Banking the Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires Book 2) (50 page)

Obviously, I had in the past, many, many times.

But I had absolutely zero desire to do what I normally did.

The only kind of normalcy I craved revolved around Thatch and us and spending every second of our time together. I wanted
him
. I wanted what we had. I wanted our happy bubble of jokes and pranks and hot sex and flirty winks.

God, I hated him.

Liar.

Well, I
wanted
to hate him.

I pulled my camera away from my face and glanced at my watch.

7:00 p.m.

My pink diamond engagement ring winked in the fading sun.
Fucking winked
.

I had to get rid of it. Now.

Which was why I tossed my camera in the back seat of the Porsche, opened the driver’s door, and told Eduardo to get out.

He stared back at me, confused.

“Get out of the car,” I demanded, and lucky for him, he listened.

Like a woman deranged, I didn’t waste any time or offer any explanations to the staff on set. I peeled out of the parking lot with a loud squeal of the tires and left in the middle of one of the biggest photo shoots of my career. All because a ring was fucking
winking
at me.

Fifteen minutes later, I damn near hit a few pedestrians as I parked illegally in front of the tattoo shop. I was out of the car and striding through the entrance within seconds. The bell above the door rang erratically, and Frankie looked up from behind the reception desk, his eyes wide with both recognition and shock.

“Cass?”

My mind wouldn’t let me do anything other than yell over him. “Take this fucking ring back!”

I yanked at it frantically, trying to free it from my finger, but it hung like Walter had hung on to Stan’s cage. At this rate, I’d be raw and bloody, but I was obviously beyond the point of caring about anything.

The one thing I cared about didn’t want me, so I wanted this reminder gone. Pulling and pulling, each yank opened up some untapped well of emotion, and by the time it even came close to coming off, I was sobbing.

“Come here,” Frankie said, taking me by the elbow and gently leading me to a chair in the back. He went into the bathroom and came back out with a tissue, offering it to me with a kind smile. “Take a minute and calm down,” he instructed gently.

I wiped at my eyes and found myself irrationally cursing his steely ways. “Fuck you for being so steady right now.”

He smiled, and it honestly surprised me how receptive I was to it.

“Feel better?” he asked softly, and I shrugged.

“A little.”

“Good.”

Now that I wasn’t so agitated, the ring slipped free of my finger with ease. I closed it in my fist and concentrated on giving it up. Every cell in my body was shouting its refusal. I clamped the ring harder in my hand until I felt the sting of the diamond pressing into my palm.

Eventually, I took a deep breath and found the strength to shove the ring toward Frankie. “Give this to him.”

He shook his head. “I think you should give it to him yourself.”

A thousand emotions pulsed through my veins until my ears buzzed with the erratic pounding of my heart. Why wouldn’t Frankie just take the fucking ring? Didn’t he understand? If I had to be the one to hand Thatch back the ring,
my fucking ring,
it would be the final straw. Having to face him and face the truth that we were really over would destroy me.

“
I can’t,”
I spat. “It rips my heart out to see him, so you can take the ring or I’ll flush it down the toilet!” I shouted, throwing it to the floor when he still didn’t hold out his hand.

His expression remained neutral. “Do you want to hear what I think?”

“No,”
I answered obstinately. His eyebrows went up in challenge, and I folded like a poker novice. “Yes,” I admitted.

“Go on, sit down,” he directed, and I had no qualms with following his orders. I was dog tired from the long day, but mostly, I was exhausted from having to remind myself a million times a day,
every goddamn day
, that I couldn’t call Thatch or text him or do anything that revolved around him because we weren’t together anymore. Our breakup felt like a constant one-hundred-pound weight on my shoulders.

“You scared Thatch last week.”

“I know. And hurting him burned a hole through my heart. But I’m really not interested in being the ghost of his ex-girlfriend.”

“Well, I’m glad to know you’re so sympathetic—”

I cringed. “God, I’m so sorry,” I found myself apologizing. “That was a really dick thing to say.”

Frankie nodded. “Yeah, it was, but it’s okay,” he accepted. “And this has nothing to do with Margo.”

Thatch had said the same thing. I wasn’t sure I believed either of them.

“Sure, that’s how she died,” he went on, and my eyes widened. He nodded again. “Yeah. Jumping off a cliff into a shallow pool of water, right after Thatch begged her not to.”

His words hit my chest like a bullet, and I inhaled a shaky breath.

“So it is about her,” I said on a whisper.

He shook his head. “No, it’s not. There, that day, the moment. Yeah, he remembered. He’s the one who spent thirty minutes trying to revive her, so I know he remembered.”

A single tear cut down my cheek as my heart broke for them. For Thatch—the man who deserved so much better than me—and for Frankie, so willing to open his arms to me even when I was yo-yoing between manic and a Grade A bitch.

“But you scaring him was all about you.”

I shook my head and wiped at my eyes. “I don’t get it.” But God, I wanted to. Even though, deep down, I probably already knew the answer.

“You’re the exact woman he’s always wanted, Cassie.
Always
. But that day made him afraid to want it. Afraid to think of what he might be putting himself through for the rest of his life. He knows you’re going to be wild and untamed, and he loves it.
Until
he feels like being so accepting of it might be the reason he loses you.”

“But what do I do?” My voice was barely audible.

“What you do is always up to you, Cassie. You’re the one who needs to decide what’s really important to you.”

I already knew the answer to that.

Moving to the corner of the room, he picked up the ring and dropped it in my hand. “And if you really think it’s over, you need to give him the ring back yourself. He’ll be here tonight at nine.”

N
erves fought to take over as I set up my station and pulled all the sanitary packets from the cabinet.

I was tattooing my very first client today. Frankie and some of the other artists had pretty selflessly let me practice on them a few times, and I’d obviously practiced on myself, but working on a client was different. I didn’t exactly think I’d fuck it up, but unlike what I liked to spout, it wasn’t an absolute certainty that I’d be good at it.

My black mood probably wasn’t helping things either.

“You ready?” Frankie asked, popping into the private room I was setting up in. My first client was a woman named Kristen. She’d come into the shop a week or so ago wanting some kind of custom book quote, and Frankie insisted this was the time. While he was a guru of portrait work, he felt like I had a gift for lettering.

Go figure. My everyday handwriting was shit.

“As I’ll ever be,” I answered with the best smile I could manage.

His smile, however, seemed unnecessarily bright.

“What’s with your face?”

“Huh?” he said.

“What’s happening here?” I asked, circling a finger around my face in explanation. “You’re looking a little too much like the Joker.”

“Nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Seriously, why am I only friends with really shitty liars?”

He flipped me off. “I’ll send her back if you’re done.”

“I’m done for now, but I’ll get to the bottom of this eventually.”

His smile grew even more demented. “I have no doubts you will.”

“Whatever.” I rolled my stool away and got my ink cups out for the colors I knew she wanted. I’d double-check everything before we got started, though. Women had a nasty little tendency to change their minds.

What? Don’t even think about pretending that’s not true.

I heard a knock on the open wood door. “Come on in—”

The ability to speak left me when I saw who it was, but the smirk on her lips brought my voice right back. For the first time in our relationship, I was in no mood to be fucked with.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her.

“I’m your first appointment,” Cassie said, walking into the room and jumping up on the table in front of me.

“No. My first client is a woman named Kristen.”

She shook her head. “Not anymore.”

“I
thought you had a photo shoot.”

“Screw the photo shoot,” I declared. “This is more important.” I pulled up the right side of my shirt, exposing my rib cage.

It hadn’t taken long after leaving Frankie to come to my senses. And to realize he’d been giving me a big fucking clue by telling me to bring the ring back myself. He’d looked downright elated when I’d walked in and raised a smirking brow.

Frankie had told me to think about what was important, and I had. He was the size of an elephant and had a trunk to rival all the others. And he was everything I needed in my life. He pushed me past my comfort zones at the same time he let me soak in them.

Thatch was my person.

He was my present and my future.

He was it for me.

God, I was such an idiot. I had risked all of that,
my fucking happiness
,
Thatch’s happiness,
because I was too bullheaded and stubborn and couldn’t stand the idea of someone else having control over me. But I was done with it now.

The funny thing about when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, is you don’t want to waste another second of your life without them.

You want it all. Right now.

He stared down at me. “So, you’re hijacking my first client’s appointment?”

“She’s not your first client.
I’m
your first client.”

“It’s bad for business for you to pull shit like this.”