Page 142 of The Renegade Billionaire

I hear it creak open, and I bury my face under the pillows. I have no idea what time it is because I knocked the clock to the floor two days ago, or was it three days ago?

The edge of the bed dips, then she pulls the pillow away and brushes my dirty hair off my face.

“He’s sitting in his truck in the driveway.”

I don’t ask who. I know it’s Braxton. He’s been here every day this week.

“You have to talk to him eventually. Savvy said he’s losing his mind with worry, and you’re not returning anyone’s phone calls.”

It’s true. The second I fell into this room, memories swam up from the darkness, trying to drown me. It doesn’t help that since the moment I met Braxton, he’s felt like my one true match.

I’ve gone years avoiding the feelings from long ago. I’d gotten to a place of numbness, and then as soon as Braxton entered my life, making me feel and live and laugh, the pain of betrayal came crashing back too.

I guess that’s the risk of allowing love in—pain finds a way in too.

Is it fair to blame him? No. But it was his father who pushed me into a depression so deep the only way to survive was to shut out everything that hurt me, and I have nowhere else to push that blame at the moment.

“Madison,” he bellows from downstairs. I sit upright and glare at Clover. She never, ever leaves her door unlocked. She’s too scared of everything that moves to do it, so when I hear his voice getting closer, I know she unlocked it for him.

“Sorry,” she says sheepishly while backing up to the door. “You need to talk to him. The guy hasn’t slept since he got home.”

I frown. I wasn’t expecting him to make himself sick. When I said I needed space, it was so I could figure myself out.

A quick glance at my four-day-old pajamas makes me wince. I haven’t been adulting very well.

“I know you’re in there. And I know you needed space. But you have to talk to me, sweetheart. I have no idea what I did wrong, but fuck, I’ll do whatever it takes to make it right. Is it because I left?” His voice fades before coming close again. “We talked about that. I thought we were on the same page.” He sounds…broken, and my stomach tightens. “We’ve given Ace’sattorney all the information he’ll need that ties Alistair to the fire in Maine. We should have a case against him by the time he turns up.”

“Just talk to him, Mads. Maybe he didn’t know either, but you won’t know until you talk to him.”

“But what if this was all a game, some way to make up for the mistakes of his father? What if all he wants is Ace’s company and he can’t get it without making up for what happened to me?”

“What if what he wants is you? Talk to him.” There’s a command in her tone we almost never hear. “He’s here, and he wants to talk to you—do you know what a gift that is? Ask him whatever you need to know, but for fuck’s sake, talk to him.”

Shock has me gaping at my best friend. She’s never this assertive.

“Madison.” He bangs on the bedroom door, and I give Clover silent permission to open it.

When she does, light filters in, blinding me. I’ve lived with the shades closed for too many days to count.

Finally, my eyes adjust, and Braxton fills the doorway. Exhaustion shows in every tight muscle on his face. He looks as pained as I feel.

“Sunshine.” He says it reverently, sweetly, as though he feared he’d never say it again.

He enters the room, closes the door behind him, and cracks the blinds open so he can see without turning on the overhead light. Then he falls to his knees beside the bed.

“Talk to me. What happened? Is it because I rented the house without talking to you? Is it because I left? I’ve been running through every worst-case scenario, and each one is worse than the last, but it’s the not knowing that’s slowly killing me.”

I’m exhausted. I’ve been in bed for days, but sleep has eluded me, and now, with him in arms reach, I know why—I need him.

“I didn’t take the pill,” I blurt, then snap my lips shut, but once it’s out in the open, there’s no taking it back, and the emotions I’ve been blocking exit in a rush of words and explanations that I’m not even sure make sense.

“And it was your dad who sent camera crews here for weeks and weeks. They camped out on the sidewalk outside of our house. My field hockey team in Charleston asked me not to return because I was a distraction and a danger to the other girls. Then I lost my scholarship because I wasn’t on the team anymore, and the cameras kept coming. They flashed every time we opened the door. They shouted horrible things to me and all my neighbors. They told lies and would talk in circles until even I wasn’t sure what the truth was anymore.

“I begged Montgomery Media to leave me alone, and they laughed in my face. Our stories were getting clicks, and I was famous for a bunch of lies. No one wanted to hear that I wasn’t even in town when Harry crashed his car. He made himself a victim, and his lies kept spiraling, saying I tried to trap him into marriage and?—”

Braxton stops my tirade with a firm kiss that makes me sob harder, but it also halts my word vomit from continuing.

“When was the last time you slept?”