Start Again Series: A Billionaire Romance Box Set

by J. Saman

  “Ryan said not to give up on you. That you are worth it. Are you? I want to believe that you are.”

  “God, I want to say yes.”

  She turns to me, her eyes so very somber. “But you can’t?”

  “There are things about my life that I cannot alter. Things I’m a part of and stuck with. Things I’ve done, and those things I will never be able to tell you about or change.”

  “This has to do with everything that went down at Caltech.” It’s not a question. It’s like she’s put it all together, but yet hasn’t. She’s got her theories, and I’m sure some of them are right, but she doesn’t know everything, nor will she.

  “Part of it.”

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here. I want a chance at something incredible, but I also want normal. I want a real life with someone. A partnership. Someone who I’m safe with and will put me first. Can you do that with me?”

  I can’t even lie to her. “No. Not now anyway.”

  “So let me see if I have everything straight then.” Her tone is almost sarcastic, but it’s too bitter to fully accomplish it. “You want to be with me and you love me. But you have a million secrets and things that you’re unwilling to share, and that’s not something that will change. So you’re pushing me away when you’d really rather not.”

  “I have to.” I grab hold of her, tugging her into me because even though I’m telling her goodbye, I can’t let her go. “It’s not that I don’t want a future with you. I fucking do. I want you forever like you wouldn’t believe, but I’m bad for you. I’m poison, and you’re pure and good. I can never tell you what you want to know.”

  “Just an inch, Luke. I just need an inch.” She’s grasping onto me so tight, her fists clutching the fabric of my shirt, needing to hold on just as much as I do.

  “You deserve so much more than an inch, Ivy. So much more.” Her eyes slam shut as she nods her head, tears leaking one after the other. “I love you, and if I can figure everything out one day, maybe you’ll still be there.” I press my lips to hers, mourning their absence before I even pull away.

  I was so arrogant and wrong to drag her into my world.

  So now I do the first right thing I’ve done in ten years. I pull away and let go.

  Her head falls, and she shakes with the restraint of holding back everything my words just did to her.

  “How did we get this far? This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she says, more to herself than to me.

  Ivy’s asked that question before, and just like then, I don’t have an answer. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t heartbroken. I am, but worse than that, Ivy is, and it’s one hundred percent my fault. I never knew guilt could come in this form. I never knew love could feel like this. I never knew pain could be so crippling.

  This is wrong. So fucking wrong. Ivy is meant to be mine, and I’m meant to be hers.

  This is so motherfucking wrong. But I’m going to fix it. I’m going to make this right for her. I can’t keep her. Not yet, anyway. Things are too precarious with me, but I will make this right for her. For us. I’ll do what I have to do and I’ll fix this. I’ll let her go now, and I’ll change everything I can possibly change. I’ll flip my world upside-down. I’ll move heaven and earth if I have to. I’ll do whatever it takes to deserve her.

  And then I’ll fight like hell for her.

  “So this is it then? The end?”

  I can’t even speak the words. They might kill me as they rip a hole inside me.

  I nod and she nods, and we fall silent, watching a rainy Seattle fly past us with nothing left to be said.

  21

  Luke

  * * *

  I drive Ivy home after I screwed it all up. It’s for the best, I tell myself as I start my car and pull away, unable to look at the woman who became my everything in four short weeks, only to leave her for the second time. I’ll make this right.

  But what if I can’t make it right? What if I can’t change my situation or my life?

  Or what if I can, but by that point it’s too late and Ivy doesn’t take me back?

  That thought is a sucker punch to the gut that knocks the breath from my lungs.

  I stop at the first open bar I find but make no move to get out just yet. It looks like a total dive, which almost makes me smile. Almost.

  “Fuck!” I slam my hands against the steering wheel so many times that the horn blasts, the phone picks up and hangs up, and I turn on the stereo.

  “Fucking asshole piece of shit!” I punch my steering wheel one last time for good measure, but before I can shut off the car to go drown my misery in cheap booze, my phone rings.

  Hope flutters in my gut, thinking it’s Ivy, but it’s not. It’s Ryan.

  Of course, it is.

  “I’m not talking so don’t even ask.”

  He laughs. “What did you do?”

  “Fuck you. Just fuck you and your happy existence.”

  “Address.”

  “I don’t even know, man. You’re good with computers, find me if you need to, but if not, then leave me the fuck alone.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty.”

  Of course he will.

  Shutting off the car, I run through the rain into the bar.

  It is exactly as you picture it would be. Dark, dank, and dirty.

  It reeks of stale beer and old whiskey. There’s a guy smoking a cigarette in the back, and Seattle hasn’t allowed smoking inside public establishments for at least ten years. Old-school Metallica plays in the background, as if to prove just how hard this place is.

  I walk up to the bar, which has seen better days, and park my ass in one of the many open seats. It’s eight p.m., but you’d never know it based on how empty this place is.

  “We’re not open yet,” the female bartender who looks as worn and weary as the bar she tends, says. Her very bleached blonde hair is teased a mile high, and her smudged eyeliner is at least from the night before. Her leathery skin and raspy voice betray a long-standing smoking habit.

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “We open at eight-thirty.”

  I pull out my wallet and slap a hundred-dollar bill on the counter. “What about now?”

  She eyes the money with equal parts desire and disbelief. “That real?”

  “It is. Jack, neat. You can leave the bottle.”

  She snatches the bill off the counter, examining it, even holding it up to the meager light. Once she determines it’s the real deal, she goes for that bottle and a clean glass.

  “Wanna talk about it, handsome?” She leans over the counter in a seductive pose that I’d find comical if it wasn’t so sad.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think that with your money and looks, she’s crazy for letting you go.”

  I toss back the smoky bourbon that bites all the way down my throat. “Then I guess you don’t know shit.”

  Her dark eyebrows shoot up to her hairline, creating more wrinkles in her forehead than seems age-appropriate.

  “Let me know if you need anything else, sugar.”

  Nodding, I offer a sheepish shrug, feeling a small tick of remorse for snapping at a complete stranger—especially when she’s serving me alcohol. I pour myself another and just as I’m about to sling it back, Ryan’s large frame slides onto the stool next to mine.

  “May I have a clean glass, please?” he asks without saying a word to me.

  The bartender slides one down the wood, and he catches it with an appreciative smile.

  “I don’t want the lecture.”

  “I’m not here for that, and you know it.”

  Ryan pours himself a hefty shot and we silently drink them down.

  “I fucked it all up. Again,” I say, unable to handle this a minute longer. I’m so angry. So goddamn angry, but so wrecked with despair and bitterness that I can’t see anything but her.

  “Did she end it or did you?”

  “We did a lot of back and fort
h with that, but in the end, she was just looking for me to give in and open up to her. To be honest with her, and instead of doing that, I pushed her away and left.”

  It’s too bad I don’t smoke, because this certainly feels like the time a cigarette would be a good thing. Sort of goes hand in hand with misery, self-loathing, and whiskey, right?

  “Why?”

  I slam my palm down on the bar, enjoying the small sting that accompanies it. “Why what, man? Why didn’t I open up, or why did I push her away?” Ryan just looks at me, patiently and expectantly. His Zen is starting to piss me off. “Don’t give me that look. You know the answer to both.”

  Ryan pours us each another shot, and then sits back in his stool, holding his glass up like he’s examining the color of the cheap whiskey I picked.

  “I wouldn’t be honest if I told you that I only know what you’ve told me over the years, because I know more than that.” I’m not surprised by this, but it still bothers me that he looked into my past. “I guess I can’t blame you in one degree for not telling her some of that stuff. I can’t imagine what any of that was like for you, but I don’t think she would look down on you for what happened.”

  I snort incredulously. “What happened? You mean what I did.”

  He shrugs. “You’re the one who has to live with that, and I don’t think you regret the choices you made that night. I know you, Luke. You don’t do anything without thinking it through, even if you know it could end badly.”

  “See.” I turn in my seat to face him, looking at my best friend, wondering just how much he knows, and if he were to know all, would he abandon his loyalty to me. “You say that, but I did something, and I’ve been paying for it ever since. It all loops together in one never-ending cycle of bad decisions and fuck-ups.”

  Ryan sighs, just a little defeated with me. Screw him, I’m defeated with myself.

  “So you think that if Ivy knew all there is to know, all you can tell her, that she’d end it?” I nod. “So you ended it first before she could?” I nod again. “And you’re not even willing to test that theory?” I shake my head.

  “No, because she’s smart and beautiful and sweet, and so goddamn perfect. She deserves way better than someone like me, and though I lived for a brief period of time pretending I could actually be worthy of her, I know I’m not. My past is what it is, and what I did may, in fact, be something she can’t overlook. But even if she could, there’s the other thing. This past week away taught me that quite clearly, so despite the fact that letting her go feels like death and disembowelment and anything else unpleasant you can think of, in reality, I’m saving her.”

  “From you?”

  “Yeah. From me.”

  “You’re a stupid bastard, Luke.”

  Ryan downs his drink before slamming the empty glass back on the bar and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He spins on me, grabbing my shoulders in an unrelenting grip, forcing my attention.

  “That fucking girl loves you. She. Loves. You. And I know you love her, possibly more than she loves you. Don’t let that go over some preconceived notion of not deserving her. Does your past suck? Yeah, it really does. But that shit in Oklahoma was a long time ago, and I can’t picture her leaving you over that. As for the shit at Caltech, do you really think I’m stupid enough to believe you got busted and I didn’t for the same crime?”

  He gives me a pointed look before continuing on without waiting for my answer to his rhetorical question.

  “No. I’m not. It’s insulting to my IQ, and we both know I’m a motherfucking genius.” He smirks at me, before it falls just as fast, and he turns serious again. “I don’t know exactly who you’re working for or what precisely you’re doing. I don’t even know if they’ve got you for life or not. But you’ve been doing it for ten years, and so far, you’ve managed a pretty normal existence. You don’t have to tell Ivy all the details. You just have to tell her enough, so she knows you’re a team, that you’re with her, and trust her.”

  Ryan lets me go, and instantly I crumble against the bar.

  “I don’t know if I can do that. I’m desperate to make this right. For her and for us. But what if I can’t? What if it’s not possible? I want to marry her, Ryan. I’ve only really known her a month, but that’s all I can think about,” I laugh without humor. “That’s some crazy shit right there. But I’m the bad guy and she’s my angel, and instead of being sent to save my soul, redeem me, I’ll end up being her downfall.”

  “How do you figure that, Drama Queen?” Ryan is not impressed with me, and I can’t say I blame him. I’m not impressed with me either.

  “Pour me another one, would ya?” He obliges me, but I know he’s not going to let my little speech go. “I messed up. I was arrogant, and though I spent four years in juvie, I thought I was untouchable. But I wasn’t then, and I’m not now.”

  “One of these days you’re going to have to realize you’re not a monster. That you’re actually a really incredible man who’s made a few bad choices along the way. That doesn’t mean you’re not worthy of her. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be happy.”

  “Maybe,” I shrug. “But that doesn’t change the world I’d be bringing her into and that,” I point at him. “That is inexcusable.”

  “And you can’t get out now that you’re in?”

  “I don’t know, Ryan. I don’t think so. I plan to try like hell. She’s worth everything that will entail. But even if I can, it won’t change what I’ve done. And I don’t know how to tell her about that.”

  “So you’re letting her go,” he says again.

  “I’m letting her go.” For now.

  He sighs, running a hand through his hair and finishing off his drink. “Then why did you go after her again, man?”

  “I didn’t know how not to. I’ve wanted her for a decade, and then suddenly, she was there.” I wave my hand in the air.

  “So you’re letting her go,” he says again, and right now, I sort of want to punch him for it. Just sort of, because I still love the asshole, but come the hell on.

  I twist to him, facing him fully and staring him directly in his green eyes. “I asked you once if you were me and Ivy were Kate, if you would try to move forward with things. Do you remember that?” He nods once, but it’s short and almost curt. “Your answer was, “I don’t know.” Has that changed or are you just pushing this because you think Ivy and I make a cute couple? I love her enough to let her go. That’s the only reason I can do it. I love her more than I love anything in the whole world, and that certainly includes myself. So answer me again, if it were you, would you go forward?”

  Ryan deflates, running a hand through his hair and adjusting his glasses. That’s his go-to when he’s tense or uncomfortable, and clearly, I’m making him both. But it’s a legitimate question and I think I want a real answer, so I wait him out.

  “I can’t answer that. Only you know what you’re involved in.” That’s a bullshit response, but I don’t bother calling him out on it. “For what it’s worth, I still think you’re wrong about your past. I still think you should tell her and see what she does, because I know she’ll end up surprising you.”

  “Bullshit!” I snap. “My goddamn mother still doesn’t speak to me.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you on that. I think that could be related to her own guilt, but maybe I’m wrong. I don’t want to see this eat you alive, and I have a bad feeling that it will.”

  I laugh out, the alcohol starting to take over. “Nah man, just give me another decade and I’ll be straight.”

  “What happened this week, Luke? What is it that changed everything for you and Ivy?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “Did you kill anyone?”

  I let out a great big guffaw at that. “No, that’s a one and done thing.”

  He nods, evidently he does know my story.

  “Did you steal from people? Cheat them out of anything?”

  “N
ope. That’s one I’ve never done, believe it or not.”

  “Are you committing treason? Going against the government or setting our world up for war?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, guy. Technically that’s what I’m working to prevent.”

  “Then I can’t think of anything that would drive her away.”

  I laugh at that. “In case you missed the memo, Ryan, she’s already leaving. She’s gone as of the middle of next week. This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this. It was supposed to be casual and fun, and then she was going to leave, and we were both going to be fine. But I’m not fine. And neither is she. And it’s entirely my fault. She will never understand that I’m trying to protect her by doing this.”

  I pour myself another drink only to slam it back without giving it a moment to rest.

  “But that’s not what happened. And you could be with her, even though it will be long distance.”

  “If it were all that simple, maybe I would. Maybe if I weren’t involved with certain things, but I am. And as we’ve already established, it can’t be changed. At least not yet. And what I do puts me in danger. Imagine that shit on Ivy. You remember that month of my life that I was gone?” He doesn’t respond, but I know he does. It freaked him out, big time. He even tried to find me. “That I suddenly vanished without explanation? Let’s just say I wasn’t living the high life at some resort doing cute and cuddly hacks for shits and giggles.” He looks stricken, which tells me my point has been made. “Yeah, not exactly relationship material right there. I need to change it and until I can do that, if I can do that, I can’t be with her.”

  My eyes slam shut, and the weight of the last fifteen years of my life crushes my chest. I’ve never admitted anything to anyone. Never uttered the words once. Not even when I’ve been questioned directly.

  Ryan’s not surprised. Not even a little. For some odd reason, that makes me smile. “That was two years ago, Luke. Nothing like that has happened since. All of that sounds worse than your present reality.”