Page 70 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

I shook my head. “How do you people function? But seriously, Nik. I love you and I believe in you and I’ll support you no matter what you do. And I know you say you’ve changed, and probably you have, but when it comes down to the colours of your dreams, and whatever makes your heart fly, and the things that really matter, you always get to choose.”

“Choose what?”

“What you take with you and what you leave behind.” I let out a shaky breath. “Because that’s all change is.”

Nik leaned down and pressed his brow briefly to mine. “I hope you’re right.”

I tried to smile. I hoped so too.

Chapter 22

In Kinlochbervie, the days between Christmas and New Year’s lumbered along like concussed camels. I actually kind of enjoyed them, getting up late, falling asleep on the sofa in the middle of the afternoon, eating Terry’s Chocolate Orange for breakfast, and turkey sandwiches for dinner, watching movies we’d seen about a million times before because nobody could be bothered to change the channel, and embarking on our annual game ofTwilight Imperium, only for it to take six hours just to set up, and another six to read the instructions, by which time we’d all forgotten why we’d ever thought it was a good idea to try and play it in the first place.

But things ended up getting pretty busy in Boston. Poppy and her boyfriend arrived the day after Boxing Day, full of apologies for not having been able to make it out any earlier. At least, Poppy was full of apologies. Colt just stood there looking strong and silent and like he was going to be the cowboy fromThe Big Lebowski, give or take twenty years. They’d also secretly, and quite spontaneously, got married—Poppy had a piece of braided corn on her fourth finger—which meant that every gossip outlet in the world knew about it. Or were, at least, speculating rampantly. She seemed happy, though. And her husband had this honey-slow smile that he only ever gave to her, so I guess he was too.

Ellery and I departed on the thirty-first, leaving Nik to his sister, and a gaggle of his MIT friends who’d arrived for New Year’s. What we’d discussed on Christmas Day hadn’t come up again (though we had managed to finishCitadel of ChaosandCreature of Havoc), but when Poppy had talked about buying a place in Boston, Nik hadn’t immediately shut it down—so I took that as a good sign. It was hard, of course, saying goodbye, but as I clung to him and made no attempt to be brave about it, I knew with a deep, abiding certainty he was going to be okay. Nik was golden. He always had been. And I trusted him to find his happiness—wherever it lay.

Ellery and I were subdued on the return flight. I guess we’d both had our reasons for wanting to get away for a bit, but that was the thing about getting away: At some point, you had to come back, and everything you’d left behind would still be waiting. Which, now that I thought about it, was mostly awesome in my case. I had a job I loved, and was currently kicking ass at, somewhere to live that was actually within my budget, and people who cared about me, including one I was enthusiastically sexing. And yes, there was still the Caspian thing, wedged into my soft tissue like a piece of broken tooth, but it was New Year’s Eve. Wasn’t that the perfect time to let go of the past, make a fresh start, blah blah, blah?

Maybe I could even listen to my own damn advice. Choose what to take and what to leave behind, I’d told Nik. Wasn’t it about time I left Caspian behind? I could hold on to the good stuff—everything he’d taught me and shown me and given me. But I also needed to let go, move on, get the fuck over him. And admittedly, I’d been telling myself that for months. But then, having him get engaged in my face and being invited to dinner with his frustratingly-more-human-than-I-wanted-to-admit boyfriend hadn’t exactly made it easy. If you squinted at it funny, it was almost like Caspian was having as much trouble forgetting about me as I was forgetting about him.

Still. That was his problem. It wasn’t going to be mine. And there’d be no more weird interviews, or ambiguous encounters, or double-edged comments that made me think I had a chance. I was officially done.

Tomorrow was the first day of…the next bit of my life.

***

Between an inevitable string of delays and terrible traffic on the M1, we didn’t make it back until nearly ten o’clock at night. London was sullen and drizzly, its lights tepid smears through the greying haze, and we’d turned off the heating while we were away, so the warehouse greeted us with a belch of frigid air the moment we opened the door. Mmm. Homey.

Yanking my wheelie over the threshold, I stumbled to the sofa and slumped onto it, still in my coat and scarf. Probably I would end up sleeping in them too.

“Want to see the fireworks?” asked Ellery.

I shook my head. “I’m pretty tired.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Want to get fucked up?”

“I’m not sure I need help with that right now.”

She vanished into her bedroom and reappeared, a plastic baggie of white powder dangling from between her fingertips. “It’s good shit. Best Colombian.”

“Given I genuinely can’t tell anymore when people are talking about coffee and when they’re talking about drugs, I don’t think this is the lifestyle for me.”

Ellery sat down next to me, tucking her booted feet under her. “It’ll be way better than coffee.”

“I’ve never actually”—I waved my hands unhelpfully—“used cocaine before.”

“Are you sure? Because you’ve got the lingo down.”

“Oh, shut up. And also there’s the nose issue.”

She gave me one of her slow, contemptuous blinks. “The nose issue?”

“Yes. The nose issue. I don’t want to put things up my nose. My nose is a one-way street.”

“You know that’s what fundamentalists say about anal sex.”

“Okay, but listen.” I pulled myself into a more alert position. “I’ve had anal sex and it’s amazing. Once, when I was little, Hazel made me laugh while I was drinking a glass of milk and it went up my nose and it was one of the most horrible things that has ever happened to me.”

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