Page 114 of The Thing About My Secret Billionaire
“Says the man who I have never once seen have a good belly laugh,” I say.
“Oh, he did the other day,” Chase says. “When Amelia tried to demonstrate a dance she used to do when she was a college cheerleader.”
Amelia is our executive assistant at the club.
Leo is intent on moving his knife one-eighth of an inch to the left. “It was the chant that was funny.”
“So how was rural Upstate New York?” Chase asks. “And the…donkeys?”
“And the hot donkey owner.” Oliver raises his eyebrows over his glass. “It’s a whole saga. Tell them, Mill.”
The other two make anooohsound just as the server, thankfully, enters the room to take our orders.
“I wouldn’t usually ask a question like this,” Chase says, “seeing as how I’m so utterly sick of answering media questions about my own private life that I wouldn’t inflicton anyone else.” He nudges his cleared plate forward and leans on the table. “And I ask only out of concern for your well-being, because you work so fucking much and never seem to have a girlfriend, like ever. But, aside from all the weird shit with pretending to be someone else and sleeping in a barn and cleaning up after donkeys, did you really like Frankie?”
“I’ve never seenyouwith a girlfriend either,” I object.
“Top-level deflection from Malone on the left flank there,” Oliver says in his best soccer commentator voice.
“Okay, okay.” I make a calm-down gesture. “I think we all know I’m not exactly boyfriend material, so there’s no point talking about this.”
“Who told you that?” Leo asks.
“Pretty much every woman I’ve ever dated.”
“But you did reallylikeFrankie though, right?” Chase asks again.
It was kind of good to get the story of everything that happened in Warm Springs off my chest to people I know I can trust with my life. But I’m also kind of regretting it because they might never let it go.
The only thing their questions are achieving right now is to ratchet up the gnawing in my chest over how much I hurt Frankie, how much she did not deserve to be treated the way I treated her, and what an idiot I was to fuck up the first relationship of my life that made me feel things—both good and bad.
“I have to leave.” I drain my whiskey glass, the amber nectar warming my throat as I push my chair back and stand up. “There must be some plans for sewage drainage somewhere that require my attention.”
“Why won’t you answer Chase’s question?” Oliver asks. “What areyou scared of?”
His words stop me in my tracks.
The others fall silent.
“I’m not as brave as you,” I say to Oliver. “You’re the bravest man I know.”
“None of us would be sitting around this table if we hadn’t had to be brave at some point in our lives,” Leo says.
“Well, I’m pretty sure only one of us has ever walked away from a royal family,” I insist.
“That sounds way too dramatic,” Oliver says. “I stay with them when I go back for my charity things. We still talk.”
“If bytalkyou mean pace up and down the conference room shouting, ‘Why do you refuse to understand?’ to the King of England on the other end of your phone,” Leo says.
“That was one fight with my grandpa. He and my grandma are actually pretty great. And my sister’s okay too,” Oliver says. “Even though she does toe the company line just for a quiet life.”
“Isn’t it the tabloids you left more than your family or the country?” Chase asks, the only other one of us who has had to fear for his safety when being chased by paparazzi and screaming admirers.
“Maybe, but this is about Miller,” Oliver says. “Don’t we all want to see him happy?”
For someone who comes from a background of the stiffest of stiff upper lips, Oliver sure does wear his heart on his sleeve. Maybe that’s why he thinks he doesn’t fit in.
“Miller is very sure we don’t need to talk about him any longer,” I say. “Anyway, I’m glad that as well as picking over the remains of my fucked-up life, we also managed to unanimously agree not to sell Schumann. Sowe did achieve something worthwhile—we turned Leo into a human.”
