Billionaires Dollar Series

Ethan nods once, his arms at his side. By this time, he’s usually wrapped them around me, sometimes carrying me off unceremoniously to the sofa or the bed.

“Good,” he says, but his tone says it’s anything but. “Bella, I just heard that the Gardners don’t have a niece.”

My breathing chokes off for a second.

And then I’m babbling. “Oh Ethan, I wanted to tell you so often, but I was afraid of how you’d react. That’s no excuse, of course. I should’ve, of course I should’ve. I tried to tell you this morning.”

He’s so still he might be a statue. “So you’re not family?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then who are you exactly?”

“I’m house-sitting for the Gardners this summer. They needed someone to watch the cat, and the house, and water the plants and run water in the pipes… it’s like a summer job.”

“You get paid to live here,” Ethan clarifies. The furrow in his brow is deeper, now. No erasing it in sight.

“Yes, I do.”

“Was that so unthinkable to tell me? Why lie?”

My chest feels like it’s caving in on itself. I don’t know where to start, how to approach this, and my words just spill out. “I had two friends visiting, Wilma and Trina. I think I’ve told you about them? It was a few days after you’d seen me topless by the pool. They dared me to go over and introduce myself, and I was nervous. You assumed I was related to the Gardners’ somehow and I just rolled with it, because it felt silly to say that I was a house-sitter. You so clearly had your life together and… well. But I had no idea what we’d become, Ethan. None at all.”

He holds up a hand. “Your friends dared you to come over?”

“Why?”

“I mentioned that you were attractive. They wanted me to take a risk-I hadn’t really spoken to a man after Ryan. And you work in the industry I study, so they told me to give it a shot… Ethan?”

He turns from me, a hand on the front door, and the tension in his shoulders would be visible from space. My words trip over each other in their rush to get out.

“It was a white lie, and it grew from there, until it felt impossible to undo. I’m so sorry about that. Everything else I’ve told you has been the complete truth, I promise.” My chest isn’t just caving in, it’s imploding, leaving me a hollow mess inside. Damn my tongue and my inability to find the right words.

Ethan doesn’t turn. “Did you put your financial aid application in your thesis on purpose?”

“The document. Stuck in the thesis you left me. Was it on purpose?”

Oh God. One of the letters must have gotten caught amongst the pages, stuffed as they often were in the same bag. The conclusions he must have drawn… “No, absolutely not.”

He opens the door and heads out into the warm evening air.

“I need time,” he says.

I follow him out on the front lawn. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll be here. And if you want to-”

“No, I don’t want to talk.” He pulls open the gate in my overwrought, wrought-iron fence. “You lied to me, Bella. For weeks.”

And on that note, the gate locks behind him and he’s off, out of my temporary property and perhaps permanently out of my life. I sink down onto the lawn and try to keep from crying. But I don’t succeed in that, either.

“So you haven’t spoken to him since?” Wilma asks, the concern on her face threatening to undo my calm composure.Content rights belong to NôvelDrama.Org.

“Nope.”

“And it’s been over a week?” Trina challenges. “How can he be so hurt by this? It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

“It makes perfect sense,” I say. “He doesn’t trust people easily, not after his divorce… and then I went and lied to him.”

“I wonder what he’s told his kids,” Wilma muses. “They must be asking where you went, all of a sudden.”

Sighing, I reach up for one of the packets of cocoa powder on the high shelf in the kitchen. With only two weeks left in the house, I’m tentatively starting to arrange my meager possessions into boxes. Perhaps it’s early to be packing, but I’m so stressed by the radio silence from my neighbor-turned-lover that I have to keep myself busy somehow.

“I don’t even want to think about that,” I say. “And I’m not sure he’ll forgive me-ever.” The fear has been my only companion in the past week and a half, as I’ve given him the space he asked for.

“That would be crazy,” Trina protests. “Of course he will. From what you’ve told us, this was real. It was great. If he’s as smart as you think he is, he’ll see that.”

“He might. But he could also decide that I’m not worth the trouble. What good is loving someone if you can’t trust them?” I’d had a lot of time to think it through in the past few days-all the opportunities I’d had to set him straight and not taken. It’s a peculiar kind of pain, when it’s entirely of your own making.

Wilma shakes her head. “You can’t speak like that. You have to believe he’ll come around.”

I snort, but nod anyway, mostly for her benefit. It’s a discussion we’ve had a million times. Me, rational, logical-insisting wishing for something doesn’t help it come true. Her, a strong believer in belief itself, in good vibes and the universe and The Secret.

“Maybe he will,” I say, lifting up one of the cardboard boxes on the kitchen island. “Maybe he won’t. But it doesn’t change anything in the short term. I still have to find a place to stay.”

“You can stay with one of us, of course,” Trina says. “And I’ll come with you apartment hunting this weekend. You’re visiting a few places on Saturday, right?”

“Yes. Thank you, honestly. Both of you.”

Wilma smiles. “That’s what friends are for. I haven’t forgotten who patched me back together after Ben and I broke up.”

“Not to mention you and Ivan,” Trina supplies, a smile on her lips. “Or when you were convinced you failed your entrance exams. Or when we were at that party and you got-”

“All right, all right, we get it.” Wilma reaches out with her fingers splayed, ready to pinch Trina’s arm, but she dances back.

“We’re here to support Bella!” Trina says. “No fighting!”

Laughing, I step in between the two of them, holding up my arms like a judge in a boxing ring. “Not in this house, you don’t.”

“So protective of the house,” Wilma says morosely, “and not of your friends.”

“Of course. Material objects are forever, right? That’s the saying?”

“Friendships are forever.” Trina gives me a push and I laugh, nearly tripping over Toast. He gives a disgruntled meow and looks up at me expectantly. I glance over at the time on the oven.

“Right, food time. He’s like an alarm clock, this one. He knows on the minute when it’s time for him to be fed.”

“Smart cat,” Wilma says, sinking back into her kitchen chair. “By the way, how have the sleeping aids I gave you worked out?”

“The non-sleeping-pill-sleeping-pills?”