Page 95 of Bribed by the Billionaire Bad Boy

Her breath catches. It’s slight. “Oh?”

“Yeah.” I wet my lips. “So in case that was true, I thought my bedroom would be the best place for confessions.” I wiggle my brows.

She shoves me in the shoulder with her foot and hides her reddening cheeks beneath the collar of her sweatshirt.

I continue, “Clearly, he suspected you might tell me the truth and wanted to create such an opening, not push us into a real romance.”

“But obviously, since it was you, I didn’t even have to say much of anything for you to find the truth.”

Obviously, huh?Since it wasme? I watch the road exit signs. “You already told your mom you’d be home late?”

“Yeah.” Calypso searches in her bag’s side pocket for her phone and sighs. “I told her I was with you. Isn’t it stupid? After our little dinner fiasco thing, everything’s perfectly fine. Literally her fears were confirmed, but it’salllllgood.”

“Because I’m in love with you.” I say the words like they aren’t the truth. Just a fact of the ploy.

“She’s so confusing,” Calypso mutters. “Now my only crime is if I don’t give enough details about how I’m being ‘wooed’. It’s like she sees me as some kind of character in a romantic comedy drama.”

“She means her best. But it might not be yours. That’s what makes her especially difficult to interact with. You know that truth, so it hurts more.” I turn off the highway too early to reach Calypso’s house. “I’m okay in her eyes now because I’m in love with you, and the root of her concerns with you doing something illicit is that you’ll be tainted and hurt, reflecting poorly on her and injuring your own emotions. As she said, she doesn’t have a problem with you dating. And I’m a great catch.”

Calypso holds back a laugh. “Oh, the greatest.” Her gaze shifts out the windows. “You took a wrong a turn.”

“Did I?” I pull into a twenty-four hour breakfast. The parking lot is largely empty, and I think I can hear shouts inside, but as long as we leave before two in the morning, it will probably be fine. “Let her know you’ll be a little later if you told her you were on your way back home.”

Calypso unravels herself, peering outside at the too-bright yellow paint of the establishment. I don’t need to explain. Not to her. She murmurs, “You really think they’ll have muffins?”

“Let’s say I’m blissfully hopeful.”

Getting out of the car, we dive through the winter night to make it inside. Thankfully, they have tiny blueberry muffins on the kids’ menu, and we stick around for far too long eating them and drinking twenty dollars worth of chocolate milk.

It is, incomprehensibly, one of the best nights of my life.

Calypso

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

“I cannot express howin loveI am with Jo’s song.” Rebecca sighs dreamily, opening a burger wrapper. She found Lex, Jason, and me outside the cafeteria during lunch today, and before any of us could even get greetings out, she plopped down next to me and started her merry ramble.

Her brows furrow as she takes a munch of a double-beef burger I haven’t seen in ages. Burger Blitz feels like a lifetime ago.

“Does that mean I’m in love with Mr. D’plume? Huh. Anyway.” She puts her focus on me. “I can’t believe tonight’s the last rehearsal for it.”

Neither can I.

I mumble some sort of confirmation and tear the crust off my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. After this rehearsal, in three mere days, right after the weekend…

Rebecca bounces. “I’ve loved watching you two practice the choreography for this song too! It’s just so…I don’t know…dramatic!”

Jason leans forward, his eyes brilliant. “Wait, wait. Back up. These snobs tell me next tonothingabout the play. What’s their choreography?”

Rebecca grins and shoves back her hair to conspire together.

Lex and I meet eyes; he wiggles his brows and smirks.

“They’re, like, ballroom dancing. The scene is set in split. I’m singing on one side in a cityscape, and they’re, like, in this exotic garden that Kenneth summons Harriet to. It’s right outside his mansion. And it’s completely romantic.” Rebecca drops her burger to explain with her hands, spreading her fingers wide. “Caly made a suggestion early on that completely reinventedthe scene, so as the song heightens to crescendo, Harriet comes spinning out of Kenneth’s arms and nearly into my half of the stage. We meet eyes. I extend my hand in unison with Kenneth. She picks him.”

Jason’s mouth drops open. “No.”

“Yes.”