Her Billionaires(106)

For some reason, that made her finally break down and sob. Not the sheer humiliation in the work lobby. Not the rage that claimed her so easily on the staircase, her feet still aching from that howlingly stupid move. And not the thought that once again, as with Ryan, as with so many guys in high school and college, as with Dylan and Mike the first time they made love, she felt tiny and cheated and shamed and grotesque because nothing had turned out as planned, and her own blind naivete meant that here she was sobbing and racked with grief, her best friend stroking her shoulder and nothing had changed.

She was the same Laura this happened to, time in and time out, a decade and more of falling for guys who cared less for her than she cared for them, respected her in a way that made her queasy with doubt, and who managed to give her just enough hope such that when it all came crashing down what hurt most was that they ever gave her any.

It would have been easier to become a cat lady who never bothered, and she was about to do just that. As soon as it was safe to go home. If Dylan was hunting down Josie’s number and texting her, then she damn sure couldn’t go home right now. Weak and addled, her mind might play a game of sabotage on her, believing whatever smooth line he came up with to try to convince her that she should get up once more, strip naked before them, and let them ridicule her pure, loving heart.

Nope.

Done.

“Josie,” she announced, her voice sounding like a drill sergeant’s. Wiping the tears with the bottom hem of her sweater, careful not to get cat hair in her eyes, she sniffed and demanded, “you are going to text that motherfucker back.”

“Yes, Ma’am!” Holding her phone, Josie looked expectantly at Laura. Hmmm. Now what? What could she possibly say to Dylan that would make him stay away? That would make him just evaporate, with Mike, and let her go on and live a life that didn’t have so much pain and wonder in it? Were there magic words she could fit in a text that would do that?

She had to try. “OK, so type, ‘If you say it’s complicated I’ll cut your balls off and put them on the warlock waitress.’”

Josie choked and clapped. “Fucking brilliant!” Tap, tap, tap—

“No! Don’t do it. Changed my mind.”

Pout from Josie, then a quick change to a neutral face. “Sure.” Tap, tap, tap as she erased it.

In her heart, what she wanted was an apology from them both. A long, drawn-out pleading and self-flagellation filled with regret and recriminations and sorries and kisses and flowers and all that crap. More words than things, though, more affection than promises, and more attention than empty phrases. At the center of it all was a ball of pain that now lived in her stomach, hot lead and napalm and poison that leaked and festered in her, planted there by Mike and Dylan because this?

This was a bitter pill to swallow. And swallow it she had, whole and dry and without any awareness of what it meant.

That was all fantasy. Her dream world was about her, about people caring what she felt, what she thought, what she needed and wanted. Fantasy.

The real world involved self-centered men who didn’t trust her enough to tell her their second-biggest (or first!) secret and who let her learn about it from a fluff-chick morning chat show cougar who had the self-awareness of a bottle of nail polish remover. If that wasn’t a big sign that their respect for her was in the crapper, nothing else was.

Add in the little detail that they clearly didn’t trust her to be anything but a money grubber and she was, well, she was still struggling to sum all that up into one pithy text.

“Try this,” she ordered. Josie’s finger hovered over the glass keyboard. “Don’t chase me. Give me that one shred of respect. Why? Because it’s complicated.” Josie typed it in and looked at her, eyebrows raised with a question.

Laura nodded and Josie tapped “Send.” Laura took a deep breath through her nose and let it out through her mouth, making a weird vibrating sound with her lips.

Bzzzz. “Man, he’s fast,” Josie muttered. Dotty made a hissing sound and arched her back. “It’s just a phone. Not a predator,” Josie chided the cat. “She does this all the time,” she explained, squinting at the screen.

“He replied, didn’t he?”

“Yep. Wanna hear it?”

No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Ye—“Yes.”

Josie made a disgusted sound, complete with a slow shake of the head that Laura interpreted as not good. “He says, and I quote: ‘It’s always complicated.’ With a little smiley face.”

A slap across the face would have shocked her less. Laura felt a rising numbness take over, blinking furiously with a neutral face, completely unable to comprehend what on earth had possessed Dylan to think that that—that?—trite and flippant response would somehow be perceived as funny. Or endearing. Or clever.