Page 74 of The Billionaire's Shrubbery

“Fuck you, Will.”

“Can I say something?”

She shakes her head, looking anywhere but at me. “Whatever. The great Will Power will do what he wants, anyway.”

With that one sentence, I go from wanting to soothe Virginia to wanting to eviscerate her the way she’s just shredded me.

“The great Will Power does whatever he wants,” I echo. “Do you seriously not see how this whole situation is precisely because the great Will Power,” I say, dripping with sarcasm, “can’t doanythinghe wants? When he wants? How he wants? Fuck, not even with who he wants?”

“Right. So we’re back to me not being good enough.”

“That is not what I said.”

“The part where you don’t get to do anything with who you want? Since this is all coming up after spending one day with me in my world, it kind of feels like youdomean me.”

“No. Not even close.” I can’t believe how badly this is going. I didn’t expect it to be easy, but this is not the direction I anticipated. “Please, sit.” I pat the mattress.

“Thanks. I’ve been standing on my own my whole life. I’m fine.”

“I meant the six hounds of hell shadowing our every move. I meant my job and all the people I work with, aside from my brothers. Men like Liu.” I pause and wait for that to sink in. Virginia knows how angry I am at her former business coach, since she’s the one who convinced me not to fire him.

She looks up from whatever interesting spot on the floor is holding her attention with a question in her eyes. She’s softened—even someone who hasn’t watched a thousand hours of true crime documentaries would see that.

“Virginia, I love you.”

“Interesting way to express it,” she mumbles.

“I love you, and I want nothing more than for you to be happy.”

“I am happy. Why would you think I’m not happy?” Her tone bites, but it’s not as vicious as the rabid cougar she embodied a few minutes ago.

“I know. This weekend showed me what you’re like when you’re truly being Virginia Beach without all the walls I usually see around you. This place, this town, these people—they make you happier than I’ve ever seen you. Even happier than being in that monster greenhouse.”

The fire is out. Tears have pooled and overflow their banks.

“Please come back to bed? Please let me hold you. If not for you, for me. I need you. This is worse than my most distressing fucking nightmares.”

She pulls off my T-shirt and drops it on the foot of the bed, crawls back under the duvet, and presses her back to my front. I hold her tight and feel her sob. She is breaking my fucking heart, but better now than in a year, after I’ve broken her spirit by keeping her locked in my fucking tower.

“Breathe,” I say, taking a long, slow inhale myself. I wait until she sighs, her breathing back to normal, before I talk again.

“You know, my mother wasn’t from money either. She met my dad when they were, like, fifteen or sixteen. She went to the local high school, was just a normal kid. Dad wasn’t billionaire class back then, but the Power family was the wealthiest in the city. Mom’s dad worked for the company. That’s how they met.”

“Like a ‘take your kid to work’ thing?”

I can hear the smile behind her question.

“No. Mom actually got an after-school job cleaning the bathrooms. It was an older building. She said it was the worst job ever. Can you picturemymother cleaning fifty toilets a night?”

“That is … no, unimaginable.”

“Yeah, well, the story goes that Dad was escaping from one of those bathroom windows that opened into an alley so the guards and doormen wouldn’t see him.”

“Your mom caught him?”

“She did more than catch him. She showed him all the places teens hung out—the places parents knew aboutandthe ones they didn’t. And … the rest, as they say, is history.”

Virginia rolls to face me. “I’m confused. You’re saying you and I have a relationship that’s the same as your mom and dad’s, but that this will never work between us. Doesn’t make sense. Why tell me that story?”

---