions like the self-replicating charm in the Lestrange vault at Gringotts.

Fuck. That was my dad. I’d met my dad. And it had been…not how I might have imagined. But then, that sort of thing was unimaginable anyway. He’d been so…soordinary. Average-looking, with a steady gaze behind those nerdy glasses, and a nice-ish smile. Thick hair for a man of his age, which surely boded well for me in the future, flopping somewhat waywardly across his brow. He hadn’t threatened me or pushed me into anything. He’d actually been fairly respectful, hadn’t he? Giving me the power. Promising to stay away if that was what I wanted. I knew the thing about sociopaths was that they didn’t seem like sociopaths but, well, he didn’t seem like a sociopath. So why did I feel all turned upside-down and emptied out?

Anyway, even if he wasn’t acting in good faith, and wanted to get to know me for sinister reasons of his own, it was hard to see what those reasons might be. He was only in town for a week. What if I did go for coffee with him? To satisfy my own curiosity, more than anything. What could he do to me? How much harm could that cause? On top of which there was another possibility to consider: He could very well have been sincere. In general, parents were supposed to care about their kids. Was it so totally outlandish that my own father could care about me? After all, I wasn’t exactly anyone’s dream child: short, skinny, kind of weird, average student, borderline incompetent at a lot of things, semi-regularly in the tabloids for scandalous behaviour, incredibly queer. And he’d still come looking. Still said he wanted to know me. That he was proud of me.

Obviously what he’d done to Mum had been super supersuperwrong. And he’d admitted that. I mean, I think he had—he’d said something about regrets, anyway. I couldn’t quite remember. But maybe he really had changed. Was it right of me to punish him for shit he’d done when he wasn’t much older than me? Or would it be betraying Mum if I didn’t? Probably I should have spoken to her, but I was afraid she’d freak out. And Hazel just would tell me not to do it. To not even think about it.

And…and I wasn’t ready to be told that. My father had given me the choice. So I wanted the choice to be mine.

Chapter 30

Imet Jonas for coffee a couple of days later. I wasn’t sure I would, right until I walked in through the door of Starbucks, but I also knew if I hadn’t gone, I would probably have…not regretted it exactly, but questioned myself for probably my entire fucking life. So yeah. I texted him. Arranged to see him. And surprise surprise, it wasfine. He looked the way he had before, bewildering to me in his normality, with those heavy, dark-framed glasses and the messy hair, and the big, dimply smile that came much less hesitantly now. In fact, he looked positively lit up when I came in. Which, honestly, was kind of nice.

He bought me a muffin, and a hot chocolate, and it was awkward at first because we had something that felt as though it ought to be a connection but zero actual relationship. It got easier, though. And talking to Jonas was…no chore. While I still couldn’t tell if he’d meant all that stuff about getting to know me, he was doing a ridiculously good impression of wanting to. Asking me lots of questions and whatever. And while I wasn’t all that forthcoming at first, it turned out that you could get used to someone being interested in you pretty fucking quickly. Especially when they were, y’know, your dad. And being interested in your kid was meant to be part of the job description, right?

I mean, don’t get me wrong. We weren’t hugging and crying and having Kodak moments. I wasn’t going to be popping round to his place on Christmas Day anytime soon. But I guess I could maybe picture taking a call from him occasionally. Meeting like this every now and again. Was that so terrible?

“I’m really glad,” said Jonas, in the lull of me talking about me in order to think about me, “that you decided to come.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

“Well, don’t get too comfortable.” I prodded the remains of my muffin defiantly. “I can leave at any time.”

“Of course you can.” When I’d first met him, I’d thought his eyes were like mine, but they weren’t really—there was a light to them, an intensity that wasn’t quite warmth, especially when he was looking at right at you. “But I hope you won’t. I’m enjoying spending time with you. Getting to hear a little bit about your life.”

I wasn’t ready to admit I was enjoying myself too. Besides, I wasn’t, at least not exactly. He’d done nothing to worry or upset me, but I couldn’t shake a lingering unsettled feeling, and I had no idea why. Maybe it was just the newness of the situation. Or the fact it ran so abruptly contrary to every story I’d ever been told, which was doing an Orwell with my brain because, surely, one of these narratives had to be wrong. Unless they were both right simultaneously and we’d always been at war with Eurasia.

“I still don’t know anything about your life,” I pointed out.

That got me dimples. “Oh, I’m not very interesting.”

“Bore me, then.”

“Well, I…I don’t really know what to say. I travel for work a lot, and talk to a lot of librarians.”

“Doesn’t that get kind of tiring?”

“The travel or the librarians?”

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