The Billionaire's Allure (The Silver Cross Club Book 5)

by Bec Linder

  “I gave the letter to Renzo,” he said. “The night that I left. I was too ashamed to tell you in person. He was asleep, and I woke him up and told him to give you the letter when he saw you in the morning. He was confused. He didn’t understand where I was going or why I couldn’t give the letter to you myself. I gave him some bullshit explanation and I thought he accepted it. But apparently he read it, and he decided not to tell you because he thought you would be too hurt. He thought it would be better if you thought I was dead.”

  “How long have you known about this?” I asked. My voice was very quiet. This was the heart of it, the one thing I maybe couldn’t forgive. If Max had renewed our relationship under false premises, I wasn’t sure I could ever look him in the eye again.

  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I can defend myself against past mistakes by citing youth and ignorance,” he said. “But I can’t defend myself here. Renzo told me when we were in California.”

  I closed my eyes. Weeks ago. Max had known for weeks, and hadn’t told me. “So when we—the first time we…” My voice was strangled and torn. I could barely bring myself to say the words. “After we went to Golden Gate Park, and we—when we—”

  “It was after that,” he said, very gentle. “We didn’t see Renzo until the next day, remember?”

  It was a small comfort. “So you didn’t know, then,” I said. “You still thought I had read the letter. You thought I knew everything.”

  “I thought you knew,” he said. “I thought—at the very least, I assumed you would have looked me up on the Internet.”

  “I never did,” I said. How stupid. I remembered deciding that I would, during our fancy dinner the night he told me about Renzo—but I had forgotten to do it. Stupid. “But if Renzo told you—Renzo told you, and you didn’t—you still didn’t say anything to me.”

  “He asked me not to.” Max ran one hand through his hair and sighed heavily. I was glad to see some signs of distress. I hoped he was upset. It served him right. I was so upset I could barely speak. “He wanted to tell you himself. He thought you would be mad at him. He made me promise not to tell you. And I, very stupidly, agreed.” He looked up at me, anguish clear in his face. “That was a mistake. I regret it more than I can say. But I thought if I went along with it, maybe Renzo would stop hating me.”

  I couldn’t bear it. He had kissed me, made love to me, slept beside me all night, the whole time knowing that I thought he was someone different from who he really was. And, worse, I understood his reasoning. The whole purpose of our trip to California was to reconnect with Renzo, and I could imagine all too well what had happened during their little sidewalk conference: Renzo’s emotional blackmail, and Max’s desperation.

  I understood, but that didn’t mean I could forgive.

  “You should have told me,” I said.

  He groaned. “I know I should have, Beth. I wish I did, but I didn’t. I can’t change that now. I actually—you know, I decided I was going to tell you, that day I took you to visit at the shelter. But then the next time we talked, you told me about your mom, and I didn’t want to contribute any additional stress to your life. I thought you were stressed out enough already. And after that there was never a good time. Good intentions and the road to hell, I suppose.”

  It was clear what he wanted: for me to forgive him, and put this behind us. For me to accept that he had made a mistake and was sorry.

  But he wasn’t sorry. Or at least he hadn’t said it. Not in so many words.

  I was being petty.

  I didn’t care. I had decided to trust him, despite having every reason not to, and my trust had been betrayed. Again. I had nobody to blame but myself. I should have trusted my instincts and told him that I never wanted to see him again.

  Live and learn.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, standing, clutching my purse like a shield. “I can’t do this.”

  “What?” he asked. “Beth.” He rose to his feet. The letter fell to the floor and slid beneath the sofa. “Come on. Let’s talk about this.”

  I knew how that would end. He would reason with me, be very calm and patient, and in the end I would admit that I was overreacting and none of this was a big deal. But it was a big deal. I didn’t think I was overreacting at all. I didn’t feel calm. I didn’t want him to be patient with me.

  I wanted to be somewhere very far away.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Beth

  Renzo called me a few days later.

  I was at home, doing some painstaking writing before work. I didn’t recognize the phone number, but I was half-expecting Renzo to call me, and I answered. “Hello?”

  I heard a rustling noise, and then, tentatively, “Beth?”

  It was Renzo’s voice. I closed my laptop and leaned back in my chair. “Hi, Renzo.”

  “Sorry I didn’t call earlier,” he said. “I was sort of…”

  He trailed off. I didn’t answer. I waited for him to go on.

  I wasn’t too pleased with him at the moment.

  “Uh, so anyway, did you get my letter?”

  I closed my left hand into a fist, and then flexed my fingers out wide. One of my knuckles popped. “I got it.”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything. For reading the letter in the first place. For never giving it to you. For asking Max not to tell you. I’ve made a lot of mistakes.”

  “You and Max both have,” I said, merciless. “You should give him a call. The two of you deserve each other.”

  “Bee, come on,” he said. “Don’t be like this. We just found each other again. You have every right to be mad at me, but don’t—I don’t know. Don’t be? Can I even ask that of you? Don’t turn me away. I know we screwed it up, me and Max both, but everything we did was to protect you.”

  “I never asked to be protected,” I said, really quite angry now. “What the fuck, Renzo. Come on. I’m not some damsel in distress. You don’t need to shelter me from the harsh realities of life.”

  “I didn’t say we were right to do it,” he said. “But that’s why we did it. Not to lie, or to hurt you.”

  “And yet somehow, both of those things still happened,” I said. I rubbed the bridge of my nose. I was getting a headache. It was too early in the day to have this conversation.

  Another rustling noise came from Renzo’s end. “Look, I’m on my way to work. Can we talk more about this later? I don’t want to—”

  “I don’t particularly want to talk to you right now,” I said. “Call me in a week and maybe I’ll be less angry with you then.”

  “Bee, come on,” he said. “Please.”

  I sighed. “And maybe we can talk about you coming out here for a visit. I just need some time to process, okay? It’s not like I’m going to refuse to ever speak with you again.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I really am sorry.”

  “I’ll talk to you in a week, Renzo,” I said, and hung up the phone.

  My head was throbbing. I went into the bathroom and swallowed two painkillers. I avoided looking at myself in the mirror. I didn’t want to see whatever it was that would be reflected there.

  I hadn’t spoken to Max since our conversation at his apartment. He had sent me a few text messages, but I just deleted them without replying. I was still too angry and hurt. And, also, ashamed of myself for trusting him when I obviously shouldn’t have. I thought I had better judgment than that.

  Love made people do stupid things.

  I decided to go visit my mom before work. I hadn’t seen her in a few days, not since my confrontation with Max. I kept telling her that I was too busy with work, but it was a flimsy excuse, and I couldn’t stay away forever. I wasn’t entirely sure why I had been avoiding her. Maybe because she needed cheerful, optimistic visitors, and I was anything but cheerful at the moment.

  I did my best. I paused for a moment on the front stoop of the group home and gave myself a pep talk. I would be positive
. I would smile and make pleasant conversation. We would have a nice visit. Everything would go great.

  My mom was sitting in the living room with a few of the other women. Her face lit up when she saw me, and she pushed herself to her feet. “My daughter’s here,” she announced, beaming.

  I waved, feeling awkward. I recognized a couple of the women from my tour. I hoped my mother didn’t expect me to sit and chat with them. It was hard enough for me to interact with strangers on a good day.

  My mom came over and gave me a brief hug, and said, “Let’s go up to my room. I want to show you how I’ve decorated it.”

  Crisis averted. “I would love to.”

  We climbed the stairs. She told me about her work placement—not quite finalized, but she expected that it would be within the next few days—and her new friend, a woman named Janet. I made encouraging sounds and didn’t say much. I was happy to let her talk.

  When we reached her room, she paused with her hand on the doorknob and said, “Even if you don’t like it, I want you to pretend that you do.”

  I didn’t roll my eyes, but I wanted to. “I’m sure it’s great, Mom.”

  “You say that, but you’re a stylish city girl now,” she said. “I’ve seen your apartment.”

  “Just open the door, Mom,” I said.

  She had made a lot of changes since she moved in. All of the furniture had been rearranged. The bed was pushed against the wall beside the door, and she had moved the armchair in front of the window, facing out. The window was open, and a warm breeze blew through. She had hung photographs on the walls and even found a plant somewhere, a little bonsai tree in a wide white dish.

  I crossed the room to the low table where the tree sat, and very gently touched one of its leaves. “It looks really nice, Mom. I mean it. You’ve made it really nice. And I like this plant.”

  “That Max brought it by,” she said. “He told me it was a housewarming gift.”

  My face flushed hot with anger and shame. Of course Max was coming by to visit my mother. Of course he was bringing her presents. What did my mom need me for? Max was taking better care of her than I was.

  “He’s a nice boy,” my mother went on, either oblivious to my silence or deliberately ignoring it. “Very charming. He couldn’t stop talking about you the whole time he was here.”

  I closed my eyes. My fingers traced the edges of the leaf. “What did he say?”

  “Oh, just how smart and beautiful you are, and how much he adores you,” she said. “Music to any mother’s ears. He loves you very much.”

  I couldn’t talk about this. I didn’t know which scenario was worse: that Max was using my mother to try to communicate with me, or that he had said those things spontaneously, with no hope that I would hear them, simply because he wanted to. I changed the subject. “Where are all these pictures from?”

  “Oh, they’re all old,” she said, taking a seat on the bed. “I’ve had them for years.”

  “I’ve never seen them,” I said. I moved away from the plant and examined the gallery wall she had assembled. There was a picture of my grandmother on her wedding day—I recognized it because my grandmother had kept the same photograph on top of her dresser until she died. Another picture was of me as a baby, chubby and smiling in a frilly dress.

  “I never unpacked them before,” she said. “But this room is so nice that—well, I thought it would be nice to set out some of my things.”

  She was making the room into a home. I was so glad. Maybe she would want to stay here, instead of going back to prison. Maybe this time she would succeed.

  One of the photographs caught my eye. It was another picture of me as a baby: a family portrait. A tall man held me in his arms, and my mother stood beside him, looking very young and happy. The man was, of course, my father. I had seen pictures of him before, but not many.

  I touched his smiling face, frozen in time. “What was Dad like?” I asked. “Grandma never told me much.”

  My mother smiled. “She wouldn’t have. She never approved of him. What do you remember?”

  “Not much,” I said. I moved to sit beside her on the bed. “Just images, really. Sitting on top of his shoulders—I think at a parade. Watching him shave. I was so young when he died.”

  “He was a good man,” my mother said. “Not educated. That was why your grandmother didn’t like him. He was a high school dropout. She wanted me to marry a man with a diploma. But he was so smart. He loved history. He was always reading some fat book about it. That’s why we named you Elizabeth. He said that you were going to be a queen.”

  My eyes prickled. “I never knew that.”

  “When he died, I thought that my life was over,” she said. “You were so young, and you needed so much from me. I didn’t have anything to give you. Drugs made me feel alive again. I wish I could go back in time and undo all of my bad decisions. It’s too late for that, but maybe it isn’t too late for me to be your mother.”

  We were both crying by then. She wrapped her arms around me and held me while I got myself back under control.

  I sat back, wiping my eyes. “Mom, I’m really scared that this time is going to be just like all the other times. It’s hard for me to trust you when I feel like you’re just going to start using again.” I had never spoken so openly with her. The honesty was raw and painful, but cleansing, like lancing an old sore.

  “I know, baby,” she said. “I don’t blame you at all. But I’m really going to try this time. The people here are going to help me. I’m going to do the best that I can.”

  “I know,” I said, and squeezed her hand, and tried to believe her.

  * * *

  I had my writing group the next day. I worked on my book all afternoon, slowly, haltingly, the words dragging out of me, but coming nonetheless. I tried to be less of a perfectionist, and to simply get words down on paper. I didn’t stop until it was time for me to get ready to leave. I skimmed through what I had written. It wasn’t earth-shattering—no first draft ever was—but I thought it was pretty good. I printed it off. It wasn’t my week to share, but I wanted to see if Claudia would read my new chapter anyway. Maybe I could catch her before the group started.

  I walked to the coffee shop, feeling a heavy cloud hanging over my head, like in a cartoon. My mother was doing well. Flowers were blooming. Work was fine. I had a nice apartment. I wasn’t homeless. I was in good health. But my heart hurt so much that every step pained me. None of the good things mattered when I didn’t have Max.

  I was pathetic.

  I was the first person to arrive for the meeting, and I took my customary seat in the corner, holding my chapter on my lap and peering through the doorway of the room in the hopes that Claudia would show up soon. Dan drifted in, and Colin, and Darya, who sat in a chair near mine and offered me a tentative smile.

  “Hi, Darya,” I said. I would be brave. I would strike up a conversation.

  “Hi,” she said, with her shy, sweet smile. She gestured at the papers on my lap. “Are you presenting tonight?”

  I shook my head. “I just wanted to see if Claudia would read this chapter and let me know what she thinks. I guess I won’t have time before the group starts, though.”

  “Claudia is never early,” Darya said. “I can read it, though… if you’d like?”

  I hesitated. Sharing my work with Claudia was one thing. Because she was the group leader, her criticism was somehow less intimidating. I wasn’t competing with her. Not that I was competing with the other group members—except in a way, I was. We all wanted to be the best writer in the group. If Darya read my chapter and didn’t like it, I would be ashamed.

  I was spared from having to answer by Claudia’s arrival. “Good evening, my darlings!” she called out, and we all settled back into our seats, ready to begin.

  Samuel shared a new chapter that evening, and Paolo. I didn’t like Paolo’s book very much—a weird post-modern ramble that read like a poor imitation of Murakami—but Samuel’s book,
a fictionalized memoir about his childhood in Senegal, was my favorite out of all of the work that people had brought to the group over the last several years. It was lyrical without being flowery, and addressed the difficult realities of poverty and suffering without sentimentality. I really hoped he would be able to get it published.

  After the meeting was over, everyone—as usual—wanted to talk to Claudia. I lingered near the edges of the group surrounding her, a pitiful supplicant, until she was finally free. Then I approached her with my chapter clutched against my chest and said, “Claudia, if you have time, would you mind looking this over for me? I just wrote it today…”

  She smiled at me, warm and welcoming as always, and said, “You know I’m always happy to read your work. Let’s have a look.”

  I sat beside her while she flipped through the pages, my heart pounding in my chest. I thought it was good work, the best thing I had written in a while, and I really wanted her to tell me that she liked it, that I had done well. I wasn’t sure why her approval mattered so much to me, but it did, and I was hungry for her praise.

  She reached the last page, and tapped her index finger on the blank space beneath the last line.

  I waited, breath held.

  “Beth, what is it that you’re holding back?” she asked.

  I frowned. That wasn’t what I was hoping to hear. “What do you mean?”

  “I get the feeling that this isn’t truly the book you want to write,” she said. “It feels constrained. Your writing is lovely and carefully crafted. Each sentence has been shaped and revised. But the reader shouldn’t feel that effort. A writer who struggles so actively with her story is resisting something. What are you holding back? What is it that you’re afraid to put on the page?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said stiffly. I was hurt. I had thought she would like this chapter.