Tapping The Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires #1) (43 page)

I
gave myself twenty-four hours to wallow and cry and browse Reddit “my boyfriend is a cheating, cock-sucking, piece-of-scum dirtbag” threads. Okay, maybe they weren’t really titled that, but I’d always enjoyed nicknaming shit.

And when I wasn’t trolling Internet threads, I could’ve been found doing any of the following:

1. Crying.
A lot.

2. Turning my phone on and off every five minutes, in hopes that Kline would attempt to contact me. He didn’t, by the way. Not a text, a call, nothing but complete radio silence.

3. Re-watching the first four seasons of
Gilmore Girls.
If only we could combine Logan, Jess, and Dean to form the perfect man.

4. Eating all of our food. (Cassie was not happy about this.)

5. Taking one thousand BuzzFeed quizzes. I was a Hufflepuff, who should live in San Francisco and preferred NSYNC over Backstreet Boys. Chris Pratt should have been my celebrity husband, I’d have two kids, and my chocolate IQ was insane. Just in case you were wondering.

When BuzzFeed told me The Notebook was the Nicholas Sparks book that best described my love life, I gave it both middle fingers and shut my laptop.

If I was a bird, Kline Brooks could go fuck himself.

But you know what the hardest part was?

I still loved him. God, I loved him. I loved Kline just as much as I had before I’d seen that screenshot from Cassie. And this voice in the back of my head kept insisting something was off.

That Kline wouldn’t have broken my trust like that.

Stupid voice. It was that kind of voice that made people stay in relationships with someone who didn’t deserve them. I also gave that voice both middle fingers. Frankly, I was ready to give every-fucking-body the middle finger. Misery loves company and all that jazz.

Day Two, Post-Kline-breaking-my-heart:

I had managed to get myself out of bed, shower, and make some phone calls to a corporate headhunter so I could find a new job. Sure, I’d slept in Kline’s t-shirt that night and cried myself to sleep, but at least I was taking a step in the right direction. And it should be noted, I left my cell phone
on
and only checked for missed calls or texts every ten minutes that day.

Baby steps, folks. It was all about the baby steps.

Day three, Post-Kline-breaking-my-heart:

I woke up red-eyed and snotty but had several voicemails with possible job prospects and interview requests. One good thing out of the entire Kline mess, I had a killer résumé and other companies really wanted me on their payroll. I took an interview that day. It was a marketing position for an NFL team, popularly known as the New York Mavericks. They’d had a recent change in management that had left them in dire straits.

I didn’t know anything about football, but I knew marketing. When I sat down for the interview with Frankie Hart, the Maverick’s GM, I reminded myself of that very fact. It didn’t matter how much I knew about the game; all that mattered was if I could market their franchise in a way that was both profitable and creative.

I showed him slides of the successful campaigns I had done for Brooks Media. I asked questions about their current marketing outlooks and financial profitability. And then I showed Frankie the kind of ingenious skills I had by tossing out a few possible changes that would help build the Maverick name.

He loved my ideas. I left the interview feeling really proud of myself. And I hated that the first person I wanted to call was Kline. I hated that he had become such an important part of my life in such a short amount of time.

After drowning my hate and irritation in three beers and a plate of nachos at the bar up the street from my apartment, my headhunter called with a job offer. The New York Mavericks wanted to hire me and presented their offer with a generous salary and investment plan. I was shocked by their quick trigger. My experiences with getting a response from corporations was
never
this prompt.
But maybe football franchises are different? Who knows?

I didn’t waste time trying figure it out.

Immediately, I accepted the position. Even though football, or any sport for that matter, wasn’t my forte, I was excited about the challenge, and honestly, I couldn’t afford to sit around for months without a paycheck. Student loans and rent did not accept IOUs.

That night, I slid into bed and checked my phone one last time.

Still no response from Kline.

I clutched my aching stomach and forced my racing mind to sleep.

God, I missed him so much I felt physically ill from it.

Later that week, Cassie surprised me by coming home a few days early from her shoot in San Francisco. This was why she’d always be one of the most important people in my life. I needed her, desperately, and she didn’t hesitate to rearrange her schedule to be my shoulder to lean on.

We ordered Chinese, gorged ourselves on chicken fried rice and crab rangoon, and lounged on the couch for a
Friday Night Lights
marathon on Netflix.

If anyone could brighten my mood, it was Tim Riggins, right?

Wrong.

I only got a few episodes deep before I was on the verge of losing it. The second I saw Lyla Garrity smile against Tim Riggins’ mouth mid-kiss, the emotional dam was ready to burst.

“Are you okay?” Cass asked as I strode into the bathroom.

All I could do was shake my head. Because I was very far from okay. Probably the furthest I’d ever been from okay.

I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, my legs trembling and hands gripping the sink like it would somehow give me the strength to fight my pitiful emotions.

Don’t cry. He does not deserve your tears.

When that didn’t work, I attempted to distract myself by peeing. But I quickly found it didn’t serve as any type of distraction, because after about fifteen seconds, I was just peeing
and
crying at the same time. If you’d ever found yourself in that horribly tragic set of circumstances, you’d have understood it was the worst feeling ever. Not only could you not stop peeing, but you couldn’t hold back the sobs. Pathetic was the only true way to describe it.

Cass found me in the bathroom that way—pants around my ankles and tears streaming down my cheeks.

“What can I do?” Her face was etched with concern.

“Nothing,” I cried, shoving a clump of toilet paper against my nose. My elbows went to my bare knees—yes, I was still on the toilet—and my head was in my hands.

“Have you talked to him since?” She rested her hip against the doorframe.

“Nope. It’s been a week and he hasn’t tried to contact me. Hasn’t called. Texted. Fucking tapped out Morse code. No skywriter or carrier pigeon. Nada. Zip. Zilch.” I stared up at her, my chin resting in my hands. “He even knows I was out looking for a new job. How do I know this? Because when the headhunter called with the offer, he also mentioned my prior place of employment provided an amazing recommendation.”

“But—” she started to interrupt, but I kept going.

“So, basically, Kline Brooks doesn’t give a shit. He saw my letter of resignation. He saw the screenshot with the note I left him. And guess what? He never attempted to contact me. Plus, he was more than happy to give my future job prospect a glowing recommendation. Am I going crazy, Cass? I mean, was I completely deranged and thought Kline and I were way more than what we actually were?”

“No, sweetie,” she responded. “I saw you two together and it was more than obvious he adored you.”

“Then why did he want to meet up with you? Why did he want to meet up with my best friend?” I stifled a sob, pressing more toilet paper against my eyes. “Obviously, this is nothing against you, Cass,” I muttered.

“I know, Georgie. And seriously, you don’t have to apologize to me. This entire situation is fucked up, that’s for damn sure.”

I nodded, blowing my nose.

“How about you get off the toilet and maybe we can find something else to watch? It’s safe to say Tim and Lyla are little too much for you at the moment.”

“Okay,” I agreed through a hiccupping breath.

“I’ll give you a minute to get yourself together,” she called over her shoulder, moving into the hallway.

I stood by the sink, washing my hands and face. I would not spend another night bawling my eyes out. It was just getting pathetic at that point. Obviously, what I’d thought Kline and I were, and what he’d thought we were, were two very different things.

The voice in my head tried to remind me of the way his blue eyes had looked the night he told me he loved me—tender, vulnerable, his heart resting in their depths.

I told that voice to fuck off. He wouldn’t be the first man or woman in the world to profess love to someone they didn’t really care about. Believe me, I had seen the threads on Reddit.

People did some horrible shit to one another. Relationships, that were otherwise amazing, could end on the worst of notes. That was not how I had pictured things happening with Kline and me, but that was life, right? Sometimes things didn’t go as you planned or hoped they would. Sometimes bad things happened to good people.

Sometimes you just had to suck it up and move on.

I just hated that I missed him as much as I did.

I missed his laugh and his smile and his teasing comments.

I missed my big spoon.

As I wiped my face and hands off with the towel, I glanced down at my pants and noticed a giant grease stain in the crotch region. Normally, I would have just left it, but that night, I needed to
not
feel like the most pitiful person in existence.

I took off the sweats and headed toward my bedroom to grab a new pair of pants.

“Hey, Georgia, what do you think about
The Walking Dead
?” Cass asked from the other end of the hallway.

“Sure, why not?” I shrugged. Zombies seemed like a good, safe choice. How could I think about Kline when I was watching humans turn cannibalistic?

She started to turn back toward the living room but stopped in her tracks. “Hold up…are you wearing boxer briefs?”

Ah, fuck.

“No,” I answered, covering my underwear. Well, Kline’s underwear.

She flashed a skeptical look.

“Fine!” I threw my hands in the air. “I’m wearing Kline’s briefs because I’m pathetic and I miss him and they smell like him!”

“Smell like him?
” She fought the urge to smile.

“This isn’t funny!” I groaned.

She held up both hands. “I never said it was.”

I pointed toward her mouth. “Yeah, but you’re about two seconds away from laughing your ass off!”

“Honey, you just told me you’re wearing your ex-boyfriend’s underwear because you miss him and they smell like him.
His underwear.
The material that literally cradles his balls.”

“Oh, God,” I whined, face scrunching into an agonized expression. “This is definitely a new low point in my life.” I leaned against the wall, head falling back. “I’m so desperate for him that I’ll take smelling like his sac over not smelling like him at all.”

Cass moved toward me and immediately pulled me into a tight hug.

“It’ll be okay, Georgie. I promise it’ll be okay.”