All That He Loves (Volume 2 The Billionaires Seduction) (22 page)

“Can you tell me more about how he was acting?” I asked. “I just… I need to know that I’m not being a fool.”

“You’re not,” he assured me. “He really does like you, a lot. More than anybody I’ve ever seen, except for – ”

He caught himself and gave me a worried glance.

“More than Miranda?” I asked.

“…well… before she turned into an evil psychopath,” he relented.

I smiled. “She
is
that.”

“I think he might even… you know…”

He paused, obviously uncomfortable.

“…love you.”

I wanted to tell him
He said that he does,
but the words were like barbs across my heart.

“It’s just that this has been an incredible amount of stress on him,” Johnny continued, then added very quickly, “Not that this hasn’t been hell on you – I know it has, you’re not even used to this kind of exposure – uh… I mean…”

He paused and looked miserable. “I’m not making this any better, am I.”

I smiled. “I appreciate the effort.”

He sighed heavily. “I was really hoping it would last. He needs a woman like you, Lily. Somebody who’s kind and good and, well, just all-around awesome.”

I smiled sadly, but I couldn’t help noticing how he said,
I was really hoping it would last.

In the past tense.

Like it was over.

“I want you to know, I think it’s incredible what you did, standing up to Miranda like that. I can’t think of anybody else who would have done what you did.”

“Thanks, Johnny.”

“He’s stupid if he doesn’t come to his senses.”

I laughed. “I’ll agree with you on that one.”

Without any traffic, we reached my apartment building quickly.

“Is there a back way in?” he asked.

“Why?”

“In case there are any paparazzi waiting out front.”

Oh shit.

I’d forgotten, in the cloistered shelter of the Dubai’s penthouse, that this was my life now.

“Yeah, turn here.”

We went down a side road. Near the back of the complex was a little-used exit door. I started to get out, but Johnny said, “Hold on,” and hopped out to open my door.

“Thanks.”

“You want me to come inside with you?”

“No… I’m okay.”

“Alright…  well… I’ll see you around, Lily.”

“Thank you, Johnny. For everything,” I said, and leaned in and hugged him. “Take care.”

He returned it, a bit awkwardly, the way a tough guy might who’s not used to holding teary-eyed girls.

After we had hugged, I asked, “And will you do me a favor?”

He looked at me a bit apprehensively. “What?”

“Take care of
him
, too.”

He gave me a sad smile and nodded. “You got it. I’ll wait here until you’re inside, okay?”

“Okay. Bye.”

“Bye.”

I walked across the sidewalk to the door, my feet heavy as lead once more, and pulled my keys out of my purse. I inserted them in the lock, made sure it opened, and turned back and waved.

He waved once, too, then slipped inside the Bentley and guided it out into the darkness.

Within seconds, he was gone.

And just like that…

…the dream was over.

I made it inside the front door of my apartment before I burst into tears.

Anh came out of her bedroom in her pajamas, wide-eyed, with her keyring canister of mace at the ready. “Lily?!”

“Hey, Anh,” I sniffled – and then started crying again.

She ran over and hugged me, then led me to the couch.

I told her between crying jags what had happened. She made chamomile tea for us as she tried to follow my disjointed narrative.

Once I calmed down, she pulled back the vertical blinds on our main window and pointed to a bunch of paneled vans out in the darkness, parked along the curb. “There’s not many of them at night, but just wait until the morning.”

Try as I might, though, I couldn’t quite explain to her why I had left. At least, not to her satisfaction.

“So… he said he loved you… but then he said he said it too early… and then
you
said you guys should take a break…”

“He was avoiding me.”

“So he was avoiding you… because you were all like, ‘Tell me you love me – ’”

“I didn’t tell him to say that!”

“I thought you told him that in your last conversation.”

“No… I said I wanted to take a break until he could tell me he loved me and
mean
it.”

“Ohhhh,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Whose side are you on?” I asked, annoyed.

“I’m just trying to understand. So, he said he loved you… then he said he’d said it too early… then he was avoiding you… then you said you should take a break until he could say ‘I love you’ and mean it.”

“Yeah, basically,” I mumbled, feeling foolish when she boiled it down like that.

“So you dumped him.”

“I didn’t dump him! I said we should take a break!”

“And then you went ahead and bonked him anyway.”

“I didn’t
bonk
him – ”

“Banged him?”

“Cut it out!”

“Okay – made sweet, sweet love?”

I just glared at her over my cup of tea.

“One for the road, huh?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows.

“Way to make me look like a ho-bag.”

“I think you already did that with those photos.”

“ANH!”

She laughed, then shook her head. “I still don’t get it… why didn’t you wait it out and see if he changes his mind?”

“He wasn’t going to,” I said, though with less conviction than I’d felt a couple of hours ago.

“And you know that… how?”

“Sebastian told me.”

“And you know you can trust Sebastian… how…?”

“I just… I just felt like I could.”

“Uh-huh… because he was always
so
nice to you before.”

“He changed over the last few days,” I protested.

“Uh-huh…”

“Why are you trying to freak me out?!”

She sighed. “It’s just really complicated, and I don’t know any of these people, and you haven’t exactly kept me in the loop.”

“I couldn’t stay there anymore,” I said miserably. “You have no idea what it’s like – like a prison. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything because there were people camped out in front of the hotel waiting to get a picture – ”

“Yeah, I have no idea what
that’s
like,” she said, looking meaningfully over at the blinds.

“Are they trying to get a picture of
you?”

“No…”

“Were
your
boobs on national TV?”

“No…”

“Okay, then, shut up.”

“Although, technically, they blurred them out.”

“Anh – ” I warned.

“It’s kind of like that ‘if a tree falls in a forest’ thing – if you see blurred-out boobs on TV, did you
really
see them?”

“Anh!”

“I went online, though – nice tata’s, Lily,” she said with a thumbs-up.

“ANH!”

And then we both dissolved into a fit of giggles when she couldn’t keep a straight face anymore.

Afterwards I wiped a tear from my eye – but this one was from laughing so hard. “Oh, God, I needed that.”

“Seriously, though, why didn’t you stay?”

I sighed and closed my eyes. “I already told you.”

“Yeah, but you exchanged a prison where they feed you lobster and filet mignon for one with crappy air conditioning and Ramen noodles.”

“It’s not just
that,
it’s – ”

“And a prison without a hot guy. Just li’l ol’ me.” She gasped dramatically and clasped her hands next to her face in glee. “Lily, does this mean you
want
me? Like…
lesbian
want me?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what it means,” I deadpanned.

“Okay. Fitty-towsand dollah,” she said in her parody of a Vietnamese accent, sticking her palm out.

“You bitch!” I laughed.

“Speaking of bitches, tell me about the evil lady again…”

I launched into my description of Miranda and the Templetons, and for awhile, my mind stayed off my heartbreak. We ended up talking until 4 AM, when I finally fell asleep on the couch.

In the few furtive hours of sleep I got, I dreamt about him constantly. I couldn’t even get away from the pain in my dreams.

I awoke feeling heartbroken and empty. Added to that, I was exhausted from lack of sleep, and uncomfortable from passing out on the couch.

But worst of all was the heartbreak.

Anh came out of her bedroom in a stupor, but she made us pancakes and we talked some more.

The day passed in a long, slow crawl. We watched some bad movies on cable, then talked some more, then ordered delivery for dinner.

Around 3 o’clock, someone knocked on our door. “Is Lily Ross in there?”

“NO, GO AWAY!” Anh yelled at the top of her lungs.

“This is Adrienne Thomas with Channel Five News – ”

“I’M CALLING THE COPS AGAIN IF YOU DON’T GO AWAY!” Anh screamed.

When she saw my astonished look, Anh shrugged. “They do that sometimes. Keep your voice down so they can’t hear you. If they know you’re in here for sure, they’ll never stop.”

I stared at her, open-eyed. “You called the cops?”

“Just once. After that they cut it out… mostly.”

“Anh, I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

“Yeaaah, you
so
owe me,” she said with a sideways look.

More than anything, I wanted him to call.

He didn’t on Sunday, though.

Or Monday.

Or Tuesday.

Or Wednesday.

Day stretched into day with no way to discern between them, except that Anh left for work on Mondays through Fridays. Then it was just me, alone, imprisoned like before – but with Ramen noodles instead of filet mignon, just like Anh had said. And I didn’t even have a view, because if I opened the blinds, they would know I was here and descend like vultures.

So it was me, in a dark apartment, watching TV, eating ice cream, being depressed, bursting into tears without warning, looking at the phone every ten minutes, wondering when he would call.

He didn’t.

I played our last few times together over and over again in my head, pondering what I had done wrong, trying to figure out how I could have done it differently, wondering if I had made a terrible, terrible mistake, paranoid that I had trusted Sebastian and he had betrayed me.

It felt like I was slowly going insane.

I could go through a long litany of all the horrible boring movies I watched, all the gallons of ice cream I ate, all the staring at the wall in depression, and all the times I thought about calling and begging him to take me back.

In the end, though, I guess it was my stubborn pride that refused to let me pick up the phone.

That, and my growing certainty that I had ruined everything beyond repair.

I scoured the internet for stories about what Connor was doing now (especially if he had been seen with any other women), but there was nothing. Oh, there were news stories, alright, and plenty of them mentioned me. But mostly they focused on the solar plan in Nevada and how it was coming along. There were announcements of political protests against the politicians involved, and counter-protests, and op-ed pieces on both sides of the aisle.

But nothing on Connor’s personal life.

I kept looking.

I had a
lot
of time on my hands.

Days passed, then weeks passed, and the pain dulled a bit. Not much, but enough that I was only looking at the phone every hour instead of every ten minutes.

Anh had to take care of the groceries and shopping. She even had to pick up my Nuvaring birth control prescription for me.

I’m sure the paparazzi would have
loved
getting pictures of
that.

The vans gradually dwindled out front. I thought they might finally be gone, and I went out for a walk one morning through the backdoor where Johnny had dropped me off.

Bad idea.

Three men saw me and ran around the corner, snapping pictures and filming video. One of them thrust a mic in my face and yelled questions like, “Lily Ross, did you extort Connor Templeton for the $50,000? Is it true that you and Miranda Lockwood are lesbian lovers? Is it true that Lifetime is buying the rights to your story?”

I ran back inside the apartment building, screaming at them to leave me alone. For the next thirty minutes, people pounded on my door until I called the police. The cops came and cleared the assholes out, but after that, I was terrified to go outside.

However, over the next few days my stir-craziness overwhelmed my fear, and I began to badger Anh for help.

“I can’t take you anywhere, they’ll do that thing where they made Princess Diana’s car crash,” Anh said.

She was actually serious when she said that.

“I’m not nearly
that
big a story. Especially not now. My fifteen minutes are almost up.”

“You’re going to have to wear a burka so they won’t recognize you,” she protested. “And then you’re going to look weird because you’re wearing a burka.”

I finally wore her down, and convinced her to smuggle me out on the backseat floor of her car. That actually worked; she’d been coming and going for so long that they ignored her. She took me on hikes in Runyon Canyon or Griffith Park for as long as we could stand. With my hair pulled up under a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses on, I looked like any other LA wannabe hiking the dusty trails, trying to work off extra pounds for my next audition. No one ever noticed who I was, and I began to feel slightly human again.

But the pain never went away. It lessened, slightly, but never, ever went away.

The good news was that I didn’t have to worry about rent and food. I gave Anh my share of the rent and utilities and groceries, and paid her back all the small loans I owed her from the previous months.

As I watched the amount in my checkbook slowly dwindle, though, I began to think of the future. $50,000 (now $47,329) was a huge sum of money for me, but it wasn’t going to last forever. I had to think about what I was going to do.