Page 114 of Bribed by the Billionaire Bad Boy

Blood rushes from my face. “What?”

“I say so merely so you know my opinion on the matter. I doubt he’d leave you behind, no matter the situation.”

“No.” My voice cracks. “What do you mean ‘after he transfers’?”

“He hasn’t told you?” Mr. Hawthorn’s voice is perfectly emotionless. “I agreed to let him go to Olympus for two years. After that, he agreed to transfer to business school and begin training to take over Hawthorn Enterprises.”

My heart beats in my ears, a pounding sound beneath the lull of the piano. Anger builds, bleeding into my eyes. I swallow hard, but I can’t stop my hands from shaking. “So that’s what it is,” I whisper, mouth dry. “You don’t actually care about Lex. You just want to groom an heir.”

“No, I—”

“What’s going on?” Lex’s hard voice pierces through my ears, and I look at him, finding his attention solely tightened on his father. His eyes flick to me, but only for an instant.

Why didn’t he tell me?

How could henot tell me?

After all this time.

I can’t look at either of them, not the son who couldn’t tell me we had spare months left to exist as we have been and not at the father who shares his face.

Before I dare crumble and do something I’ll regret, I dart from the room as fast as my heels will let me.

Lex

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The sounds of her heels echo in my skull. I watch her vanish past the doors to the ballroom, then I whirl on my father. “What did you say?” I grit between my teeth. My hands shake, and if I’m not careful, I’m going to snap the thin stems on these glasses. I don’t know if I’d care.

“I hadn’t realized I was providing any new information.”

My heart stops. The transfer.

I swear, marching out. I leave the glasses on the floor by the door, and I don’t care what happens to them as I look down the hall, searching for a splash of blue silk. I can’t find it. She’s gone. But where would she go when I’m her way home and just getting to the gate of this property is a hike?

I take to the stairs, marching toward my room. In my house only there or the kitchen is safe, and the kitchen is too occupied right now to maintain being a safe space.

I enter into silence swiftly broken. The off-key twing of my ukulele has me closing the door behind me and sailing up the steps to my loft. Like a perfectly somber angel, Calypso sits in a pool of her dress, holding the tiny instrument.

“Calypso,” I begin.

A twang cuts me off.

My hands clench. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

Another twing. A twist. A twang.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not allowed to cry,” she whispers, her voice holding the sound of all the tears she isn’t shedding. “My makeup will run.”

I approach her, like she’s wild and small. Because in my heart, she is. “Who cares?”

“I’ll look like a raccoon.”

I swallow, crouching in front of her. “It would be slightly out of character, seeing as you’re closer to possum.”

Anger snaps through her gaze beside brokenness, and she stares at me. “Two months.Two. When were you going to tell me? As we were saying goodbye? Before the start of next fall?”