Page 92 of Rival to the Billionaire

And I let him go. I wouldn't know what to say to stop him if I tried.

Sitting down on the bench again, I bury my head in my hands and let the sobs I've managed to keep at bay for years overtake me.

ChapterTwenty-Five

JENNY

For the first time since I started working at H&H, I actually call in sick.

No, wait. I actually call in dead.

Because, right now, that's how it feels. Like I'm dead.

After Ryder left on Thursday, I spent the weekend at Seattle General Hospital, where I ate stale cafeteria food and made phone calls to people I've never met in my life, all in an effort to nurse my mother—now awake and temporarily sane—back to health.

Deep down, I know that she'll sweep what she's done under the rug, as she has so many times before. "I wasn't myself," she'll say. "I'm so sorry."

She'd want me to make excuses for her—to tell people that it was all part of some sort of psychotic break, even though I know it wasn’t. That's the only way she could explain it.

I leave Seattle General at five o'clock on Monday and make my way to my downtown apartment, where I sit down in my chair and stare blankly at my computer screen.

I don't even know where to start.

Today's "Spaghetti Bolognese and Knitting" night with my girls is canceled. They understand, but they don't know the reason. They know it must be bad. But I don't have a way to tell them.

Sitting by myself on my sad gray couch, in my sad gray apartment, I feel a thousand miles from home.

The only thing that feels the same is my laptop screen. It's the only thing that won't let me go.

Even my spaghetti bolognese feels different.

I walk to my refrigerator, put the round glass baking dish that had been calling my name in the oven, and set it to 350 degrees.

I think about Ryder and the way his face looked when he saw me. He looked like I felt—lost, and sad, and angry.

I think back to that day in the desert. On the back of his bike. When he walked in the hotel room, late and drunk. When he said all those things which I thought I hated him for.

And he was right. All of it.

I hate myself now for the way that I've treated him. I hate myself for blaming him for something that was my fault in the first place.

I hate myself for everything, but most of all, I hate myself because I was a fool. I knew that Ryder looked out for everyone in the boardroom, and that he would never let someone he cared about slip through his fingers.

And I did it anyway.

The gray evening sky outside my window is starting to darken, and the first drops of rain are beginning to fall. I watch them fall, wondering how everything got so messed up—wondering how life had turned into something I'd never seen coming when suddenly my oven buzzes.

I open the oven door to check on the dish when I realize that the sound is coming from my apartment intercom. I shoot a look at my oven clock—7:30. I bet it's the pizza guy.

Too dead inside to head to the store, I ordered marinara from a local pizza place and asked for a half-a-pound pie.

Without hesitating, I buzz him in.

When I hear a knock on the door, I open it, surprised to find it's not the pizza guy at all. Carmina's brown eyes stare over the threshold at me.

"Good. You're alive," she says simply, holding a large black umbrella in one hand. She looks like she's dressed for a funeral.

I hadn't realized it, but I had been crying. I wipe the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand, smearing the mascara I'd carefully applied that morning with my other hand.

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