The One

THE ONE

(The Billionaire Next Door #9)

By Violette
Paradis

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©
2014 Violette Paradis

This is a
work of fiction. Names, places, and characters are a product of the author’s
imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places, or people is
entirely coincidental.

~Chapter
1~

“Jason, wait!” But he was gone.

I looked at Luke, hating the sight of him.

“Why are you even here? I don’t want to date
you anymore. Please leave me alone.” I turned on my heels to storm after Jason
but Luke grabbed my hand, pulling me back. “Let go of me!”

But Luke didn’t let go. I struggled against
him as he pushed me against the wall. His overly sweet cologne and unappealing
breath stung my nostrils.

“You’re just as guilty as I am,” Luke said.

“How do you figure that?” I asked through
clenched teeth. My blood was boiling and I feared steam would start coming off
the top of my head.

“You were looking at me with those love eyes,
luring me in. You want to get back together just as much as I do. Come on,
baby.” He leaned in to kiss me.

“Stop!”
Without thinking twice about it, I spat in his face and kneed him
between the legs. He shrunk in pain, cupping his manhood.

“You
bitch
! Why did you do that?” He
coughed and his eyes were watering, but I didn’t care. My thoughts were on
Jason and what he must have thought of me. I moved, but Luke reached out and
grabbed my shirt. “Sophia, I love you!” His voice was high and strained as he
continued holding himself in pain. I pulled away as I gave him the most
dangerous glare I could muster. I shook my head.

“You don’t love me. You saw me in the papers,
canoodling with a billionaire, and you thought something slipped through your
hands, and now you’re trying to get it back. Well let me tell you something,
this
did
slip through your hands and you can’t do anything about it. Now
I know you for who you really are. You only want me because Jason wants me.”

“I’m not sure he does anymore.” A pained, ugly
smile crossed Luke’s face.

Jason.
My stomach sunk
again. Taking my anger out on Luke, I pointed a finger in his face.

“How
dare
you come here and ruin my
relationship.”

“It couldn’t have been that strong if one kiss
broke it apart.”

I resisted the urge to punch that
self-absorbed smile right off his face. The last thing I needed right now was a
broken hand and a criminal record.

“You’d be surprised by how strong our
relationship is. I’m convinced now that true love is something you’ll never get
to experience.”

I turned to leave but he called out my name. I
clenched my jaw. My heart beat wildly in my chest.

Now I was really mad.

I turned back to him.

“If you follow me, if you pursue me, if you
EVER
try to complicate my life again, I will destroy you.”

“You and what
army?”
He snickered.

“You know who my fiancé is,” I warned. “He can
mess you up.”

“
If
he’s
still your fiancé.”

Clenching my teeth, I stared at Luke dead in
his eyes, envisioning him with no teeth and showing him that I was fucking
pissed. Without a word, I turned and left him behind, hoping against all hope
that Jason Powers was still my fiancé.

***

As I drove back to our penthouse suite, tears
crawled down my face. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to go back in time, back to when
I was trying on wedding dresses with Ellie! I wanted things to be right again,
like they were this morning.

Why did Luke have to come into the picture?

All I had to do was
go
and explain to Jason what happened. Luke was an old flame who showed up out of
nowhere and kissed me. I didn’t kiss him back — sure I didn’t stop him either,
but clearly Jason could see that?

I slammed the palm of my hand on the steering
wheel in anger. Hot, angry tears streamed down my face.

How could I do this? What the hell was I thinking?

My fingernails dug into the steering wheel as
I imagined Luke’s face and all the terrible things I wanted to do to it
. Oh,
who was I kidding?
I was at fault here! I was the one who messed this up. I
let
Luke kiss me. I had to straighten things out with Jason as soon as I
could.

Once I parked the car, I raced to the
elevator. Just as the elevator doors opened onto Jason’s penthouse suite, Jason
appeared on the other side. He did not look happy.

“Jason!” I reached out to him but he kept his
eyes fixed on me and his jaw clenched. I pulled back my reach and instead
stepped out into the suite with him. “Let me explain.”

“Explain what? That you were making out with
another man?”

“No, I wasn’t making out—”

“Oh really?
Because that’s what it looked like to me.”

“Jason, let me explain.” I put my hand out and
grabbed his arm but he pulled away.

“There’s nothing to explain, Sophia. I saw you
with him.” There was a hurt in his voice I had never heard before. “I can’t
believe you did this to me.”

I shook my head.
“I didn’t.”

He stared at me like he was staring into the
depths of my soul. For some reason, the silence was worse than anything he
could say.

“Don’t lie to me, Sophia.”

“I’m not!” The desperation was apparent in my
voice.

“I never thought that after all we’ve been
through, that you’d hurt
me
like this.”

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you—”

“Goodbye Sophia.”

“Jason, no!”
It was only as I reached out to him did I notice the suitcase in his
hand. He stepped into the elevator and pushed the button in time for the doors to
close between us. I tried to reach out to him one last time but the doors were
closed and he was gone.

“Fuck!”

I realized I had been holding in my breath
that whole time and I finally let it out. More hot tears streamed down my face
and I began sobbing uncontrollably. I looked around the empty penthouse suite.

“Jason.” I said out-loud.
“Jason.”
My
words echoed back to me as painful reminder of the empty suite.
“Destroyer?”

The dog was gone too. That’s when my heart
really sunk. Refusing to believe any of this was actually happening, I ran to
the bedroom, hoping that I was hallucinating and that I would see Jason curled
up on the bed with Destroyer, but all I saw was an immaculately made bed with a
note on it.

A note.

I almost didn’t want to read it, because
reading it would make everything real and I so desperately wanted to wake up
from this nightmare.

As if time slowed down, I walked cautiously
towards the bed. Looking down at the note, I wiped my tears away. The note was
written in Jason’s scrawled handwriting.

I need a break. Stay in the penthouse suite as long
as you like. Jason.

Completely numb, I stared at the words until
they no longer held any meaning. There was no “see you soon” or “love” before
his name. Just
‘Jason’
, and that’s what hurt the most.

The ink spread as my tears splattered onto the
note, obstructing the words. It didn’t matter anyway because those words were
tattooed on my mind, along with Jason’s hurt expression.

How did this happen?

I sat down on the lonely bed and stared off
into nothingness as I crumpled the wet note in my hand.

What now?
I wondered.
What now?

~Chapter 2~

After the initial shock wore off, I cleaned
myself up and decided to take action. At first I thought about calling him but I
knew there was no way he would answer a call from me after storming out like he
did.

He didn’t want to see or speak to me. The
thought sat heavy in my stomach like a lump of coal.

After pacing back and forth six hundred times,
I got too antsy to stay in the penthouse suite any longer. Getting into my car,
I drove to his workplace downtown. After riding the elevator up to his floor, I
saw his secretary.

“Oh hi Sophia!”
Dana’s chipper demeanor faded as she saw my tear-strained face.
“You here for Jason?”

I nodded.

She gave me an apologetic expression. “He’s
not in right now. He said he was going on a work trip.”

“Do you know where?”

The secretary shook her head and shrugged.
“He’s always flying here and there. I’d call him for you but he asked me not
disrupt him. He was very strict about it.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Huh?”

“You look really —
rough
.”

I’m sure I didn’t look as bad as I felt.

“No, I’m fine,” I lied. I looked up in the direction
of Jason’s office where I could see his desk through the clear window. There
was something unsettling about it. “I’ll see you later Dana.”

“Bye. I’ll let Jason know you stopped by.”

“Yeah, you do that.”

I stumbled backwards into the elevator and got
out of there as soon as possible. There was something strange about being in
Jason’s office under these bizarre circumstances.

As I stood in the elevator, I thought about
what else I could do.

He left.

That was the only thing I retained from that
interaction. Jason was gone and he didn’t want me to reach him. The knowledge
of it was a punch to the gut.

Without knowing where else to go, I went to
Ellie’s place. Ellie had multiple heartbreaks over the past few years and if
anyone could offer me advice and a shoulder to cry on, it was her.

Ellie opened the door. Her wild hair was tied
in a bun on her head, looking like a crow’s nest. I knew she was working as she
had a little cushion tied to her wrist along with a number of pins.

As soon as she saw me her smile disappeared. I
couldn’t help but start crying right away.

“Oh honey, what’s wrong?” She pulled me in for
a hug so that I was sobbing onto her shoulder.

“Jason,” I managed to say through sobs. “He
left me.”

“He
what
?”
Her shock was so intense I nearly fell off the front stoop.

I pulled back and looked at her through my
puffy, swollen eyes. I sniffled. “Jason left me.”

The shock was evident on Ellie’s face. She
furrowed her brow, her eyes full of understanding. “Come on in, honey. I’ll get
a pot of coffee going.”

As I sat on Ellie’s couch, sipping on a cup of
coffee, I relayed the story to her. I told her about Luke and how he forced
himself onto me, and how Jason was there to see Luke kiss me.

I sniffled and Ellie passed me the tissues.

“I just — don’t — know — what — to do.” I said
between sobs.

“Oh, there, there, honey. I can’t believe that
Luke.
The nerve of him!”

“And the worst part is I feel like I was
actually enchanted by him for half a second. Can you believe it? I have the
world’s most amazing guy wanting to marry me, and here I am getting myself
mixed up with a loser from Maine.”

“Well, he
is
a surgeon, honey.”

I gave Ellie a stern look.

“And
an
asshole,” she
added.

I nodded.

“Listen, can’t you explain to Jason everything
you just explained to me? Just tell him you were getting cold feet about the
wedding and that you saw someone from your past. Tell him the loser forced
himself on you. You’d be telling the truth.”

I shook my head. “There’s no hope. I tried telling
him that but he wouldn’t listen. He was too hurt. Even if I wanted to tell him
now, I have no clue where he is. He’s gone, Ellie.
Gone!”
I buried my face in my hands again, sobbing uncontrollably. Ellie patted my
back soothingly.

“What are you gonna do?” Ellie asked.

I sniffled. “I don’t know.” I looked up. “This
morning my future was all wedding planning and spending time with Jason. Now
it’s — it’s…” I shook my head, numb by the shock. “I can’t live in the
penthouse suite anymore. Living there without Jason would be too painful. And I
can’t live in my old place next door — I’ve already rented it out.” The
realization that I might be left to find a new home — or worst, live with my
mother — made my
heart deflate
.

“Oh, honey, this can’t be easy. Look, you’ll
move in here and sleep in the spare bedroom until you get things in order.”

I sniffled.
“Really?”

“Sure! I have a spare bedroom. Plus, I spend a
lot of time with Ty anyway so you’ll have this place to yourself most of the
time, at least until you get back up on your feet.”

The prospect was daunting. Ellie rubbed my
back again.

“But you don’t have to worry about that for a
while. Just bring some of your clothes back here and we can sort everything out
together.”

For the first time since the incident, I
smiled, albeit weakly. “Thank you Ellie.” I hugged her. “I knew you’d be there
for me.”

“Now, let’s get you cleaned up. All day I’ve
been thinking about fixing myself up a big ol’ margarita. Want one?”

“Can you make mine a double?”

Ellie let out a short laugh. “That’s my girl.
Now off to the kitchen so we can find the tequila.”