Page 101 of Caught Between Two Billionaires
She puts down three aces with a little laugh. “That cookie is as good as mine.”
I scoot my chair a little closer to Sutton. “You obviously need all the help you can get,” I tell him by way of explanation. He gives me a small smile, looking almost bemused.
He’s warm against my side, solid, comforting. He drops his hand to clasp mine, two of his fingers filling my palm. And I feel closer to him in this moment than I did at the Den, when he was inside me.
When my mother wins, she gets up to do a funny little jig and get the chocolate chip cookie. Which then prompts her to get milk and cookies out for everyone.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, soft so that only he can hear. I don’t only mean in this kitchen. I mean in my life. In my heart. What is he doing to me?
“Not courting you,” he murmurs.
That makes me laugh because he’s telling the truth. This is Sutton being an ordinary person, kind and genuine and so damn charming he has my mother eating cookies. If he courted me again, I don’t think I’d even survive it. He’s dangerous, this man. More dangerous than Christopher’s cruel indifference.
“The library,” I murmur. “It’s going to make it, right?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I talked to the foreman yesterday, and he said that they haven’t even applied for permits yet. Or ordered supplies. Or started—”
“They have to ascertain the condition of the building first. Better to be thorough now than have surprises later. But you shouldn’t be in the library, Harper. Not while the foundation is broken. While the foundation is shaky. It’s not safe for you to be there. Promise me.”
Safe? I’m not worried about safe. Sometimes having the roof crash down on my head actually seems appealing. A lot more appealing than a neat little Death Plan, that’s for sure.
My throat feels tight, and I have to turn away. “Harper?” he says.
I can hear the concern in his voice. He’s going to make this about me in a second, but I won’t let him. “No,” I tell him, as normal as I can. “Keep playing. Please.”
Then my mom sits down for another round, and I can turn away blindly, eyes hot with tears, lips pressed tight. I hold it together long enough to make it to my bedroom. I grab a pillow from the bed on my way to the closet before shutting myself inside. And there, with my face pressed into the cotton, muffled to the world around me, I crack into a thousand pieces.
The library looks like a war zone with temporary plaster columns holding up the ceiling and holes drilled into the precious mosaic floor.
I guess you really do have to break something before you can fix it.
Sutton doesn’t want me here, which is why I come after hours. I can think without the jackhammers and sweaty muscled men distracting me. There’s something about this broken wall that makes me ache inside, as if a living being has been injured, as if I need to sew it back together so that it can heal. But not with the butt of a buffalo or the heel of a boot.
That might be a more authentic restoration, but it’s boring. And I have the sense that it would bury the wall instead of making it come alive. This library isn’t going to be a museum. It will have modern books and computers for the community.
The wall should breathe with the community.
I’m doing my part by smoking a joint while I work, folding the sweet, earthy smell into the clay. I’m not sure it helps me create better, but it definitely makes me more willing to try. Which is how I end up on top of a twenty-foot ladder, holding up a piece of sculpted clay to see how it looks. The ladder wobbles for one second, and I hold my breath.
“Do you have a death wish?”
I know who it is before I look down. The electricity along my skin tells me it’s Christopher before I even see his stupid beautiful suit or his dark eyes. Not to mention it’s the same thing he said to me years ago when I sat on the railing of the yacht—only a few minutes before I fell into the water. “What are you doing here?”
“Keeping you from breaking your neck.”
Why does he care? “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not falling.”
“There’s always a second time,” he says, the grimness of his voice proving he remembers the yacht as clearly as I do. How he’d jumped in to save me. How it remained our secret to this day. It’s a kind of thread, that secret, binding us together no matter how far away he seems.
