Page 237 of The Morally Grey Billionaires Boxset

"Do you think of anything besides smut?" Penny arches an eyebrow.

Mira snickers. “Is there anything more important than smut?”

Penny reaches over, grabs a bottle of whiskey, twists open the cap and takes a sip.

“Not that I don’t love spicy books, but now, I worry my expectations are so high that I’ll never find a real-life boyfriend to live up to the ideal set by my book-boyfriends.

Which basically means, I’m going to be single forever. ”

Mira snickers. "All the more reason to immerse myself in book-boyfriends and never let them go." She screws off the top of a bottle of vodka and holds it up. "What are we toasting to?"

Penny holds up her own—whiskey—and takes a deep breath. "To tales of the smutty kind."

"To the sisterhood of smut." Penny leans over to clink her bottle with Mira’s.

"To not giving alphaholes the power to break your heart." I tap my bottle with theirs, then tilt it to my lips and chug down the liquor. The liquor burns its way down my throat, then hits my stomach, radiating warmth toward my extremities.

"Uh, perhaps you should slow down?" Penny murmurs.

"Nah, where’s the fun in that?" The words come out slurred, but I don’t give a shit.

I need to forget the man I thought was my soul mate but who, clearly, isn’t.

“So, where was I?” I hiccup, then glance down at my bottle of tequila.

“Oh, yeah. So, my brother’s men beat him up.

Which is how he got the scar on his forehead—”

“Which is hardly visible anymore,” Penny scoffs.

“Not when you’re blown up on a cinema screen.”

Both of them wince.

“Yeah—” I hunch my shoulders. “It changed his career trajectory. Made it more challenging for him to get leading man roles in Hollywood.”

“He seems to have done well for himself, anyway,” Penny points out.

“Well, that’s what I thought. That’s what I thought he thought. I thought he’d forgiven me. Turns out, it was a pretense. He only pretended to forgive and to care about me to get revenge.”

“This is bullshit. You were a kid. You can’t be held responsible for what your brother did.” Penny scowls.

“I agree. Not that it doesn’t lend a certain romanticism to what happened, but surely, he can see you’re not to blame for what happened?"

"Except, he does. It’s why he made me fall for him, and then dumped me. So, he could break my heart in return.” My nose tickles. A pressure builds behind my eyes. I sniff, then hiccup again.

“Here, babe, have some water.” Penny walks around the bed, snatches up a bottle of water from the nightstand and offers it to me.

I hand the tequila to her and take a sip of the water. “Of course, all this drama has to happen now, when my career is faltering.”

"What are you talking about?" She rolls her eyes. "You just came off an extremely popular tour—"

"The last leg of which they had to cancel because the last ten cities on the tour didn’t have enough ticket sales." Yep, not even my five million followers were enough to ensure enough attendance toward the end of the tour.

"Probably because you took too much on. Fifty cities in five months is a lot for anyone," Mira reminds me.

"Not if my popularity had continued to rise, as planned." I drag my fingers through my hair. "And now, I’ve broken the news that Declan and I have split, which is only going to make things worse." I hold out my hand for the bottle of tequila.

“I really think you shouldn’t drink anymore,” Penny murmurs.

“Please? Just this bottle; then I’ll stop.”

She hesitates, and I make a sad face. “Please, pretty please?”

Her expression softens, then she hands over the bottle of tequila.

I take a sip and the alcohol burns its way down my throat setting off a warm glow in its wake.

And hey, no coughing. Take that, Declan-motherfucking-Beauchamp.

I don’t care that I’m not legally supposed to drink.

I can and will. And in style. I am my own woman now.

I wipe the back of my hand over my mouth.

"Now that my career is in decline, you’d think the media would give it a rest. But no, they can’t wait to watch me crash and burn so they can dance all over the remnants of what was once my meteoric rise."

"Meteors do burn out." Mira sips from her bottle of vodka.

I purse my lips. "Are you implying I was always headed for a fall?"

"No, no, I mean you had a really quick overnight climb, and you can’t always maintain cruising altitude, the aircraft has to come down at some point.

Hell, even when you climax, you can’t stay high on endorphins.

You either slowly float down, or you crash down.

And if you’re lucky, you’ll have a dick waiting for you to land on again. "

Much as my heart is breaking, I can't help but burst out laughing.

Penny, who’s just taken a sip of her whiskey, splutters, spraying the liquid across the bed. "Jesus, woman, you do have a way with words."

"Thank you." Mira flutters her eyelashes. "I owe it all to the Ph.D. in cliterature I’m studying for."

I laugh. "What about a diploma in smutology?"

"That’s next." She quaffs more of her liquor then stabs a finger at me. "But you’re the one who’s leading by example, my girl. You’ve had such an eventful life and you’re what, twenty-one?"

"Eighteen, though I feel much older in here, you know?" I rub the space over my heart.

“Aww.” Mira scoots closer. “We’re here for you babe.”

Penny drops down on the bed and brackets me in from the other side. “Always. Consider this a circle of trust. We’re your ride or die, huh?"

A ball of emotion clogs my throat, and my eyes burn.

There’s no reason for me to feel sorry for myself.

So what, if my career is slowing down? So what, if my fans are pissed with me?

So what if Declan—that stronzo—decided he wants to be with someone else?

This is what I wanted. This is what I chose when I left Naples with Declan.

He didn’t make any promises, except to introduce me around in LA to the right people. Which he did. Which is what jumpstarted my career. Which is how I became even more famous than Declan in half the time it took him to get to the top of the Hollywood box office.

I owe my career to him. I owe the woman I’ve become in such a short period of time to him.

I was eighteen and had stars in my eyes, and an unwavering sense that he was my one true love, my future, my partner.

That together, we’d climb the steps of our respective professions.

That we’d support each other through challenges.

What I hadn’t counted on was each of us becoming the challenge the other encountered.

I never thought the way I’d met Declan would become the reason for us to split.

When I met him for the second time, he pretended to be engaged to Olivia.

And now, he was engaged to someone else. If only, he were pretending now too.

Maybe this is kismet? Maybe this is what people mean by 'what goes around, comes around'? Another teardrop squeezes out from the corner of my eye.

"Oh, babe; it’s okay to cry.” Mira caps her bottle of vodka, tosses it on the bed, then throws her arms about me.

"Group hug." Penny, too, wraps her arms around the both of us.

I sniffle. "You two are crazy."

"You need a bit of crazy to distract you from whatever other craziness you’re going through right now," Mira declares.

"You have no idea." I pull back.

The two of them look at each other, then at me.

"I still can’t believe he’d get engaged to someone else.” Mira rubs her chin. “Every time I saw pictures of the two of you together online, you two looked so happy and—"

I narrow my gaze, and Mira raises her hand. "Right, the media is not to be believed."

"The last few weeks, we’ve coordinated through his PR manager and made sure our schedules coincided so we could be seen together.

This way, they’d leave us alone the rest of the time.

It helped us play to the #Declene fans, and that kept us both relevant and top-of-mind with the media.

Not that the pictures were all posed.” At least, not on my side.

"And that was important? Being seen together?" Mira pushes up to sit cross-legged.

"There are #Declene fan clubs, and countdowns to our possible engagement. In fact, they’ve even dedicated a shrine to the two of us somewhere in Asia."

"They have not." Mira gapes at me.

"They have." I lower my chin to my chest.

“Not that it’s creepy or anything. Okay, strike that. It is creepy.” Penny takes another pull from her miniature whiskey bottle. “You’re going to hate me for saying it,”—she pulls up her knees—“but I'm with Mira. I don’t buy that he’s engaged to someone else.”

"I heard him, remember?" I pull up my knees and wrap my arms around them.

"But do you believe him?"

I frown. “I have no reason not to.”

"But you’ve never seen them together before this or thought he was cheating on you?" Mira taps her fingers on the bed.

"No. I knew he was conflicted about us. We hadn’t been calling each other that often, but I put that down to him being busy with the film. It never occurred to me he would look for another woman."

"And how did you find out he was in LA?" Penny supports her chin in her palm.

"What’s with all these questions, eh?" I look between them.

They both exchange glances again, then Penny turns to me. "Humor us, babe. How did you find out he was in town?"

"We were supposed to have another planned photo-op with the paps.

Giorgina mentioned Delcan might be at home, so I stopped by the house, hoping to see him.

I thought we could go together. When I went upstairs, I heard something in his room.

So, I went to say hi." In my mind's eye, I flash back to that day—how excited I was to see him again after so long, and how confused and heartsick I felt when I saw him with her. "That’s when I saw them."

"Hmm…" Penny looks at Mira, who raises her hands.

"What? What is it?" I scowl.

Mira starts, "If this was a planned photo-op, he had to know you'd be coming home…"

Penny excitedly adds, "I think you need to test him on this."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I think he wants you to believe that he’s with someone else. He planned it—for you to walk in on him."

"What?" I drag my fingers through my hair. "Why?"

"Because he wanted you to break up with him,” Penny exclaims.

"Well, it worked. I did break up with him. I never want to see him again." I shake my hair back from my face.

“But don’t you want to find out why he’d do something like this?”

“No.” I firm my lips.

Both of them look at me with matching expressions of sympathy, mixed with frustration and hope. Damn it, there’s this big, fat hope shining in their eyes. Something I don’t want to believe in. Something I can't afford to believe in.

“I think the two of you are clutching at straws,” I mumble.

Mira raises a shoulder. “Maybe, maybe not, but I vote we find out.”

Penny nods vigorously.

I sigh. “And how do you suggest we do that?”