Page 57 of Dating the Billionaire
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BLAIRCOULDN’TEVENtell Teo that she loved him—because he wouldn’t believe her. He wouldn’t believe anything she said, so Blair didn’t say anything at all. She just let him walk away...without a fight.
She’d told him that he didn’t know her. Right now she didn’t know herself. But then she hadn’t been herself since she’d met him. The attraction she’d felt so instantly for him had scared her so much that she’d wanted to protect herself. At all costs.
She’d had no idea how much she would lose. Even herself...
Her greatest fear was realized; she had become her mother. A hollow shell of the person she’d once been.
While he’d been in the bathroom, she’d dressed. But now she focused on cleaning up the office area, so it wouldn’t be so obvious what had happened there. As she righted the bottle of whiskey, she considered uncapping and drinking what was left. But there wasn’t enough to drown her sorrows.
Hell, an ocean of alcohol wouldn’t be enough to even dull the pain she was feeling. Hinges creaked as a door opened. Her pulse quickened.
Heavy footsteps pounded against the concrete floor as someone walked down the hall toward her. Had Teo come back to her? Had he calmed down enough to let her explain why she’d done what she had?
But it wasn’t Teo who walked into the room. It was Grant. Disappointment overwhelmed her, and she broke down in tears again.
Grant cursed and stepped closer. “What did he do? If he hurt you, I will kill him.”
“He didn’t hurt me,” she assured her brother. “I hurt him.”
Grant sighed. “Yeah, I think you did. I’ve never seen anyone look as devastated as he did when he saw you in the doorway and put it all together.” He sighed again. “Until now. You look even more devastated than he did.”
“I can’t fix this,” she said, her voice vibrating with frustration. “He’s not going to let me fix this.”
And that was why she’d been so scared to tell him the truth. Because she’d known that she would lose him when she did. Forever...
“Do you want to fix this?” Grant asked.
“Yes,” she replied quickly.
“But I know how honest you always are, so you had a reason for lying to him, a damn good one,” he prodded. “You didn’t want to get serious, or you were worried that he would get too serious. You must have kept him at arm’s length for a reason.”
“I tried to keep him at arm’s length,” she said. But he got too close to her anyway, so close that he had become part of her. “But I fell for him anyway.”
“I blame your damn friend who has never been a friend to you at all,” he said.
“She told me to be honest with him,” Blair defended Miranda.
“She shouldn’t have set you up with anyone in the first place,” Grant said. “The last thing either one of us needs right now, with getting the business off the ground, is a relationship.” He reached out and awkwardly patted her shoulder. “You’ll see that this is for the best.”
She shook her head. Losing Teo was the worst thing that could have happened to her—even worse than falling for him.
“I know the guy is a billionaire and all, but seriously, the way he plays cards, he’ll be broke in no time,” Grant assured her.
“I didn’t care about his money,” she said. She cared about his integrity, his loyalty, his passion...
She suspected she would never experience passion like that again—from him or from anyone else. And she doubted she would ever feel as much passion as she had for him.
“Man, you really did it,” Grant said. “You really fell for him.”
“I know.”
“That’s too damn bad,” Grant said with more pity than sympathy. “Too damn bad.”
It wouldn’t have been, had she been honest with Teo from the beginning. Now she didn’t know how to fix it—if she even could.
“You’ll be okay, though,” Grant assured her. “You’re tough.”
