Page 54 of The Billionaire's Second Chance
I would be.
The backs of my eyes stung, tears threatening to fall.
I stood straight, smoothing my hair back, my lips pressed together tight. I nodded, tried to take a step toward the door.
“Sami,” he said, grabbing my wrist.
I looked down at it, his firm grip, his blunt fingernails.
“You need some time. Take it. And then…” I nodded again, but he didn’t release me. “Come back.” Not until I met his eyes did he drop my wrist. I didn’t know what he was looking for. I didn’t know if he found it.
It didn’t matter.
I didn’t make it far.
I pushed the library door, the tears pricking against my eyelids.
It was locked.
* * *
“She says security should be on their way soon,” Charlie said at last, hanging up his phone. He stood by the locked door of the school library. When I’d checked my watch, panicked, it had read a quarter to nine, and my emotions had tangled in my stomach, fear and nervousness and panic all twisting together with something that felt a little bit like relief. He wouldn’t leave, and I couldn’t. “But that it might be a while. Fuck, when did it get so late?”
I knew exactly when–when I was avoiding the meeting, delaying my arrival until the last second. Then when I saw him, and the worries had slipped like silk from my shoulders. When he pushed me into the darkened corner of the library, my mouth filled with his taste and my stomach filled with want and my chest filled with need. It had been sohardto be around Charlie for so long, and now, when I least needed it, it had become so easy. I closed my eyes for a long moment, and when I opened them, he was standing in front of me, his mouth caught in a resigned smile.
“Come on,” he said, nodding over into the shelves. “Let’s sit.Justsit.”
I followed him there without complaint, and when he slid down to sit on the library’s soft carpet, his thighs flexing against his khakis, I sat down beside him. We sat like that for a few minutes, long enough that the automatic lights flickered off, first one, then the other, leaving us sitting side by side in the quiet, still library.
“Why is it that you need this award so badly, Samantha?”
I was quiet. The library was dark; I could make out the contours of Charlie’s silhouette, but I couldn’t see his expression.
“You wouldn’t understand,” I said.
“Try me.”
“I…” I didn’t know how to explain it. I hadn’t had any practice in doing so; I’d kept everything to myself for so long. But in the dark of the library, with Charlie…
Our hands, side by side, flat on the polished wood floor, were so close that his pinky brushed against mine. I didn’t draw my hand away; warmth seemed to flow from his touch, and selfishly, I took comfort from it. “When I was growing up, my father treated Sebastian and me the same. We were both supposed to be perfect. You understand that much, at least,” I said, hoping he could hear my sad smile. We were all supposed to be perfect, James and Charlie and Sebastian and Ryan and Tally and I, or if we weren’t, we were at least expected not to get caught. “The grades, the manners, the sports… it took me a long time to realize that the lives he was preparing us to live were sodifferent.”
I expected him to speak, but he didn’t. Instead, the touch of his pinky disappeared, only to reappear, settling over top of my own. The warmth spread to my face, and I was thankful that the dark hid my blush.
“Sebastian would inherit the company. I’d always known that. But I hadn’t reallyknownit.” I was doing a bad job explaining myself. I’d dedicated years now to being taken seriously, but I’d never learned to do… this. “Sorry, I–”
“Take your time,” he said.
“Sebastian would inherit the family business,” I started again. It was better just to come out and say it, all at once. “And I’d marry someone advantageous.” I laughed, the sound muffled by the books around us. “God, it sounds ridiculous like that, doesn’t it? Like I’m in a Jane Austen novel. And itisridiculous,” I added emphatically. “Itis. But when I realized that my career… it was only supposed to keep me in the correct circles for long enough that I could get married to someone like, well–”
“Someone like James,” Charlie said. His voice held none of its usual lightness.
I nodded in the dark, my hair tickling against my shoulders, and heard him sigh.
“Yes,” I said. “Someone like James. Someone who would provide, primarily, business connections for my father and brother, and secondarily, a comfortable life for me. As much money as I could spend. Aspen in the winter and the Hamptons every summer, never enough time in the city for me to maintain myownconnections, myowncareer. Someone like my–”
I didn’t have to finish the sentence. Charlie already knew the kind of marriage my parents had:maybe you’ll meet a nice investment banker who’ll give you the run of the house while he’s sleeping with his secretary, he’d said, his shirt half on and my panties shoved into my clutch. I’d been furious when Charlie said that, but not at him. At myself.
“I’m sorry for what I said,” he said now, as if reading my mind.
