Page 67 of Fake Dating My Billionaire Boss

“Oh, no, no, no…” I mutter as I squint at the dark wall. My painting. It’s hanging up in this room. It’s so disorienting, being in this room in the dark, but we must have stumbled over to it and bumped into it. I reach my fingertips up to my back and feel wet, gooey paint coating the fabric of my tank top. When I brush my hand down over my bum, it’s there, too. And despite the darkness, my vision has adjusted just enough to make out the fact that Damian’s peering down at his arm.

“Are you sure? Because my sleeve is covered in something…” He plucks at the fabric.

I groan. “No…”

My painting.

All that hard work.

What have we done?

Damian’s phone pings, and at the same time a humming sound floods the room. The electricity. It’s back on.

A little red light at the base of the television starts blinking, and then the room fills with a faint glow from a light that’s on out in the hall.

“Great. Power’s back.” Damian takes two steps to his left and reaches for an outlet on the wall. And then—the lights are on.

And there’s my very blatantly impressionist painting, staring us both in the face. And in the middle of it, there are two body-shaped blobs of smeared paint: the places where me and Damian leaned while we were kissing.

My gut twists, like my whole body is cringing.

I catch a glimpse of Damian’s face: eyes wide, brows raised, mouth parted with shock.

Now I know why Bo hid under the side table when he was scared. I feel an impulse to duck under there and escape from every single scary thing that is happening out here in this room. I lied to Damian, and now he knows it. He’s going to hate me forever. I can already see how upset he is. The emotion is written on his face, which is transforming from a look of shock to one of anger.

All this talk about taking leaps and falling and how crazy he is about me—he’s going to take all that back.

And I can’t handle that. I can handle a lot of things. Moving across the country in the middle of the night. Putting myself through college and grad school. Losing my mom. Watching my dad cry. Working two jobs I hated while building up my portfolio in any spare moment I could snatch.

I even faced my fears and ate Cornish hen with Maxine Finch. I’ve handled a lot of things. But I can’t handle seeing Damian’s anger and disappointment.

I have a shred of dignity left in me, so I also can’tactuallylet myself duck down under the side table and hide until this nightmare is over. So instead, I spin toward the door and stride out of the room without looking back.

Not even once.

When I get to the guest suite, I hold the door open for Bo. He trots in, and I lock the door behind us. Then I flop onto the bed, belly down, and let myself cry.

Damian’s back there, looking at the painting that’s supposed to be abstract and is most definitely not. He’s realizing, right this instant, that he should never have hired me. Everything that happened between us is ruined, and I have only myself to blame.

When I turn my head to the side, Bo licks the tears streaming down my cheeks.

I squeeze my eyes closed and listen to the sound of Damian’s slow, heavy footsteps, out on the iron stairs.

“I’m sorry, love bug,” I whisper to Bo. “I know you like it here, but I think—I think it’s time for us to leave.”

Chapter 22

Damian

She left.

I’m staring at the empty guest suite, holding the hand-written note she taped to the door.‘Damian—I’ll refund your payment once I can get the money together. You’ll get every penny back, I swear.’

She left the painting, too. I can see it when I turn my head to the side and peer through the glass panels. There it is, hanging on the wall.

And in front of me is the guest bedroom, which is devoid of her belongings. She must have headed out early because I didn’t even hear her when she pulled out.

After the power came back on last night and I caught my first look at her work of art, I was so upset that I trudged upstairs and went to my room to stew and mull.

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