Page 35 of Big Bad Bully
I try to figure out why she’s pussyfooting around. “Do you really mean racist?”
Is this about the color of my skin being darker than his?
“No,” she says immediately, so I’m sure it’s true. “Not that. But he didn’t think I was good enough for Brick.”
“Right. Because you weren’t rich? Or blue-blooded?” I jog down the steps into the subway.
“The latter. But I’m thinking this all through, and I can’t imagine he’d be up to anything with you. He suffered a lot when he was out of favor with Brick. Like, he looked like he wasn’t sleeping.”
That news creates a lump in my throat.
I don’t want to think of Billy as someone with a heart so easily punctured. It makes him less torture-able.
“Unless he’s really that evil and is still trying to split me and Brick apart,” Madi adds.
“Well, he told me that planning the bachelor party was his penance for fucking with your relationship.” I find a bench in the subway and drop onto it to wait for the train. After being on my feet all morning, I’m ready to rest.
Madi lets out a soft chuckle. “Ah. That explains it. He’s still trying to mend things. So I guess he’s sucking up.”
“He came to pick me up at Sentience two nights ago.” I let that bomb drop to see if it changes her perspective.
“What?”
Good. She’s appropriately surprised. I’m not the only one who thought it was weird.
“Yeah, and then he wanted to know if there was something between me and the security guard.”
Madi gasps. “Holy shit. He’s into you.”
“Kind of seems like it.”
“So into you, he hired you to be in his loft for the next two months.” Madi sounds thrilled.
My heart skips a little although I’m not sure if it’s over the joy of Madi and me having something to gossip about together again or about a Wall Street suit being into me.
“Yeah. He sent me a contract and wired the down payment the very next day.”
“Which allowed him to bully you into meeting him this weekend.”
“Uh-uh.” That slows my heart rate back down. “No amount of money will allow him to bully me,” I say firmly. “Weekends are actually better for me with school, or I wouldn’t do it.”
“Good for you. Yeah, never show fear with Billy. He can smell it, and he’ll work any advantage he can find.”
I recall the feel of his large hand steadying mine as he handed me into the car. Is he working an angle with me?
He might be. But I suspect the angle is only about getting in my panties. Like Madi said, he’s too much of a stuck-up society douche to be interested in anything real.
He probably just wants to know what it’s like to fuck a lowly barista. What does he call me? Cafe Girl??
But whatever. I’m not entirely opposed to a hot round or two in the sheets with him.
Call me curious. Maybe I just want to know what it’s like to screw a billionaire.
My train pulls into the station, and I press my earbud to my ear to finish the conversation as I stand. “He won’t be working me. I intend to make him suffer.”
Madi laughs. “Good. How?”
“Well, I already decided that if the bachelor party is his penance, I won’t make it easy for him.”
