Billionaire Boys Club 5 : Romancing the Billionaire(28)

"I was in love, yeah. Back in the day." Cade considered his glass. "She got famous and she changed. She's not the same girl anymore, and I don't know what to think. All I know is that I feel like she's the one that got away." He gave Jonathan a thin smile. "So. You're not alone in the heartbreak corner."

He was surprised to hear all of that coming from Cade. "Yeah, but you didn't destroy her life, did you?"

"No, she seems to be doing that well enough on her own," Cade said flatly.

"Well, I destroyed Violet." Jonathan thought of the pain in her eyes. A baby. There had been a baby and he'd never known. She'd lost it after she'd gone home. Had it been because she was so stressed and unhappy to be abandoned? Probably. He could lay the blame for that at his own feet, as well. It just made him hate himself more. "I've dreamed of her for ten years, Cade. Missed her with every waking moment. And now I find out that she hates me and she'll always hate me. It's like a knife in my gut." Despair threatened to overwhelm him. "I'll never get her back now. Ever."




 

 

"Maybe it's time for both of you to start over," Cade said. "It's been ten years. You're both different people than you were before."

Maybe. He just didn't know if Violet would ever give him that chance. He'd f**ked it all up ten years ago. There might never be a chance to fix it now.

-

Someone knocked at Violet's hotel room door a few hours later, just before she was about to go to sleep. Curious, she pulled on a robe and peered through the peephole. Cade. Violet unlatched the door and opened it a crack. "Is everything okay?"

Cade flashed her a brief smile. "Well, he's drunk again."

"This isn't surprising. He's been drunk for the last few days. I'm pretty sure he's spent more time drunk than sober since we've been together."

"He's pretty miserable at the moment," Cade said, glancing down the hallway. Violet craned her neck out the door and caught sight of a man sprawled in a chair at the end of the hall, a bottle tucked under his arm.

"Yes, he looks quite miserable," she said in a droll voice. "I'm sure he's quick to blame me for all of this."

"Actually, no. He blames himself." Cade glanced at her, then down the hall. "He's pretty sure he's destroyed his own life and ruined yours, and places responsibility for his actions squarely on his own doorstep."

She felt a twinge of pity at that. "Well, you can assure him I'm just fine."

"I would if I could get a word in edgewise."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean he's constantly quoting poetry at me. Watch." Cade stepped into the hall a few paces. "Jonathan? Ready to go upstairs?"

"'I was a child and she was a child,'" singsonged the drunk voice down the hall. "'In this kingdom by the sea. But we loved with a love that was more than love-I and my Annabel Lee!'"

Someone in the next room banged on the wall in response.

Violet pressed her fingertips to her mouth to keep from laughing. It wasn't funny. It wasn't. "Is that Edgar Allan Poe?"

"Is that what it is?" Cade grimaced. "It's godawful."

"I think so. I took some poetry classes in college and it sounds familiar." She'd been majorly into poetry back when she'd started college. She hadn't known that Jonathan knew poetry. Was this another facet of him that had cropped up in the last ten years, or had it always been there and she'd never noticed? "So you couldn't get him to stop drinking?"

"He was already wrecked, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to get a few more details out of him before I implement my plan." 

She tilted her head at him, curious. "Your plan?"

"Yes." He grinned and rubbed his hands together, looking so utterly boyish that she wanted to smile back. "Phase one-glean information. Phase two-strategy. Phase three-execution."

"It all sounds very corporate."

"It does, doesn't it?" He seemed rather pleased with himself.

Down the hall, Jonathan began to drunkenly ramble again, voice singsonging another poem that he was slurring too much for her to make out.

She glanced down the hall at him, and played with the high neck of her robe. "Should you, um, stop him?"

"Nah. I'm going to let him get it all out of his system. As of tomorrow morning, he's not going to want another drink."

"You sound very confident."

"Trust me. I know what makes Jonathan tick. I just need your word that you'll go along with everything I throw at you."

"Me? What's my part in this?"

"Just that. I'll come get you for breakfast, and anything I suggest to you, just agree with it. We'll get Jonathan out of his funk and back on the road with you in a heartbeat."