Page 104 of The Elusive Billionaire
“It wasn’t just one thing, Grey. I just…I felt out of control. Too many things were broken—I couldn’t catch up.”
A memory of a teenage Violet begging me to be quiet so our dad wouldn’t find me hits me hard. She was always trying to control things too. I didn’t understand it was her way of keeping us safe until it was too late.
“Was I one of the things that made you feel out of control?”
She won’t meet my eye.
“Savannah, at the risk of sounding like a narcissistic fucking asshole, did my behavior contribute in any way to you punishing yourself?”
She brings her arms up to break the hold I have on her face, then she pushes me away and stands. “You’re right, you sound like a narcissistic asshole.”
“Answer me, Sav. Please.”
“I don’t know, okay?” Her voice is a broken scream that has no power behind it. “Is that what you want to hear? I. Don’t. Know. Riley was released from prison, work pressure was intense, things here were…complicated. Then when you left, it felt like a piece of me broke, and it’s so ridiculous because we didn’t even like each other. How could I miss someone who was actively recruiting me as his enemy?”
She stomps to the window and presses her forehead to the glass while I attempt to control my breathing.
I was too weak to admit to myself that I was hurt by her—that I needed her—and she ended up harming herself.
“We’re idiots, Sav.”
She sniffs—it’s a fragmented laugh with no sound.
“You can’t take this on, Grey. I was damaged long before I met you. I know you’ll want to fix this, fix me, but it’s not your place and it’s not your responsibility. I’ll always carry this with me.”
Little clouds of condensation form on the window from her puffs of air.
“Some years will be better than others.” She sounds so tired. I want to demolish anything and everything that makes her feel like less than the perfect mess she was meant to be.
“But I don’t believe it’s something that will ever be cured.” Sadness rolls off her in waves. “Yes, there are coping mechanisms, and new systems I can learn, but I’m the only one who can do anything about it. If you’re only here because you need to fix someone, then we should stop whatever this is now before we ruin any chance of friendship between us.”
I slip out of bed. “Oh, sweetheart. We’re already so much more than friends. I’m just biding my time until you see it.”
“That’s not?—”
“I told you. I don’t want to fix you, just your demons. You’re more than what haunts you, Sav. You’re not broken, but like all of us, our past is full of wounds that never healed properly. Is it really so bad that I want to be the medicine that cures some of those cuts?”
“It’s not your job,” she growls, and it punches me in feelings I didn’t know I possessed.
“Was it Braxton’s job to teach Madi how to trust in love again?”
“That wasn’t the same thing, and you know it.”
“What I know is she was hurting, and he found a way to make her feel better. That’s all I want.” I step behind her and tug her back to my front. “I just want to make you feel better.”
“You give me whiplash.” She relaxes into my hold.
“Let me make you feel better.” I insert so much innuendo into my tone that it comes across cheesy, but she laughs, and it’s worth the slight humiliation.
“When did everything get so…intense?” Slowly, her shoulders unwind, her fists unclench, and her breathing evens out.
“Well, we started hate-fucking, met on a surrogacy app, got stuck together in a hurricane, hate-fucked again, realized maybe it wasn’t ever really hate-fucking, had some asshole try to blow up our lives in the media, got fake engaged, decided to have a real relationship, admitted some really hard truths, and now here we are.”
Her chuckle loosens a knot in my chest.
“We did things all out of order,” I say.
“What happened to meet-cutes and dating? We went straight to the reality-TV version of romance.”
