Page 28

B is for…

C ome onnn,” Avril said, giving him no time to process what he’d finally realized. She kept walking, nonchalant in the face of the earth-shattering revelation that had come down on him like a thunderbolt. Only to avoid further perplexment from Rose did Liam, head spinning like a top, order his feet to head forward. His pace was sluggish, like he’d been physically mugged and was limping out of an alleyway.

Avril was waiting for him at the end of the tunnel, loitering with a knowing grin on her face. Meanwhile, he stumbled up to her, still reeling from the hammer blow to the senses he’d just experienced. Like a decade-old phone, the additional task of walking to her delayed his processing power substantially. He ended up staring at the ground, needing to limit his visuals. All so he could finally comprehend something that had been so damn obvious.

“So,” Avril asked, verdant eyes aglow with amusement as she spoke, “what have we learned?”

Liam slowly lifted his head. Climbing long, fit legs, shapely hips, a jersey that clung to her hourglass figure with glee, even if she couldn’t stand the player whose name was covered up by tape on its back, a pair of immaculate breasts, a slender throat, and a luscious but cruelly smirking mouth, he finally met her eyes.

He let her hear what she wanted to hear.

“That I don’t pay enough attention to baseball,” he said glumly. “Miss Knight.”

“No arguments there,” she said. “You like ‘em when they’re bigger than what we throw out in this sport.” She playfully gestured with her hands, which lifted her breasts. “Softball might be more your sport. Even that might not be big enough for your tastes.”

He rolled his eyes but had no retort. How couldn’t he have figured this out before now?

The evidence pummeled him. From every side, it struck him. Mercilessly, laughing at his ignorance, his dull, unperceptive mind. Holy. Shit. He could have started to suspect it on the very first day they’d met.

“You offered her tickets because you can offer anyone tickets,” Liam groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Huh?” Avril said.

“Tara—the woman working at the rink. On the first day we met, we went ice skating. You two went back and forth.”

“Oh, yeah,” Avril said, grinning wider. “I wasn’t even working to hide it from you yet. You could have put two and two together and saved yourself so much embarrassment. I’m glad you didn’t, though. The past couple of months have been sooo funny.”

He almost went down on his knees and curled up into a ball. The realization—this stupid realization—it recontextualized so many situations, so many things he’d said and done, how she’d reacted.

“I fucking bought you a jersey for a team that you own. I basically paid you to buy you a jersey.”

“Actually, with how the merchandising rights are currently set up, if it’s sold outside of the stadium, the money gets distributed evenly amongst the teams. So, you really only paid my family a little bit for this jersey. But it looks nice on me, no?”

She made a show of lifting her arms over her head, drawing Liam’s gaze across her alluring figure. Alluring, frustrating, and apparently just as good at him, if not better, at getting others to keep a secret.

“Everyone else knew,” he groaned.

“Well, duh. People I haven’t even met know me. It’s Avril Knight, Liam.” Clearing her throat, she mimicked a masculine broadcaster’s voice. “‘Will the Knights continue to keep the Bandits in order?’ ‘With how much they’re spending this year, the Knights sure are emptying their castle’s coffers.’ ‘Here’s this photo of owner Rory Knight and Manager Bill Stoors shaking hands at the stadium. The Knights clearly have a lot of faith in this bandit leader.’”

Through gritted teeth, he said, “I. Don’t. Watch. Baseball. News.” Liam knew that wasn’t enough of an excuse. Not by a long shot.

“It was just so fucking funny, though,” Avril said, shaking her head. “Once we realized that you didn’t know who I was. I just had to get them to go along with it so we could all see how long it’d take you. A part of me knows I could have kept it going for longer, but you’re going to be on one of my family’s private jets in a week, and it just kind of felt like the right time to spill the tea—right before the start of the season and everything.”

“A private jet?!”

“Yeah-huh,” Avril said. “Anna and Victoria are pretty conscientious about the environment, so I had to convince them we should use it. There isn’t any first-class flying to Fiji from the States, but that’s not what won them over. My brother is going on a trip to Europe, but so is my grandpa. Instead of them piling into the 7500 together, Casey was going to try and use the 6500. Shockingly, he does not care about emissions, or anything other than himself. So, I got Victoria on board by bringing up that the plane would be used one way or another, so why not us instead? From there, I managed to bring Anna over eventually.”

Not a private jet. Multiple private jets. Because… because…

“Your grandfather owns the Bandits,” Liam said, planting his face into his palm. It’d been established, yet he still felt the need to say it at least once. “Which makes you a—”

“A billionaire,” Avril said. “Well, the granddaughter of one, anyway. The only granddaughter, too. That brings with it a lot of perks. Perks that you’ve unknowingly been benefitting from for a while now.”

“Oh, God,” he grunted, assailed by an endless stream of those times. One stood out above the rest, causing him to snatch his hand away from his face and meet Avril’s gaze. “ That’s why Trent and his lackeys were so terrified of you. When you threatened them.”

Avril grinned, reveling in that memory. “Oh, yeah, they were. They are. You’re well off, Liam, but you’re not rich. That fair?”

“I… suppose?” he said.

“See, a millionaire’s kid, if he were in your shoes right now, he’d probably have given me an even more humorous response than you did. Eyes boggling out of his head more, jaw dropping further, body trembling like he’s in one of those mall massage chairs. Because a millionaire’s kid actually understands what the difference between a million and a billion dollars is. Do you, Liam?”

He shrugged. “No, I guess not. A lot of money, I suppose.”

“Well,” Avril said, sounding more earnest than joking, “it’s about a billion dollars, so, yeah, a lot of money. Most people don’t seem to have put much thought into how much a billionaire has. What it allows them to do, to buy, to circumvent. Anna’s family, they have a Cessna. A Citation CJ3, I think. One of the newer variants, too, so I bet it goes for five or six million. It can probably carry a handful of people, is probably around fifty feet long, and might be pretty fast.

“When we go on this trip next weekend, we’ll be flying in the smaller of my family’s private jets. A Bombardier Global, the 6500. It can seat seventeen, is about a hundred feet long, has a kitchen, private suite, and shower, and costs about fifty million dollars. Oh, and it can make the trip to Fiji, allowing us to sleep comfortably during it. Arnold Royce would fall into the Pacific about halfway through the trip if he tried to tail us. So, Evelyn can’t even use the family jet for her trip to Bora, Bora. She’ll have to rent one that can.”

Avril twirled a finger, then pointed it down, sending it into an imitation of a spiraling plane heading toward the ocean. Her fingers spread apart in an explosion once it had hit the invisible surface.

“Millionaires, and the shitty, little, bastard children of millionaires,” Avril said, clearly referring to Trent and his cohorts, “know the difference. They know my family flies in jets worth more than their net worth. As Victoria might say, it’s a whole different ecosystem. Like comparing… I don’t know, a stag beetle and a termite.” She waved a dismissive hand through the air, giving up on making a comparison that might have made Victoria proud. “It’s just a lot. Like comparing normal airline pilots to astronauts. It’s just a different breed—a different world. Sharks and oversized minnows,” she announced, clapping her hands together. “There we go. We got there.”

Liam noticed something during her detailed explanation, which kind of tapered off slightly at the end. It was an odd thing to see, a specific emotion. Like those sharks and minnows, it swam beneath the surface, visible only at particular points. While he didn’t panic after seeing it, as he might have had it been a shark fin, it certainly perplexed him.

Avril seemed nervous, which was already rather uncharacteristic of her. That wasn’t quite the emotion he expected from someone who was, in detail, explaining how exorbitantly rich she was. Especially with that person being Avril.

“Alright,” he said, nodding. “I think I get all that. Is there… anything else?” He wasn’t sure how to broach what he knew he’d seen, so he figured that a simple question was the best way to allow Avril a chance to keep going—to explain what was unsettling her.

“Yeah, there is,” Avril said. She sucked one cheek in, glancing around. It was just them. They hadn’t made it that far into the stadium’s guts, just to the inner ring, which in four days would be swarming with people using the restrooms, buying things from the concessions, or seeking their seats. “My grandfather’s a billionaire. Ostensibly, so am I.”

“Sure,” he said.

“And you know that now.”

“…Yeah.”

“But you’re not going to start acting any differently around me, right? Weird, different, whatever. Got it?”

Liam borrowed a few moments of silence by scratching the back of his head. “I… wasn’t planning to. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Fuck. No.” Avril released a long sigh. “Seriously, Liam. Same old deal between us. Nothing’s changing, right?”

“Is this that big of a worry?” he asked, earnest but slightly perplexed.

“It is,” Avril confirmed. “People get weird when they realize they’re talking with a billionaire, and it can go either way. They can turn into total grifters, or they can turn up all tight and puckered all of a sudden, as if they’re afraid I’ll snap my fingers and get them tossed under a guillotine. It’s happened before.”

Liam took a moment to compile his thoughts. His response felt natural and honest.

“I already knew you were super rich—you’ve proven that over and over, honestly. I’ve got a watch in a glass case that proves that. Like you said, I’m not from one of those millionaire families. The difference between a family with hundreds of millions and a few billion—that’s not something I can fully appreciate. I can tell you honestly, I’ve never been on anyone’s private jet before.”

Avril snorted but seemed to cheer up a little. “Mine’s going to ruin all others for you. Kind of like how my tight pussy ruined—”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, cutting her off with a gesture. “You’re definitely still the same Avril Knight I know.”

She grinned. “The one and only, baby. Don’t ever forget it, either.”

Liam promised he wouldn’t. “Oh, and I have money to repay you for the flight too, if you really want me to keep treating you the exact same. Afraid it’s based on what I figured a normal flight would cost me, not one on your super jet.”

Snorting again, Avril shoved away from the wall she’d been leaning on. “You can keep hold of whatever you’ve got. It’s basically spending change to a Knight.” Her eyes glinted as she started walking. “Buy me something nice when we’re on the islands. But for now, come on. You’re going to fuck me in a private viewing box.”

Liam’s jaw might have dropped again, but his feet didn’t hesitate. Not this time.