Page 12 of Billionaire and the Barista

I bought a Ducati, left it showroom floor red. No fancy customizing. It didn’t take long before some punk on another racing motorcycle challenged me. I let him win and followed him into the street racing community.

The parties weren’t as lit as they were back home. But the girls were sexy, and soon it felt as if I had my groove back.

My uncle didn’t approve. He was too much like my dad that way. It was obvious they were brothers, they looked alike, they were judgmental and disapproving in the exact same ways. But he wasn’t my father, and I wasn’t there for his approval. I was there to do a job, and I was good at it.

By the end of my first year, I had a high success rate of identifying and acquiring properties to develop for the hotel and resort branch of the business. I made him money, that's all he needed to be concerned with.

The job was even easier once I stopped showing up hungover. By the end of my second year when I stopped racing, I was stone-cold focused on doing my job. I had my last drink ever, and I stopped racing. Nothing was quite as sobering as witnessing a stupid mistake compounded into a deadly accident.

After I lost my buddy Fredrik, I sold the bike. I stopped drinking. We hadn’t been drunk. Far from it. But we had been drinking. Drinking and wet pavement are never a good combination.

I walked away from the accident, Fred didn’t. How many kids hadn’t gone home after a night of racing and partying back home? Was Gabriella riding itch on the back of those asshole’s bikes? Were they safe having her perched on the pillion seat behind them? Was she safe?

I tried to think of anything other than letting my mind race through everything that Fred had done, had said that evening. What could I have done to have changed the outcome? What could I have done so that I wasn’t standing in a cemetery, and he wasn’t in a pine box?

My gut clenched, what if that was me? Would Gabriella cry at my grave side as I was lowered into the ground forever? What if that was her? Anguish surged through my system at the thought of losing her in such a deeply permanent way.

I stepped away from the funeral. I couldn’t stomach it anymore. I had a sudden bone-deep urge to know that she was safe.

My thumbs froze over the touch screen of my phone. How was it that I no longer had her phone number registered in my brain? I started to dial and found myself connecting to the office number. I had to look up her number.

How long had it been since I last tried to call her? It seemed like only a few weeks ago, but there was nothing in my phone log from the past few months. How had I lost so much time? How had I let something, someone so vital to my existence slip away?

Maybe she had been right, maybe breaking up had been the right thing to do. I would always love her, and she would always be the one who got away from me.

I called. It went to voicemail, no surprise there. This time instead of hanging up immediately I listened to her outgoing message just to hear her voice. She warmed my heart and settled my nerves, and all she was doing was saying her voice and telling the caller to leave a message and giving the café’s phone and hours.

Well, at least I knew she was still at that shit hole café. It made no sense to have her work information on her voicemail unless she had been getting a lot of calls to her personal phone about work.

I held onto the feelings that listening to her had given me and returned to the funeral. Life was full of endings; some were harder to deal with than others.

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