Page 92 of Forbidden Billionaires: Vol. 3
“Why would you say that?”
“Light and dark and black and white isn’t what I want, James. That isn’t what love is. Dull tones of gray. Love is…” My voice trailed off as I turned to look out the window. Dusk was settling over the city, casting a beautiful sunset over Central Park and between the buildings in the distance. “Love should be more of a…a whirlwind of color.” I turned back to him. “And I have to assume that isn’t what we had.”
The music stopped as James stared at me. “Okay. You’re not the light to my darkness. You’re my…whirlwind of color. It doesn’t matter how I put it. What matters is how much I care about you. How much I love you. Because I do love you, Penny. I love you with every ounce of who I am.”
“It’s not about that. You can’t just change how you describe our relationship. I don’t think our life was colorful. I think you had it exactly right. It was black and white and honestly I feel like it was mostly darkness. I…”God, just rip the freaking Band-Aid off.“I tried to kill myself, didn’t I? That’s why you were hiding so much stuff from me? So I wouldn’t figure it out.”
“What? No.” He stepped forward and grabbed both my hands. “Penny, we were happy. You have to trust me on this. I don’t know how else I can convince you…”
“I found the note, James.”
“What note?”
In that moment, I knew he was lying. He knew which note I was referring to. And he was playing dumb. I couldn’t trust anything he told me. All of it could have been lies. “The note where I said goodbye.” I kept going because he was still playing dumb. “Where I told you to move on.” Still nothing. “My suicide note, James.Thatnote.”
“Fuck. I thought I threw that away.”
“So it’s true?” I pulled my hands out of his. “What was so wrong with my life that I’d try to do something like that?”
“You didn’t, Penny. You were poisoned. The note was a what if. You tried to add it to our will in case something went wrong during childbirth. That’s it. That’s the only thing that makes sense. It was just inconvenient timing of when I found it. You’d never try to take your own life. You loved your life. You loved our life together.”
“You couldn’t possibly know that for sure. Only I would know what that note meant.”
“But I know you better than you know yourself right now…”
“No you don’t.” Screw him. I knew myself. The real me. Not whatever person I had become after meeting him. “No matter what you do to convince me that what we had was perfect, I know it wasn’t. Nothing is perfect.”
“I never said our life was perfect. Of course we have issues. Everyone has issues.”
“Like my severe depression?”
“You weren’t depressed…”
“Stop lying, James. Please stop lying. For one minute can’t you…”
He grabbed the back of my head and pulled me into a kiss. I tried to push him off, but within a second I was completely captivated by his lips. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. I was paralyzed by that kiss. A hot, passionate, mind-blowing kiss.God.It wasn’t just a kiss. It was everything. Every. Single. Thing.
He pulled away far too soon. “I can prove to you we were happy. Just…don’t move.”
When his hands left my body I immediately felt cold. The reaction I had to him was all-consuming. He disappeared out of the living room and I silently cursed myself. I meant to just ask him about the letter. I didn’t mean to fight. And why was Iso turned on whenever we fought? What the heck was that all about?
I smoothed down my hair and tried to even out my breathing. But all I wanted was his fingers in my hair again. I wanted his hands on the small of my back, pulling me closer. I wanted more. I swallowed hard. There was no way I was ready for more. Besides, he was healing from his cardiac episode. And I was healing too.Nothing heals the past like time.That’s what he had said earlier. I didn’t know if that was true. It felt like every time James and I took one step forward we took two steps back. And he wasn’t being patient with me. He was suffocating me. And intoxicating me.
James reappeared with a huge stack of papers in his hand.No, not just papers.He handed me my manuscript.Temptationby Ivy Smoak. The pages were worn, like he had read through it a lot. “You’ve read it?”
He pressed his lips together. “Several times. I may have tried to recreate a few scenes. I didn’t remember every detail. But you did. When you wrote it.”
“And Ivy Smoak is my pen name? Why wouldn’t I use my real name?”
“We have enough publicity. You wanted to do this on your own. Anonymity has its perks.”
“Do I have a publishing deal or…”
“Read it. We can talk about everything after you’ve read it. I just need you to understand how we started. How hard and fast wefell in love. How much we love each other. How real everything I’ve said is. Read it and then we can talk.”
I looked back down at the worn pages. He said he had read it several times. That was touching. “What did you think of the writing?”
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever read.”
