Page 93 of Most Eligible Billionaire

I squeeze his hand. Would he say that if he knew I was Vonda? “Thank you.”

The driver pulls out.

“Painting the cranes? That’s a move my mother would make. And it sent me down a rabbit hole of fuckedupness that you said it.”

I nod, easily imagining her doing something like that. Delighting in it. “I get why you cut her out of your life.”

He straightens. “You think I cut her out of my life?”

“She was always talking like you did, like—”

“Vicky, she cut me out. She didn’t want to see family. Her doormen had instructions to turn me away. You think I didn’t try to see her? At least get her out of that shithole?”

“Right,” I say, shocked at how stupid I was to have kept believing Bernadette’s side of it. “I can’t believe I didn’t put that together. I mean, you’re the most loyal person I’ve ever met. I should’ve realized.”

“Bernadette talked a good game.” He’s so casual about it, that’s what breaks my heart.

“I'm sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be,” he says. “She knew how to have fun, how to make you feel like the only person in the world.”

Even as he says it, I hear thebut. I’m thinking about my own mom. “But it wouldn’t last,” I add.

Again he shrugs. Knowing him, he’s starting to regret complaining right about now.

“And it’s worse when that goodness is taken away,” I say.

I want him to know I get it. He deserves something real, something that’s not part of my fake identity.

He takes my hand, warm in his. He turns it over and traces the surface of my palm, as if to learn it.

Recklessly, I continue. “My mom was great when she was off drugs. But when she was on? Not pretty.”

He stills. “She was on drugs?”

“Meth,” I say. “And there were things she did when she was desperate for money, for another buy, the deepest betrayals.”

I’m getting into dangerous territory—I’m not contradicting my fake identity, but I’m definitely off-roading from it. It was safer when we were enemies. Enemies hide things from each other. Now I just want to know everything about him, and I have this crazy idea that I could bare my heart to him, and it would all be okay.

Except it wouldn’t.

Still, I continue. “Much as I had cause not to trust Mom, I’d always think things would be different the next time around. I always hoped.”

He says nothing. Doesn’t even flinch. He wants to hear. He wants to know things about me.

“The last betrayal was the biggest. You wouldn’t even believe.”

“And then your parents died,” he says. “And you were alone with your sister.”

My pulse quickens as he searches my face, as he fits our hands together, like fitting the pieces of my story together. He turns the knot we make over, so that mine rests on his.

“And you had to leave Prescott,” he adds.

I lean into him, wanting to stop talking about my fake life.

“But you made it,” he says.

“More or less.” What the hell am I doing? “Hey,” I lift my head. “April said it was almost your birthday. Happy early birthday.”

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