Page 110 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

“The spot they went through is back there,” he finally says. “All this metal, and he managed to find the one loose part, the one damaged part, to blast through.”

I stay holding his hand. Theo doesn’t like a lot of chatter when he’s feeling emotional. We’re starting to move. He looks over at me. “Screw it. Okay. Okay, then.”

“What?” I ask.

He lowers the partition. “Take us down to the water once you’re off.”

“Will do,” Derek says.

“Down to the water?” I ask when he doesn’t explain.

“We’ve come this far,” he says simply.

And I wonder: does he meanthis farin terms of distance to the bridge? Orthis farin terms of being honest with each other?

A few minutes later, we’re parked near a giant docking and loading area for barges. It seems deserted. Maybe because it’s still cold, maybe because there’s not a lot of freight traffic today.

He grabs two beers out of his back-of-the-car cooler. “Come on.” He gets out and walks. I follow, pulling my jacket tight. The afternoon sun doesn’t do much to cut the chill from the wind that blows off the Harlem River.

Everything around us is huge and hulking. There are piles of cement things here and there, and a large sign for the river traffic that we only see the metal back of. I catch up to him and follow him along the railed edge of the concrete slab and down some steps toward the dirty green water.

He puts out his coat on the lowest step. I sit.

He hands me a beer, then he turns and lifts his in a toast, as if toasting to the bridge.

I toast my own beer, and then hold it in both hands on my knees, waiting solemnly for whatever he wants to say.

He’s showing me a piece of himself, and that means a lot. Because in spite of everything, I want to be connected with him, whether it’s the hottest sex or the deepest, darkest pain. I never felt like that with a man before.

“I didn’t take you here to feel sorry for me.” He swigs his beer. Stays standing.

“I know,” I say.

He nods. He knows I know.

“See the third section? And how the bridge is darker right down from it? That’s the repaired part. You can still tell.”

“Where they went off. The accident.” It’s not really a question.

“It wasn’t so much an accident, really. Accidents are unexpected. This was inevitable.”

I wait. Listen.

“You could see it coming from miles away,” he says. “My dad, the world’s most high-functioning drunk. He kept a good job. Managed to handle his responsibilities, but couldn’t resist driving. He just loved to drive us around. I don’t know what the hell was in his head. It especially terrified Willow. She’d cry when he’d make her ride. He saw it as a criticism, and he’d just do it all the more.”

I stare out at the bridge with its crisscrosses and thick, gray geometry. Cars streaming over, right past the spot where his parents went off. None with any idea of the lives that ended just feet away.

“That’s why Willow worked so hard for those scholarships,” he continues. “I mean, she was in her bedroom programming from morning to night when other girls were doing whatever girls that age are supposed to do. It was her ticket out. The shit he’d say. Those terrifying rides. Willow and I always hated rides at the fair. Roller coasters. That type of thrill was never fun for us. We had the real-life version.”

“Sounds like,” I say softly.

Seagulls screech nearby. One swoops into the air with a hunk of something in its mouth. The others chase.

“When I was fifteen, I started standing up to him and taking away the keys. I’d refuse to ride. Refuse to let Mom ride. Sometimes hide the keys and just take what came. But he was still a lot bigger than me. I could sometimes stop the rides, but not always.”

He’s silent for a while. I want to go up next to him and put my hand on his arm, but I know not to. That’s not what he needs.

“At one point, Dad went out of town on a business trip, and it was just Mom and me. We were out of his orbit long enough that we felt what it was like to be free of his power. I had my mom talked into leaving. It was going to be just us. Build our own life. I had enough savings for a place in Queens. A sad little studio in a piece-of-shit building, but it would’ve been ours. I really thought I had her on board, but then he came home, and nothing changed. Except the fights over the keys got worse. Finally I left. I managed to get a job.” He turns around to face me, leaning back on the railing, picking at the edge of the label on the bottle. “I was so damn angry. At him, but also at her.”

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