Page 90 of How to Bang a Billionaire

“Did what wrong?”

“I did it the wrong way. Look.” She held out her wrist, pushing aside one of the leather bands to show me a pale slash of a scar. “You’re supposed to do it diagonally from here to here. But I didn’t know. So I did it wrong.”

“I guess you wouldn’t think to Google first.”

She gave me a faint twist of a smile. “Yeah. But nobody believes me.”

I didn’t know if was the right thing to say, but I said it anyway. “I believe you.”

“Really?”

I ran the very tip of my finger over the rough, raised skin. And, to my surprise, she didn’t flinch or pull away. “Really.”

She turned her gaze back to the city, her hand still and quiet under mine.

I was touched and scared at the same time. It felt good to be someone she trusted. But, all the same, she clearly wasn’t in…well, a happy place. I wasn’t sure she’d have wanted to be, but that didn’t mean it was right to encourage her.

Except.

Was I encouraging her? Had she brought me up here so she could jump off a building? What was I supposed to tell Caspian? He obviously didn’t like his sister very much, but I didn’t think he would appreciate it if she killed herself after an afternoon in my company.

Fuck.

Now I had to do something.

“Would you try again?” Ouch. Awkward. “I mean,” I rushed on, “now that you know…um…you know how.” Nope, even more awkward.

“I think about it.”

That wasn’t the answer I’d been hoping for. “Ah.”

“But I’m too scared.”

“That’s probably…for the best. Your mind’s way of telling you something.”

She gave me one of her most scathing looks. “I’m scared in case I fuck it up a second time.”

“Right.”

Oh help. I didn’t want to just sit there in the silence and have her cheerfully conclude I was on board with the suicide plan. But how did you talk about something like this without sounding clueless or patronizing or falling back on the platitudes I knew she’d despise?

“Why did you do it the first time?” I asked finally.

“Wanted to.”

“And nothing’s changed since then? Nothing might change in the future?”

“Things change. But it never makes a difference.”

Great.

But that was when I thought of something. “Hey, have you heard of Dorothy Parker?”

She shook her head.

“Look her up sometime. She wrote this poem…”

Which was how I ended up reciting “Résumé” for Caspian Hart’s sister on the top of a half-finished luxury apartment block in Canary Wharf.