Page 63 of Bribed by the Billionaire Bad Boy

“It’s not,” she lies. I can tell. It’s in her tone, in the pause before she answered, in the way she clings a little tighter to my shirt, stretching it out beyond repair.

Daring, I bend a kiss to her forehead, hear her breath catch before I meet her eyes. Big, blue, glassed with tears that streak perfect lines down across her cheeks. I cup her chin. “What do you need from me, right now?” Letting the hints of a smile curve my lips, I offer, “Your soft Kenneth, whose past reflects a similar ache? Or maybe a darker shape, like Hilgart, who will burn down this world for you? Or perhaps—”

I don’t get to finish.

“Alexander.”

The conviction in her tone, the lack of a taunt, the touch of something that makes that dreadful namemineandmine alonefills me.

Her fingers clench, somehow even tighter, in the ruined fabric of my shirt. “Lex is enough.”

With those words, I am idiotically entranced.

Sitting beside her on the bench, so close she may as well be on my lap, I pull her into a full hug, rest my chin on the top of her head, and flick a braid. I try to keep my voice lighthearted, but I fear it leaves with all the weight of the world. “Never would have thought that one your preferred role for me to play.”

Her arms coil around me, and she whispers, “Shut up.”

So I do.

Calypso

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

Dazed is how I spend the rest of the day. Detached and distant from my body, I run through every “normal” motion. In my head, I’m trapped in Lex’s arms, feeling the strength in his hold as it coiled around me.

In my head, I’m safe there in that place with him.

I barely register anything between Greta and Kenneth during theater class rehearsal—even though I know the scene where he denies her is one of my favorites, because it comes just before he realizeswhy. Afterward, I avoid Lex, and Agatha, and even Mr. D’plume. Thankfully, class time runs over just enough for me to be on my way to the bus stop before Lex can linger with me at the gazebo.

I guess I’m both dazed and avoidant.

But I don’t know how I’m supposed to face him. I don’t know what came over me this morning. Maybe it had something to do with the way he looked at me and knew the song I was playing was mine with such confidence it felt almost like he knewme.

He said the same words as my mother, but they sounded nothing like hers. Hers felt like an accusation: something is wrong, because you’re doing something wrong. His felt like protection: something is wrong; who hurt you? How do I help fix it, so you don’t have to?

Maybe it’s wrong of me to run to Lex who lets me be blameless. Maybe it’s wrong to want to believe I control less than I do, but whenever I talk to Mom it feels like she believes I controleverything.

If I’m stressed, it’s because I’m doing too much. It’s my own fault for taking so much on. It doesn’t matter than she pressured me into an education that would allow me a better job. It doesn’tmatter that I have to work to help afford where we live.

Every moment, she wants me to listen to her because I’m too young and stupid to understand anything for myself. Every moment, the rules are subject to change.

Help with the bills.

I hate seeing you working so much. Quit some of your jobs.

We’re struggling to make ends meet.

You should go to college, so you can get a better job.

You’re stressed with college.

I can’t believe you put so much on yourself.

She exhausts me more than anything else, especially when most of the time I’mfineuntil she makes me doubt whether or not I really am. Once I find a way to make things work for me, once I put together a schedule, I manage. I manage so well that I get bored. I get bored, so I get ahead. I get ahead, so I have time.

To write.

To compose.