Page 118 of How to Blow It with a Billionaire

Later…later…later…

My phone bleeped.

And, like a fool, I scrabbled for it. Wrecked with hope with fear with hope.

It was Nik: I MOVED MY FOOT!!!!!

* * *

I slept and didn’t sleep and the hours sped and sluggished by.

And, finally, I rang home.

Hazel picked up. “What’s wrong?” she said, before I even had a chance to speak.

I took a deep breath, then another. Terrified of saying it. Of making it real. Of breaking the strange, still twilight of my grief. “He left me.”

It was all I managed before I started crying again.

The line crackled as Hazel shouted: “Rabbie, get the car.” And then to me, “You sit tight, Ardy. We’re on our way.”

I didn’t tell them they didn’t need to come.

Because they did.

They really, really did.

* * *

The next day, I took a shower. The water hardly touched me. It just ran over my body.

Afterward, I put clothes on.

Because I vaguely remembered that was the sort of thing people did.

* * *

Text from Rabbie: nearly there! They must have driven for twelve hours straight.

It didn’t take me long to pack. I briefly considered breaking everything in the apartment. But then I didn’t.

I rang Bellerose. “I’m moving out.”

“Arden…”

“I’ll leave the phone and the credit cards and everything on the table.” I sounded weird, even to me. Like one of those Star Trek episodes where a crew member gets taken over by an alien brain parasite.

“All right.”

“And thanks for…y’know.”

“I was simply doing my job. You don’t have to thank me.”

“Well, I just did, motherfucker.”

He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “I’m sorry, I’m not the most socially adept of people.”

“You don’t come across as socially inept. You come across as really mean.”