Page 13 of The Billionaire's Second Chance
But the perfect focus that I’d curated over the past dozen years remained just out of reach. Charlie’s face was flushed, green eyes sparking dangerously, muscles coiled tense under his worn button-down, and despite myself, I was reminded of last night. His intensity. The flicker of a vein pulsing in his neck drew my eye, and I found myself staring at a faint purple bruise just below it, disappearing underneath his collar. My skin felt too tight, my face suddenly warm.
“I am trying my very best here, Samantha,” he said, as I stared at the smudge on his neck. “I am giving this my all. You don’t need to tell me not to screw this up.” My stomach felt unsettled–too much coffee and no real breakfast. “But as for you…” Charlie told me, a sad smile I hadn’t seen on his face before. “Well, I hope youdohave something that vibrates at home, because you can go fuck yourself.”
CHAPTER7
Charlie
Iprobablycould have handledour first meeting better.
Every time I let Samantha get my hopes up, I ended up disappointed. Twice in one morning, though? That had to be a new record. First at the hotel, then at the school…That was two conversations in a row that had ended in afuck you,I thought as I stomped down the familiar sidewalks of the Upper East Side, walking purposefully but going nowhere in particular.Three, if you include the one that ended with us actually fucking.
I shook my head. Last night and then again this morning, I’d almost thought that the icy front she presented was just a facade, a mask. Sitting next to her in the high school media center, I’d felt my age acutely. Had it really been so long since I slumped into a chair next to my friend’s little sister and saw a cute blush color her cheeks?Hey, Sami. Whatcha reading?She could have eaten lunch with anyone she wanted–she wasSebastian Scott’ssister–but she’d been in the library more often than not, poring over a paperback, rolling her eyes at my interruptions. So to see her volunteering for a school literacy initiative? It was believable enough that I’d been reluctantly surprised: maybe she had a heart after all.
Ha.Good one, Charlie. Very funny.
Despite the business and the money and the penthouse apartment, I still felt like that same stupid kid most of the time.
But Samantha had changed.
I stomped past salad restaurants and gelato bars and dry cleaners until I found myself in front of the familiar door of Ryan’s brownstone, almost without meaning to. I’d made it up to his door, my hand raised to knock, when I remembered that Ryan was on his honeymoon.
I dropped my hand, cursing out loud.
I could call him, I thought. He’d answer. He always did–whether in his capacity as my friend or my CFO, he’d always been there for me. And he’d understand: his ex-wife, Tally, was not unlike Samantha herself. They’d come from the same old-money families we all had, with trips to the Hamptons in the summer and cocktails before dinner and the quiet sort of disapproval. Overbearing fathers and distant mothers and inherited memberships to the Bankworth Club and the right kind of sororities. They were friends, the two of them, the main difference between Tally and Sam being that Tally had a good heart under the serious veneer, and I wasn’t sure if Sam evenhada heart these days, let alone agoodone.
Yeah, Ryan would answer. And he would understand.
But I had a heart, too. I couldn’t call Ryan.The man was on his honeymoon, probably getting his dick ridden by his new wife–and good for him. For them. They deserved happiness.
That left my brother–hard pass on that one, I didn’t need his smugly married advice–and Barrett, who would insist on taking me out and getting me either drunk or laid or both. The idea alone had me already tasting tomorrow’s regret.
But I still had one remaining friend: the friend who never failed me, never bailed, never left for a honeymoon.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, my driver dropped me off in front of my office’s sleek glass building in Midtown. Veritech, read the sign above the door, my little joke with myself. James had our grandfather’s business, Verity Publishing. I had Veritech. He’d rolled his eyes when I told him the name of my little startup as a college senior.
He still didn’t take it seriously.
But he would.
I thanked the driver and jogged up to the wide doors, letting myself in. The office was quiet on a Sunday afternoon, but it was never empty. The security guard nodded at me.
“Charlie,” he said.
“Arman.” I nodded back, then slipped into the elevator, and up to the tenth floor. I’d stick my head into the communal work space before I retreated to my office. The elevator dinged pleasantly and I stepped out.
I didn’t care when people got things done, as long as they got done on time, so sometimes, it felt like all the company’s work happened on weekends. I’d stopped by on Sunday afternoons before to find whole teams hunched over laptops in the lounge or hanging around in the glass-walled conference room, feet up on the table alongside half-empty beer bottles as they worked out a tricky problem over the floor-to-ceiling whiteboards. Sometimes I came in to interrupt not work but an intense board game session. Once, memorably, one of my chief architects had been wearing a full wizard robe and a pointy hat, leading a bunch of other engineers in a game involving dice and graph paper and, apparently, a lot of funny voices. I’d skipped that one. Today though, the lounge and conference room were empty save for a couple developers, a man and a woman. They looked up as I crossed the room to the fridge. I recognized them, but I didn’t know their names.
“Hey,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Good,” said the man, and the woman nodded in agreement.
“Cool,” I said, grabbing a canned cold brew. “Just us today, huh?”
“The rest of the dev crew was here earlier. I think they’re taking an early lunch,” the woman said.
I nodded. “Okay. Let me know if you need anything,” I said, cracking open my coffee. “I’ll be in my office.”
