Page 61 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

“What can I say”—she gave me one of hernot so much dead as long ago decomposed panlooks—“I’m a saint.”

“Will you at least tell me where we’re going?”

She blinked. “No.”

Where we were going, I discovered, after a shower, breakfast, a thirty-minute ride on the Boston Not-Tube, and a five-floor climb to the top of a library, was Warren Anatomical Museum. Though “museum” was a bit optimistic—since it was a room with some glass cabinets in it, all of which were full of gross stuff.

Ellery was there for, like, nearly two hours. I mostly sat in the corner. Because as far as I was concerned, once you’d seen one dislocated pelvis or deformed foetus in a jar, you’d kind of seen them all. Ellery tried to cheer me up afterwards by offering to buy me lunch, but I think she was taking the piss.

“You,” I said as we headed east towards the harbour and the rehabilitation hospital where Nik was staying, “are the weirdest tourist.”

This earned me my first scowl of the day. “I’m not a tourist.”

“We just went to a museum. Where you enjoyed yourself.”

“Shut up. I did not.” She pulled her feet up to rest against the seat. “I just like stuff other people might not have seen.”

We had to change lines at Haymarket, something Ellery navigated with far too much comfort for someone who had been to Boston exactly never. Honestly, I was glad she was with me. My last visit had involved a car ride to and from the airport, and a daily walk between my hotel and the hospital, my memory a blur of white corridors and long roads, and a too-flat, too-wide river that didn’t look anything like the Thames. Of course, now I was seeing underground tunnels and skulls with holes through them, but what could you do?

Nik’s hospital was right on the tip of a peninsula in one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods—which is to say, it was substantially younger than the crockery at your average Oxford college. The building itself was sleek and glassy, with awe care about sustainabilitylook to it. Inside, it was clean and bright, and slightly corporate, which, while it wasn’t cosy, was more reassuring than you might have expected. It suggested they wanted you rehabilitated and out of there—an approach I could get behind.

Nik was waiting for us in the lobby. I’d seen him over Skype a bunch of times, and I knew intellectually that he was in a wheelchair now, but it turned out my mental image of him had adjusted way less than I’d realised, and so the sight of him was a little bit jarring, like when your glasses-wearing friend suddenly gets contacts. But it only lasted a second or two. And then I was just so, so happy he was there.

“Nik.” I gave an excited squeal and scampered across the floor to meet him. “Shit—what’s the best way to hug you?”

“Wait until we’re both sitting down.” He gave a wan smile. “Because if you pull any leaning over me crap, I will punch you in the face, I swear to God.”

Honestly, I was already conscious of being loomy—which was extra uncomfortable because I was used to Nik being taller than me. “Wow, is that what they’re teaching you in physical therapy?”

“No. But it would definitely be therapeutic.”

“Punching me?”

“It would be a principled punching, not a personal one.”

I pulled a face. “I don’t know if that makes it worse or better.”

“This is weird.” He spun away with a deft, and somehow expressive, motion. I’d never been cold-shouldered by a wheelchair before.

“You’re the one threatening physical violence two seconds after I’ve got through the door. I’m still glad to see you, though.”

“Actually, you looked traumatised.”

“I’m not traumatised,” I protested. “I’m just not used to you being in a wheelchair.”

“Using a wheelchair.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m supposed to think of it asusing a wheelchair. On account of how it’s not something that limits me. It’s a tool I use to get around.” He sighed. “Although I’m not sure what the difference is, given it’s a tool I only use because I have to.”

“Um…”

“Because I can’t walk.”

“Nik, I—”

“Because my spine is fucked.”