Billionaire Badboy (16 page)

“It could ruin my father. Not me.”

“His company, your company, his legacy, your legacy. They’re
all tied together. You can’t love me anymore.”

“I can’t just turn that off.”

“Well try!”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

I threw her back on the bed, crawling right back on top of
her. I crushed her lips with mine, and aggressively attacked her tongue with my
own. My hands were in her hair, pulling her head in any angle I saw fit for my
taking. I pulled my face back, licking her spit from my lips. Pushing her skirt
up over her hips, I never broke eye contact with her.

“Tell me to stop.”

She said nothing. I lowered my mouth to her craving and
tasted what I had done to her. I wanted more. I took more. I gave her more. She
screamed.

“Tell me to stop.”

Still nothing. I pushed my fingers into her so hard her back
arched. My mouth found hers as I made her taste herself on my tongue.

“Tell me to stop.”

Nothing. I gave her my desire, pulling her on top of me so I
could watch her as I took her.

“Take off your shirt.” I ordered her. I then reached up and
pulled off the bra I had already unhooked. I watched her bounce as she rode me,
harder and faster, harder and faster, until there was nothing left. She
collapsed on top of me with a scream.

We laid there, silent and still, for what could have been an
hour. Eventually, she fell asleep, curled up in my arms.

“Ashley?” I whispered. But she didn’t stir. I softly kissed
her forehead. “Come home to me, Ashley. I will take care of you. I will protect
you. I will love you.”

I closed my eyes, and fell asleep, dreaming of only her.

When I woke up, she was gone. The room was empty aside from
me, and a little note on the bedside table next to me.

Teddy,

Last night was… amazing. Simply amazing. But you were
right: I spent the last two years wrapped up in your father’s web and not
focusing on what was truly important to me. Now, I can change that. I’ve been
too scared of learning the truth; too scared that bringing back those memories
would be too painful. But last night, you made me promise you that I wouldn’t
give up on my dream because I was scared. So that’s what I have to do. I can’t
run away with you. I can’t pretend that I’m ready to walk away from something
that has meant so much to me for so long. I have to finish this.

And you showed me that. And that’s why I know you’ll
understand.

And also why I know you’ll understand that I can’t say
‘goodbye’ to your face. It would hurt too much.

Until we meet again,

Ash

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Teddy

“Can someone grab the door?” I called from the kitchen as I
threw more beer into the cooler.

“Got it!” One of the guys stumbled from the back patio,
through the seating area, further into the foyer, and up the two stairs to the
door. I know, because I heard every step. We had been drinking for hours. It
was kind of our unofficial kick-off to summer party that the gang made sure to
be around for every year. It could’ve been any other summer. “Dude, it’s the
girl who wrote the book about you!”

But it wasn’t any other summer. It was this summer. It was
the night I died.

I wasn’t quite sure if I was ready to watch the final memory
I would ever have on this earth. I wasn’t ready to leave. I had just spent
another whole lifetime watching a string of flashes that was meant to show me
something, to teach me a lesson. And now what? I was just going to be taken
from it? I was just going to be burdened with my failure for the rest of
eternity?

I inhaled deeply. I wasn’t ready to see her. I couldn’t. So
much had happened since that night in Boston, three years earlier. Yes, I had
understood, but I always thought there would be an end date. I had thought she
would come back to me.

But there was no end date. She didn’t come back. She stayed
away. She broke me. I wanted nothing to do with her.

I saw myself struggling. I closed the lid of the cooler and
stood up straight, debating whether, or how, really, I would face her. What
would I say? What would she say? Who would apologize first? Would either of us
apologize? Would things go back to normal? Had things ever been normal? Really,
what was normal?

The backlash from Ashley’s book was irreparable. It was slow
at first, but once
Blackmailed by a Billionaire
hit the top spot on all
best-seller lists, we were bombarded. We lost countless shareholders, we had to
sell off parts of companies, full companies, and we filed for bankruptcy with
others. I was working full time with my father during the entire ordeal,
sometimes twenty hours a day just to try and subdue some of the repercussions.

He blamed me for the entire thing.

“Had you done what I told you in the very beginning, none of
this would’ve happened.”

“Had you any respect for this family, we wouldn’t be in this
situation right now.”

“Had you cared at all for your future, you would have done
what needed to be done the first time that girl crossed a line.”

I handled the berating for two and a half years. I spoke to
the press, took interviews, assured the public that their confidence was
deserved, and we wouldn’t let them down. People have flaws. Everyone has flaws.
My father wasn’t proud of his, but he did everything he did in the interest of his
family and his employees.

In a sick sort of twisted way, he really did. There was a
reason he had been so successful as a businessman. He knew what he was doing,
and didn’t second-guess any of his actions.

“Theodore, get in here!”

The sound of my father’s voice pulled me from the night of
the summer kick-off party into another memory. I was standing in the foyer. It
was a Friday, and I had just come home from the city. I had been either
spending my nights at our Central Park West home, or I would sleep in my
office. Either way, I barely saw my father anymore. I was practically running
the company on my own, as he had taken heavily to the bottle. No one needed to
see him in that condition.

But now he was calling me into his office. I had dodged the occasional
swings, sported the occasional black eyes, and wrapped the occasional bruised
ribs since Ashley’s book, but none had come close to the night I spent in the
hospital. Still, the tone in his voice shook me. I knew what I would be walking
into. I knew the outcome could land me near death.

“Theodore!”

“Coming!” I set down my briefcase and made my way toward the
door under the stairs. “What is it, sir?”

“Close the door.”

Shit.

He took a sip of his scotch. “Look what I just read.” He
handed me the newspaper opened to the business section.

“Our stock is up. I told you. I’ve been reaching the right
people. We’re going to pull through this.”

“No, not that. The interview.”

“Sir?”

“You gave an interview?”

“Yes.”

“And in it, you said that as a father and son, we never saw
eye to eye.”

“True, but then I went on to say that as a business partner,
I respect you tremendously. I’ve learned everything I know from you, and have
no doubt that when the time comes, I’ll be able to run this company
successfully because of the practices you’ve instilled in me.”

“Which I appreciate.”

“So what’s the issue?”

“The issue is that this bimbo decided to add her own
opinions to what should have been a simple question and answer interview.”

“No.”

“Yes. And she seems to think that the company would be much
better off without me. If fact, she went on to say that she believes if I
resigned, you would be able to eradicate any residual damage still left by that
book.”

“I didn’t say any of that.”

“But you fucked her.”

“What?”

“Come off it, Theodore. I know how to persuade the press,
just as well as you do.”

“Sir, I didn’t persuade her.”

“DO NOT LIE TO ME!”

He stood up from his chair and slung his bottle of
eighteen-year-old scotch directly at my head. I ducked, missing the bottle by
mere inches, but that only angered him further. He jumped out from behind his
desk and threw his body at me. We fell to the floor, rolling on top of the
broken glass and the puddles of whisky.

But I had finally had enough. I saved his company from completely
going under while he did nothing but stare at the bottom of his brown spirit
bottles. I was the one pulling his weight. I was the one being called out in
the papers as someone deserving of his place in the world. That had never been
me before. It now was. I wasn’t about to let him take that away from me.

I pushed him onto his back and found my feet.

“You’re jealous.”

“What?” He drunkenly groaned, picking himself up off the
pile of glass.

“You… you…” Everything was becoming clear. “I always thought
I was a disappointment to you. I thought you saw something in me that just
needed to be brought out, and yet, I was smothering it in my wildish ways. But
that was never the case, was it?”

“You hold your tongue when you’re speaking to me.”

“No. You’re afraid. You’re afraid that I’ll be better than
you. It makes so much sense. You wanted to be remembered. Any time I acted out,
you only covered it up to hide your inabilities as a father. But now, now that
I’m becoming successful, you think that I might actually do a better job than
you. People might actually look up to me. They might forget you. And that
drives you crazy.”

“Don’t you dare…” He threw his fist in the direction of my
face, but I didn’t let him make contact. I stopped him with my bare hand. I wrapped
my fingers around his knuckles. And I held him there.

“You don’t hit me anymore. You hear me? I am not afraid of
you.”

I tossed my weight into his fist and threw him back a few
stumbled steps. He stared at me, flabbergasted that I wasn’t floundering. I was
standing firm. I was standing tall.

I was standing up to him for the first time.

It was also the last.

I marched out of his study, slamming the door behind me, and
not looking back. My heart was beating out of my chest, but finally, I felt
whole. I felt strong. I felt like I should have felt my entire life.

Three minutes later, a gunshot rang throughout the entire
house. Theodore Vincent Stoneguard III, my father, put a pistol to his temple
and pulled the trigger.

That seven-year feud I spoke of earlier was finally over. But
it wasn’t between Ashley and I… it was between my father and I.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Teddy

“Can someone grab the door?”

“Got it!” Stumble… step, step… Stumble… three more steps…
a turning doorknob… a swinging door… “Dude, it’s the girl who wrote the book
about you!”

I was back, leaning against the kitchen wall, holding a beer
and standing by an open cooler. Ashley was standing in my doorway. My Ashley. The
girl I had been pining over for some seven years. But for the first time, I
didn’t want her there.

“Tell her I’m not here!” I immediately regretted it as soon
as I said it. If he had heard me, she, of course, had heard me too, and now
she’d be certain I was avoiding her.

The last direct contact I had with Ashley was the night in
Boston. She said her piece in that letter, and I refused to fight any more. I
wrote her off. She would always just be the girl who got away.

But the problem with that girl who gets away is that you can
never stop thinking about that girl. You cry out your ‘if only's’ over and over
again until you’ve asked them all. You find yourself wishing you had the
ability to go back in time and change one small moment. That one small moment
would be all you would need. It would fix everything.

But, as I’ve said, there’s a reason no one invented time
travel.

The ‘if only’s’ never happened, and I had no special
abilities. I was stuck in my reality, and my reality was without her. And so I
erased her. I didn’t allow myself to track her, to find her, to know anything
about her. She was but a distant memory. It was the only way I could get
through it… the pain of telling her that I loved her and not having it
reciprocated.

Especially for me: someone who didn’t know love until she
came along.

After my father died, she wrote an article that was
published in The Times claiming that she fully supported my endeavors as the
new CEO of Stoneguard Holdings, and that she hoped the masses would put their
faith in me as well. That was nice of her.

Then she tried to get in contact. She called, she wrote, and
she emailed, but I didn’t answer, I didn’t read, and I didn’t open. It was the
only way I could survive.

But how was I supposed to avoid her when she was standing in
my foyer?

“Teddy, I know you’re here.”

That was my own damn fault.

I regained my composure and gave myself a little pep talk.

She’s just a girl, Teddy. You can do this. Maybe once
there was something, but now, you’re over it. You’re strong, you’re powerful,
you’re better than this. She means nothing to you. She’s not worth the pain. She’s…

“Gorgeous.”

I looked up to see her standing in front of me.

“I’m gorgeous, huh? I really didn’t expect to hear that from
someone who has been avoiding me for the better part of six months.”

She was gorgeous. I couldn’t even be mad at myself for
saying it out loud. She deserved the word.

It had been three years since I had seen her. Those three
years were good to her. Twenty-nine was good to her. She wore her hair back,
with loose curls falling around her face and shoulders. He cheeks were lightly
blushed, and her skin was tanned, but radiant. She was wearing a modest
sundress with red-wedged heels.

“You’ve always been gorgeous.”

I held it together, offering my arms out to hug her. She
walked into my embrace, and for the first time in three years, I felt alive. What
the hell was it about her?

“How are you doing?” She cooed into my ear.

“I’m okay.” I pulled from her hold, trying to act as though
her presence had no effect on me. “Busy, but okay.”

“Good. I missed you.” She slowly blinked with sad eyes.

“I have that effect on girls.” I cockily joked.

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?”

For a brief second, I dropped the act. “It has to be, Ash.”

There was so much sadness, so much regret between us. The
room was stifled with it.

“Right, yes.” She just kept nodding. “I understand.”

Silence. Awkwardness.

“Beer?”

“Yes, please.”

We civilly walked outside together, greeted the rest of the
partygoers, and talked with anyone but each other for over two hours. I had to avoid
her. Having her in my house was next to impossible for me.

At midnight, I pushed back from the patio table and
announced I was getting more beer. Ashley followed me.

“Should I leave?”

“What? No.” I coolly commented. “Do you want to leave?”

“No, but I was hoping to… you know… talk to you.”

“Then talk. I’m listening.”

“No you’re not.”

“I’m hearing you. What am I doing wrong?”

I was being a complete douche. She was pleading with me and
I was acting as if there was nothing between us. I hated doing it, but it was
my only defense.

“Here, I came to show you this.” She reached into her bag
and pulled out a bound manuscript.

“What is it?”

“Take a look.” She bit her lip and held the pile of paper
out to me. She was so fucking adorable. I just wanted to eat her up. Or put my
pinky on her nose.

Control yourself, Teddy.

I stared at the cover. In large, bold letters were the
words:

My Father was killed in an “Accident”: unearthing the
secrets for the grieving families

“You… you did it. Ashley, you figured it out?”

She put her hand up in an effort to pause my excitement. “Not
exactly. And not specifically my father, but this is a start. It’s interviews
with families that were in the same situation, that never really knew. I even
sat down with some pretty important government officials… I got… there’s a lot
of good stuff in there. A lot of eye-opening stuff, and it’s really helped me
get some… closure.”

I wanted to hug her. I wanted to pick her up and spin her
around to congratulate her. But I couldn’t. I had to hold myself back.

“Congratulations. This is really something.” I smiled as I
handed the book back to her.

“It’s yours.”

“What?”

“I want you to have that. After all, without you, I never
would have found the courage to write it.”

Oh God, what was she doing to me? The pain, the anger, and
the extreme sense of pride I felt for her all mixed together with copious
amounts of alcohol were beginning to bring out a whole new emotion. I was
afraid what might happen if she pushed me over the edge.

“I really appreciate this.”

“I’m glad.”

Silence.

“My father was going to force himself onto you.” I just
blurted it out.

“What?”

“The night of that party… seven years ago. That’s why I
kicked you out.”

“But, how…”

“He told me he was going to. I tried to stop him all night,
but then you ended up with him. I had to do something.”

She took it in. She nodded. She understood.

“Teddy,” she placed her hand on mine, “I’m back. I want to
come home.”

I don’t know if it was the sensation of her touch or the
look in her eye, but the calmness I had been using as a mask flew out from
underneath me.

“No.” I stepped back.

“What do you mean?”

“No. No. You left. You left me. I wasn’t okay without you
and you left me.” My breath quickened.

“I needed to do this, Teddy. You knew that. You told me to.”

“And that’s great. And that’s the choice you made. But all
this…” I motioned to myself, “Has been surviving without you, and I have too
much going on to risk falling back into that trap.”

“Now I’m a trap?”

“This hold you have on me. You won’t leave. I finally,
finally started to get a sense of a normal life, and then you came back. You
can’t just come back whenever it suits you. You need to leave me alone.”

“We’ve tried this. I can’t do that as much as you can’t.”

“I can. That’s what I’m saying. If it means that otherwise I
have to endure heartbreak the next time you decide you have to go on some
spiritual journey…”

“Don’t you dare call this a spiritual journey. I did this so
I could move on with my life.”

“And you just expected me to be sitting here waiting for you
three years later?”

“I didn’t. And I never would’ve asked that of you, which is
why I didn’t. But it doesn’t mean I can’t ask to try it again. Are you not
willing to give us another shot?”

I was. I was so willing. But the pride and alcohol took
over. They wanted her to hurt like I had hurt. They wanted her to feel what
it’s like when someone doesn’t love you back.

“You ruined my life.” It wasn’t the truth. I was just trying
to push her away. I was able to justify it. “You’re the reason he’s dead.”

Her eyes widened in shock. “Wow. Wow.” Her hand came to her
mouth and her face reddened with grief.

“And if you thought you could just stroll back in here and
ask for it all to be taken away, you’re insane.”

Her sobs became audible and tears streamed down her face. “Whatever
you think you can say to try to hurt me, assume I’ve thought worse. You don’t
think I’ve blamed myself every day for the last six months? You think I look
down and don’t see his blood on my hands? But it was your father’s fault too. I
was just a silly college kid who had a crush on a boy, and then was emotionally
tortured for two straight years because of it. I fought back to protect myself.
But he pulled the trigger, Teddy. Not me. And I thought if anyone were to
understand that, it would’ve been you.”

I had nothing left to say to her. Had I been in my right
mind, I would’ve told her exactly what happened the night my father killed
himself. That it was, in fact, me who he was angry with, me who finally stood
up to him, me who showed him he was powerless. I too looked down every day and
saw his blood on my hands.

But she was right. He pulled the trigger. I had to stop
blaming myself.

And I definitely had no right to blame her.

Angry with myself, I turned around and headed for the door. I
needed to get out of there. I needed to get away from her. I didn’t want her to
see me this way. I didn’t want my drunken state to be the reason that I screwed
up something I had thought I wanted for so long, just to prove a point.

“Teddy, where are you going?”

“For a drive.”

“You’ve been drinking for hours.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

“Don’t you dare tell me what to do!” I screamed at her
before I shut the door in her face with her still inside.

I fumbled with my keys, finding the one to bring the engine
to life. As I sped down the driveway, I saw Ashley running barefoot behind me,
screaming and waving her arms. But I wasn’t turning back. I needed to clear my
head.

I turned right out of the driveway, barely missing the mailbox
with my mirror. I blinked quickly, attempting to rapidly sober up, when I saw
something move in the middle of the road up ahead.

What was it? My blurry eyes tried to focus. A girl. It was a
girl. She had a short, blonde bob, and was wearing a white, flowing dress. It
was the girl of my dreams. It was Ashley.

It was a memory of Ashley. The memory of the first time I
saw her… the one I wished I could see again. There, as I drove away from her, I
was given my wish.

But it didn’t register soon enough. I twisted the wheel out
of instinct. I felt the tire blow, the car flip, and I saw the tree coming
straight toward me. It was the old oak tree where I had first met Ashley seven
years earlier. The memory I had so wished to relive was now the reason I was
about to die.

I braced myself, both in the car and watching the scene, for
what was about to happen. Would I have to experience the pain again? Or would I
simply be taken away and it would all be over?

If only I had told her that it wasn’t her fault.

If only I had told her that she was the reason I finally
stood up to my father.

If only I had told her that I was proud of her for following
her dreams.

If only I had told her that I would’ve waited forever.

If only I had told her that I couldn’t imagine my life
without her.

If only I had told her that I still love her.

If only I didn’t turn straight into that old oak tree.