Page 88 of Faking It
“Love is a bullshit emotion,” I murmur softly and hate knowing he said that when every time I’m with him lately, my insides feel like they are turning inside out.
“What?” Zane glances over to me briefly as he pulls the plunger back and lets it fly against the ball.
“If you really feel that way, why did you even buy and revamp SoulM8 in the first place?”
“It’s a long story.” He hits the flipper buttons repeatedly as the machine talks back to him with every push.
“I want to know.”
His ball slides through his flippers’ reach and he loses his first round with a sigh. “It was a bet,” he says so very casually, while my head feels like I just suffered from mental whiplash.
“What do you mean it was a bet?” My pinball machine flashes for me to play it but I suddenly have no interest.
“A bet. Some of my friends and I made a little high stakes bet. Take a million dollars, start a company, and at the end of two years, whoever has the highest profit wins a pot we all pitched in on.”
I stand there and blink at him and try to comprehend what it is he’s telling me. A bet. A pool of money.
“But for what reason?”
“Because we’re men,” he says and chuckles, and I hate that as much as that’s not an answer, it’s a perfect one. It’s not like many men back down from a challenge. “We’re all successful—very—and we needed something to
put the thrill back in business again. So . . .”
So it’s not just an ego thing . . . in reality it is, but at least it’s something that . . . God, why am I justifying it? Why do I even care?
Then something clicks. “Kostas?” I ask already knowing the answer.
“Yes.” He nods and then groans when he misses the ball with the flipper. “Son of a bitch.”
“But . . . why?”
His chuckle bugs me. It’s the first hint of condescension I’ve had from him in weeks and now all the sudden as the outside world seeps back into our little bubble, I am so very aware how different our lives are. With the luxurious coach and fancy wardrobe and first class everything, it’s been easy to forget that this isn’t playtime in a fancy dream world to him like it is in a sense to me.
The pang in my chest is so very different now than the one I felt a few minutes ago.
Why do I feel hurt that I didn’t know this?
Is it because he didn’t tell me? Is it because I feel like we’re close enough that he should have sooner?
“Part of the contest rules are that no one is supposed to know about it,” he says before I ever ask the question on my mind. “You know, the first rule about fight club and all that.”
“You could have told me.”
He glances my way, mid-battle. “I’ll refer back to fight club,” he says with a playful laugh.
“I know, but I’m the one here trying to help you sell this whole thing and . . .” My words trail off. He owes me no explanation, no anything, and yet I’m still hurt that I didn’t know this. Couldn’t he have told me after Kostas’ visit what was going on? “Never mind.”
“Does it really matter why I started the company?” Another glance my way. Another aloof statement I shouldn’t care about but do.
“No . . . but I mean . . . if it doesn’t matter why you started it, then why is it a secret?” He doesn’t respond and I know the why. “Does Robert know?”
“No and he won’t know.”
I stare at him, the authority in his posture, and see the person I met the first day. Gone is the playful, sweet guy from earlier. Present is the man I met in error who ordered me to walk his dog.
The juxtaposition messes with my head. And heart.
“That’s why you took Kostas out that night. He was saying things that now make sense but—”
