Page 72 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

Two…

Happy. Happy. Happy.

One!

The chimes began to strike, rolling out over the dark waters. Then came the crackle of gunpowder in the distance, and suddenly everything was colour on colour on colour. With bonus Adele.

I’d always loved fireworks. I mean, they were loud and sparkly, what wasn’t there for me to be into? But my only real experience of them was Rabbie crouched in the middle of our back garden, swearing and dropping matches, and then running away frantically as a couple of rockets wheezed into the air.

This was…this was…not like that. There were fireworks that whooshed upwards from the ground, leaving long comet trails in their wake, and others that exploded into vast and lavish starbursts. Some of them spun in spirals in the centre of the Eye and some poured down from the sky like it was raining light. My soul crackled with each new explosion, shining amethyst, emerald, and jade, like the reflections in the Thames. I felt…almost transparent. But in a good way. The usual mess that lived inside me, gone. Transformed into a stream of bright moments under a fresh-born sky.

I glanced at Ellery, lit up, and wanting to share it, and she grinned back at me, her eyes full of tiny fireworks, and so blue just then. The bluest I’d ever seen them. Blue enough to break me.

And then it was slipping away—whatever I’d felt, or thought I’d felt, everything I’d learned, or thought I’d learned. And I knew it was fairy gold. Had only ever been fairy gold. And here I was, exhausted, on a bridge in the middle of London, with my still heart in ruins, and nothing to show for it but handfuls of dust.

I missed him.

I missed him so much.

And he would never be mine again.

Something flicked across Ellery’s face. “Ard—”

Drowning, I kissed her.

Bare seconds before she wrenched away. “What the fuck?”

“I…I don’t know…I’m sorry.”

“You…why…” She stared at me. And I saw her eyes had never been his blue at all.

Remorse was a slow, sick tide rising inside me. My heart rabid in my chest. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She turned, ran, and the crowd swallowed her like a great, fleshly fish.

“Ellery. Please. I’m—”

At which point, I threw up over my shoes, the pavement, and some undeserving German tourists.

Chapter 23

Running. Bashing against the shoulders of strangers who recoiled when they saw me. Shouting Ellery’s name. Sour, breathless sobs caught in my throat. Sweat streaming down my back, clotting in my hair. My heart thrashing like some dying thing.

It was no use.

She was long gone.

And I was falling apart. I stopped, eyes full of water, and dry-heaved stringy bile into the gutter. Then I started to cry in earnest.

What had I done?

The look on Ellery’s face was scored into me with a compass point. I was never going to forget it for as long as I lived.

Or forgive myself.

Oh God, oh God, would she?

I pulled out my phone with damp, shaky hands and rang her. No answer. Tried again. Straight to, “The person you are trying to reach is not available.” I knew she never bothered with messages but I left her one anyway. Well, “message” oversold its coherence. It was mainly crying.