BILLIONAIRE (Part 5) (4 page)

“And you’re still helping him.”

“Giving him a job is the least I can do for him.  He’s pretty good at making money when he puts his mind to it.  He can charm people easily enough.  But there’s a hole in him that I … I don’t know.  It’s just there.”

“I understand that hole,” I said, without overthinking my reply.  Just going with it.  This was the most personal and exposed conversation I had ever had with anyone – bar none – about my past.  I knew without asking that it was equally groundbreaking for Alexander.  Right here, out in the open, in a lavender-walled room in the Louvre, of all places.  I spoke quietly and Alexander leaned closer.  “There were men that visited my mother,” I began.  “She was pretty, even then.  Even when it got bad.  She was lonely.  Even as a child of nine or ten I was barely ever home.  Already I was determined to do well in school and – like you – dig my way out of that … life.  Already I knew that graduating with good grades was my ticket, if only I could achieve it.  I wasn’t sure I could.  I had to work so hard.  It didn’t come easily at first.  I had to teach myself.  I practically lived at school and in the bookstores and libraries.  Sometimes, when I got a little older, I would take a bus to Charlottesville to the university there.  I sat in the classrooms when they were empty.  I touched the books, I don’t know, … like I wanted to absorb what was in them through osmosis or something.  The students were everything I aspired to be, with their cars and their backpacks, their shiny hair and their laughter. 
That’s
what I wanted.  A future.  A fun, bright, happy future.  I could almost feel like I was a part of it when I was around them.  But then I’d have to go home again.”

This next part was harder to talk about, but I kept going.  I could feel the therapeutic purge of emotion even before I spoke.  “There was one man in particular who spent time with my mother.  He lived with us for almost a year.  When I was thirteen.”  My voice had grown raspy and Alexander’s face showed the beginnings of anger.  He was anticipating what I was about to say.  I liked that anger there.  I imagined I could use it to fend off the anxiety, as a shield where before there’d been nothing.  No protection.  No hope of escape.  I kept the description simple but the husked edge to my voice hinted at the depth of my buried sorrow.  “He used to come into my room.  He would … touch me.  He would make me touch him.  He never took it … all the way.  He never took my virginity, but he did … other things.  Lots of things.  All the time.  Every night.  My mother was so out of it.  So unaware.  He used all that complacency and all that grief to his full advantage.”  I paused and Alexander let me.  He waited for me to continue, which I did.  “It was relentless.  And it made me feel so dirty.  Every night after my mother had passed out he would come to me.  He didn’t physically beat me but the pain of it all was … just so awful.  The hole grew bigger.  Darker and deeper.”

Alexander reached for my hand and held it.  “Jesus, Lila.  You didn’t tell anyone?  You didn’t tell your mother?”

“I thought about it.  I thought about telling her.  But he could read that.  He threatened to kill her.  He could tell I was getting close.  So he killed my pet rabbit.  As a warning.  I was devastated.  I just couldn’t take it anymore.  I finally ran away.  I lived under a bridge for a while.  I slept in a barn.  I hid in the library and got locked in for the night.  I loved the sound of that lock clicking into place.  It meant no one could get me.  No one could get in.  I slept in a chicken coop, once.  But I always went to school, if I could.  I kept my hiding places close enough to get there.  No matter what.  My teachers noticed, eventually, and I was returned home.  By then he was gone.  The police realized the squalor of our living conditions.  My mother was put into a rehab facility, but she never got better.  She died when I was a sophomore in college. I was placed in foster care, with a single woman who was kind enough but distant.  She needed the money.  I was grateful for the roof over my head.  The electricity.  The
food
.  But we were both relieved when I left for Princeton.”

“Christ,” Alexander said, his rage muted by a compassion that was so full of understanding it undid me.  The memories didn’t make me cry.  Not even the relief that my life had changed so profoundly from those horrific dark days.  It was Alexander’s
grasp
of my damages that coiled right into my heart like a soulful, jagged knife, spilling fear and grief and loss along with my blood.  Releasing all those pent-up secrets.

Confessing all that felt more than restorative. 

It felt like solace.  It felt like life.  It felt like trust.

It felt like
love
.

Alexander put his arm around me and stood slowly, guiding me along with him with careful reverence.  As though I was made of glass.  His eyes never left me.  “I’m taking you back to the hotel.  I’m canceling our meeting with Etienne.  We can do that another day.”

He had made a dinner meeting with the editor-in-chief of the French edition of his magazine.  I’d been looking forward to it.  After all, it wasn’t every day a person dined with a billionaire and a Parisian editor of one of the world’s trendiest publications.  And it would be the first time Alexander and I had socialized with someone other than each other since we’d arrived in Paris.  “No, don’t cancel it,” I said.  There were lingering tears in my eyes but I didn’t feel distraught.  I felt comforted, if anything.  I felt surprisingly calm, and light.  “I want to go out.”

“You’re not feeling up to it.”

“Alexander, I’ve been living with these secrets for seven years.  The only thing that’s changed is that now you know what haunts me.  You said you wanted to know and now you do.  I’m over all that.  I escaped it.  And now I’m with you.”

Alexander stopped walking and stood, facing me.  His hands were on my shoulders.  He seemed touched by something I’d said.  After several moments of staring, dazzled, into my eyes, he kissed me.  The kiss was so tender it almost brought fresh tears to my eyes.  “Yeah,” he said, and his voice had gone all husky.  “You’re with me.  And I’m going take such good fucking care of you, you’re going to forget all that other stuff once and for all.”

“I already have.”

He studied my face, not entirely convinced.  “Are you sure you don’t want to go back to our hotel room?  It’s a lot to confess.  I know that wasn’t easy to do. I can meet with Etienne tomorrow.  Or the next day.”

“No.  I’m fine.”  More studious concern.  But I felt unusually sanguine in the aftermath of my confession.  I had never told anyone what I’d just told Alexander and the burden
did
feel lighter.  Like it had happened to another person.  Not entirely, but just a little.  Just enough.  “I want to go out.  I want to eat with you.  You should meet with your editor.  Don’t worry about me.  Rehashing old wrongs isn’t going to make them right.  I just want to forget about my past and live my present.”  I felt slightly more vulnerable than I was letting on, but that was nothing new.  Most of my existence had been conducted through a veil of feigned courage.  And in Alexander’s company, my imagined staunchness felt more empowered – more
real
– than it ever had.  “Bring it on.”

This brought a half-smile to his lips.  He kissed me again, this time allowing some of that wildcat eroticism to creep back into his protective concern.  “Bring it on,” he whispered, repeating my words against my lips.  “All right, then, honey girl.  Have you had enough of Delacroix for today?”

I nodded, and he lightly squeezed my hand, leading me out of one masterpiece-loaded gallery room and into another.  He was about to ask me a question; I could tell by the little crinkle between his dark eyebrows.  Already, I was learning his little idiosyncrasies and for some reason this pleased me immensely.

“Seven years,” he said.  “And you were thirteen.”

“I don’t really want to talk about that anymore.”

“No. I’m not.  I’m just doing some basic math over here.”

Ah.  He’d figured out one of the details I’d yet to share with him.  “And how’s that going for you?”

He gave me a sideways glance.  Damn, he was gorgeous.  With his white cotton shirt, exquisitely made but worn to the point of being visibly-comfortable, the rich shine of his ink-black hair, the seraphic beauty of his absurdly-stunning tanned face, he was outshining the art.  “You’re
twenty
?”

“Nicely done, professor,” I said.  “Now I get why you’re the CEO.”

“Are you kidding me?  You’re not even old enough to legally drink?”

“I am in France.”

“Good point.”

“And I’ll be twenty-one in two weeks.”

He shook his head in disbelief, but he was smiling.  “I know you got your degree in three years, but that would make you –”

“I also skipped seventh grade,” I said.

“All that library time,” he smiled gently.

“Yeah.  And the osmosis.”

“I’m glad you told me.”  His comment was quiet, almost off-hand, like he didn’t want to kick up any regret.

“And I’m glad you told me,” I said, finding, oddly, that I was.  On both fronts.  I felt closer to the elusive billionaire Alexander Wolfe than I’d ever felt to anyone in my entire life.  I didn’t know what that said about me, or him, and I didn’t particularly care.  All I knew was that I was glad I’d survived all those dark days and terrifying nights, all that work and struggle and desperation.  Because it had all brought me to this one moment of such glittering magnificence that it almost felt worth it.

We sat at a cozy but very expensive restaurant on the Champs d’Elysee, in a corner table by the front window.  The restaurant was busy but our little enclave felt secluded.  We were early for our appointment, so Alexander ordered a bottle of champagne and some
hors d’oevres
.  His command of French, like so many things about him, was impressive.  He must have taught himself a couple of languages, somewhere between working those odd jobs, raising Jake, and clawing his way onto the honor roll.  It felt different now that we knew each other’s secrets.  Connective.  Our pasts were both riddled with deprivation; we had that in common.  That we now knew this about each other seemed to hinge us in a more profound way.  Like the broken pieces of us somehow fit together.

Our bond had begun with a rampant sexual attraction that had seen us forsake every consequence.  And now it was blooming into something else altogether.  Something equally as powerful and just as urgent.

Studded now with the effect of our confessions, our sexual attraction was more relentless than ever.  By this point, it had been many hours since we’d left the plush haven of our bed in Alexander’s hotel suite.  In our ten days together – and this seemed astounding to me, that we’d only known each other for just under two weeks – we’d made love so frequently that our bodies had become accustomed to a certain timetable.  Our need for each other was so ridiculously intense that this long stretch of hours of constant contact had driven us to a sort of fever pitch of foreplay and anticipation.

I was wearing a black plunging V-neck silk-knit top, a short, flouncy black skirt, my new pink scarf and my Balenciaga boots.  And nothing else.

As we were waiting for our food to arrive, I got up to go and check my face after my gushing tell-all in the Louvre.  I probably looked like a train wreck.  Oddly, when I went to check my reflection in the mirror, I found I didn’t look stricken or shattered.  My face was flushed along my cheekbones.  My eyes were barely bloodshot, but the slight, fading redness gave my green irises an almost neon brilliance.  The platinum streaks of my hair were artfully unruly.

This newfound cocktail of love, lust, leisure and the Louvre was having an unexpected effect on my both my appearance and my outlook.  I felt like I’d just lost ten pounds of existential weight.  And the effect of my emotional purge apparently had left me more empowered and more courageous than ever.  Like I’d just eaten a big meal of genius and it was still not only churning around in my psyche but manifesting itself into my look.