Banking the Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires Book 2) (48 page)

Shocked. Hurt. Angry.

Why wasn’t he listening to me?

I climbed out of the tent and found him throwing his bag in the trunk. Frankie and Claire had already packed up their things and were climbing inside of his car.

“Aren’t you listening to me?” I shouted. “I just fucking told you I loved you! Why aren’t you listening to me? Why are you freaking out? I don’t understand what’s happening right now!”

He walked around the front of the vehicle and toward the driver’s side door.

I ran toward him at a dead sprint and crashed my body into his before he could open the door.

“Thatch!” I cried, and his eyes refused to meet mine. He just lay limp against the door, staring over my head and out into the distance. I wrapped my arms around his body again, hugging his huge frame as tightly as I could manage. “Please, don’t leave like this,” I begged. “Just talk to me. Don’t leave angry.”

His brown eyes finally stared down into mine. They were so cold, so distant, and it was then I realized how much I had hurt him.

“Don’t go,” I begged again.

“Enough, Cassie.” His large hands wrapped around mine as he disentangled me from his body and moved me back with a gentle shove. “I’ve had enough.”

“Enough?”

“Yes,” he snapped. “I’ve had enough. I can’t do this right now. I need you to give me some space to process what just happened. I need time to cool down.”

“So that’s it?” My voice rose with my anger. “You’re just going to walk away?” I stabbed a harsh finger into his chest.

He didn’t budge. Didn’t react. Didn’t do anything but stand there and stare down at me.

His reaction made me feel crazy. This was worse than his angry words. He wasn’t giving me a single fucking emotion besides indifference.

“Stop acting like that! Stop acting like you don’t care!” I slapped at his chest, hard and erratic. I was desperate for him to show me something.
Anything.
“You’re done with me, Thatch? I do one thing that pisses you off, and all of a sudden you need space away from me?” I screamed. “Why don’t I get a say in any of this?”

“You did get a say,” he corrected, his deep voice cracking in the middle. “And I heard you loud and clear when you jumped off that cliff.” He opened the driver’s side door, and I tried like hell to push it back closed.

But he was too strong, swinging it open with ease. I tried to climb inside with him, but he must have signaled for Kline because I was wrapped up in strong arms and pulled away from the vehicle.

“Put me down!” I yelled as Thatch shut the driver’s door and started the engine.

“Calm down, sweetheart,” Kline whispered in my ear. “It’s going to be okay.”

“No! It’s not going to be okay! He’s leaving!” I cried, and Georgie’s sad eyes blocked the view of Thatch driving away. A few tears dripped from her lids as she wrapped me up in her arms and held me tight. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

I was sitting inside my shitty apartment, inside my least favorite neighborhood in New York. The only thing Chelsea and I had in common was that we both needed a goddamn shower.

It had been three days since the camping trip. Three days since Thatch lost his shit because I had decided to recreationally cliff jump, off a cliff I knew other people had been jumping off for years.

He had made no attempts to reach out to me.

I had made three attempts to reach out to him.

The responses I got revolved around the fact that Thatch wasn’t ready to talk to me.

He was being a dick.

And I was fine.

No, you’re not.

I. Was. Fine.

Three soft knocks on my apartment door woke me from my heart-fucked stupor. I shuffled across the redone hardwood floors in my “Classy Bitch” socks and flung it open without checking to see who it was.

I lumbered back to my home base—
the couch
—and plopped my ass back down into the cushions. With the TV remote in hand, I searched through all of the DVR’d episodes that had accumulated since I’d been living at Thatch’s apartment.

“So, you look great,” Georgia said as she meandered through my apartment, occasionally picking up random takeout containers and tossing them into the trash. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s great.” She glanced around the apartment. “The new floors look nice…well, at least what I can see beneath the trash.”

“Thanks.” I pushed play on the latest episode of
Vanderpump Rules
.

Georgia walked over toward the television and turned it off.

“Hey! I was watching that!” I flipped the television back on.

She turned it off.

I glared and turned it on again.

She turned it off again.

“Okay, I think it’s time for you to leave.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Well, then, I’ll leave.” I got to my feet and trudged into my bedroom.

She followed.

“It’s nap time, G,” I said as I tossed a pizza box onto the floor and crawled into my bed. “I’ll call you later.”

She got into the bed with me.

“Go cuddle with Big Dick. I don’t feel like cuddling,” I whined and pulled the comforter over my head.

She yanked it off of me, and my annoyed eyes met hers. She looked concerned, and that sympathetic expression pissed me off.

“Stop it. I don’t need you over here worrying about me. I’m fine.”

She shook her head. “No, you’re not.”

“Yes. I. Am.”

“Honey, your apartment looks like New York relocated the garbage dump, and you’re wearing your underwear outside of your yoga pants.”

I peeked under the covers to find out that she was right. Big deal, so my underwear was outside of my pants. I’d seen numerous homeless people sport that look every fucking day in the city.

“It’s okay not to be fine, you know? I wouldn’t be fine if I were in your shoes.”

“I’m not wearing any shoes.”

“Yeah,” she said through a soft laugh. “But you’re wearing your Classy Bitch socks, and I’ve only seen you bust those out on two occasions.” She held up one finger. “When they canceled
Friday Night Lights
.” She held up another finger. “And when you found out that Prada purse you bought in Soho was a knockoff.”

I had the overwhelming urge to burst into tears. I covered my face with my hands. “I don’t like feeling like this. I never feel like this. About anything or anyone.”

“Yeah, but Thatch isn’t just anyone.”

“You got that right. He’s the biggest fucking asshole I’ve ever met. I wish I’d never fallen into that giant ogre’s trap.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No,” I whispered, “but I wish I meant it.”

Georgia sat up and rested her back against the headboard as she rearranged me so my head was resting in her lap. Her fingers ran through my hair, occasionally getting caught in the numerous knots that had taken up what I considered permanent residence. My hairbrush could suck a fucking goat scrotum.

For a few quiet moments, I let her calming energy soothe the myriad emotions I was trying so hard to avoid.

“Why did that happen, Georgie?” I asked on a whisper. “I didn’t mean for things to go down like that. I wouldn’t have jumped off the cliff had I known he would freak out like that.”

She glanced down at me. “Are you sure about that? Because from where I was standing, he was begging you not to do it. He looked desperate, sweetheart. Distraught, even.”

Honestly, I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t like that my gut feeling told me I was an asshole for being so fucking stubborn.

“But why would cliff jumping freak Thatcher Kelly out?” I changed the direction of the conversation. “The man took me skydiving, for fuck’s sake.”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

“Are you sure you’re not sure? Because I have a feeling Kline knows something. And if he knows, then you probably know.”

“Kline wouldn’t give me the details, which is saying a lot considering he never keeps anything from me. But I think it had something to do with Margo.”

That had my mind racing for answers I was almost a little too scared to find out.

“C’mon, Cass.” Georgia nudged me up to a sitting position. “Let’s get you out of this apartment and grab some lunch. I think a little fresh air will do you some good.”

She walked toward my bedroom door and glanced back with a smirk. “And we’re not leaving here until you shower. You literally smell like balls.”

I smiled for the first time in what felt like ages. “Like that bothers you. Everyone knows you love smelling like Kline’s sac.”

She flipped me off and strode down the hallway. “Get your stanky ass moving! I’m hungry!”

Slowly but surely, I got out of my bed and hopped into the shower.

I told myself it had nothing to do with Georgia being right about me not being okay and me being desperate to stop the “I miss him” loop of crazy that kept circling inside my brain, and everything to with the fact I hadn’t eaten since the night before.

Yeah, that’s exactly what it was.

I was fine. I was hungry, but I was motherfucking fine.

Fucking liar.

“Y
ou didn’t have to do this tonight,” I said loudly while I leaned toward Kline’s ear to be heard over the noise of Z Bar.

“Didn’t have to do what?” he asked back innocently.

I nodded and laughed. “Give me a break. You know what.” There wasn’t a question in my mind he’d rather be at home with his wife than in the middle of some crowded bar with me. But Kline Brooks was a world-class individual, and I was seriously lucky to call him my friend. “But thanks.”

He raised his glass in salute before taking a drink, and I desperately tried to make his effort worth it. I wanted to pretend I was okay, like I wasn’t missing Cassie—like I knew how to go on. But the truth was, I didn’t. She’d become ingrained in every aspect of my life, and I
liked
her there.

I battled myself, and not for the first time since it’d all gone down. Had I really given her a fair shot? Was I making the whole thing a bigger deal than it was?

Half of me, the part that missed her—and yeah, it was probably the bottom half—thought definitely. I was letting my whole traumatic history with Margo color my opinion. But the other half had a laser-like memory when it came to her face in the moments before she jumped.

It wasn’t a decision in good fun because she couldn’t see how important it was to me. It was a distinct choice. A choice to hold herself away from me and everything we’d built.

A choice where she’d always put herself before me.

Everyone always speaks of selflessness in a relationship, but I expected and respected a little selfishness. I never wanted her to be the person I made her. I just wanted her to trust me enough to know the difference between respecting me and giving herself up.

But the road she was on was dirty, and she hadn’t yet uncovered the center line.

“Where’d you go just now?” Kline asked. The back of my neck felt tight under my palm.

He grabbed my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, and I knew no one knew what I was feeling better than he did. Still, I had to wonder if he would have ever chosen a life separate from Georgie if their circumstances had been the same.

Not a chance in hell, heaven, or Manhattan
.