Crushing On The Billionaire (Part 2) (6 page)

“And why the hell not?”

“Look at me!”

“Look at you.” Patrick captured one of my flailing hands and turned me around as if I were a prima ballerina. “You are so beautiful, so perfect, so perfectly you, Loren. I couldn’t have imagined anything better.”

“It’s weird,” I said.

“It’s you. You’re not trying to be anyone else, and I love it. You’re genuine. You’re real.”

“You’re not embarrassed to be seen with me?”

“I’m only embarrassed for the getups everyone else will be wearing,” he said. “You’re going to outshine them all. The belle of the ball.”

“I highly doubt that,” I scoffed, blushing.

“You are perfect,” he repeated. “Now get that perfect ass into my car or else we really will be late.”

It felt wonderful that Patrick approved wholeheartedly of my faux formalwear, but as soon as we were in the car, and I was feeling secure in one area of my life, the other worry—Shawn—reared its head. I had to breathe deep and try not to panic. I needed to keep my mind on the task at hand, making it through the benefit without alerting Patrick that anything was wrong. He needed this. I needed this. We needed some form of normalcy.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, glancing over at me, clearly alerted to my distress from my heavy breathing.

“Nothing,” I lied. “Thought I was getting the hiccups.”

He smiled, and I hated myself for being dishonest.

“Have you heard from Shawn lately?” he asked. “Seen him, even?”

I should’ve expected the question; it had sort of become our “hello” or “how’s the weather,” but it still took me off guard.

“Why?” I asked. “Have you heard anything?”

“No,” he said, looking at me askance. “That’s why I was asking you.”

I was terrible at lying, and I hated it. I wondered if there was a subtle way I could shift the conversation.

“I did see him the other night,” I said, carefully, trying to feed Patrick something of some substance, something to reassure him and make him happy, and something to distract him from my falsehoods.

“When?”

“A few nights ago; I don’t remember which, exactly,” I said. “He was doing fine. He’d been out on the town with some friends. Just ran into him, really, and there wasn’t much time to catch up.”

“Loren, you’re shaking.” Patrick reached over and grabbed my hand. “Please don’t be nervous about the gala. You look tremendous, you really do. It should be the least of your worries.”

“I’m not worried about the benefit,” I protested, realizing my mistake too late, understanding I should’ve gone with the excuse he’d provided me with. Instead, Patrick gave me a long look and pulled the car over long before the turnoff for the museum.

“Then tell me what you’re worried about,” he said, looking deep in my eyes. “I am begging you to be honest with me. I know it’s about Shawn. I know you’ve been lying. I need to know the truth about him. How he’s doing. I only have an incomplete picture. I haven’t been able to find out much, and like it or not, you’re the best informed out of anyone.”

How had I drawn up the courage to lie to this man about his son? It seemed ludicrous now, and I realized the courage had been false. I’d been only protecting myself. It was my fault that Shawn was like this now, and I was so horrified at my role in his tragedy that I hadn’t even been able to be honest with myself.

I told Patrick everything, leaving nothing out, divulging every grim detail and observation, every suspicion and worry, every heartache and horror. Everything.

He was quiet for a long time before pulling back out onto the road.

“We’re still going to the benefit?” I asked in a small voice. I hated myself for it, but I actually felt better after burdening Patrick with the truth about his son. I knew how badly the truth had to hurt.

“We have to at least put in an appearance,” he confirmed, his mouth set in a straight line.

It was difficult to feel anything at all as a valet helped me from the car, as Patrick fixed a smile onto his face and escorted me on his arm inside the museum. He introduced me to more people than I could remember, then deposited me near the bar.

“I have to use the restroom and make a couple more rounds,” he said, “then we can leave. Try to enjoy yourself.”

Every time I smiled it felt like I had broken glass in my mouth. I’d lied to Patrick, and I’d destroyed his trust in me. I’d done it with the best intentions, but there were some pretty dire sayings about intentions. My efforts to save Patrick grief had caused him even more pain in the end, and the only thing I could try to do for him was to keep a brave face on and soldier through this benefit, for both of our sakes.

The champagne was tasteless, each intricate appetizer dust. I couldn’t even enjoy the canvases and sculptures around the beautiful gallery that hosted the benefit.

It was almost a relief when Patrick made his excuses and led me back outside.

“I wanted to stick around for the dance, but I’m not sure I’m in the mood anymore,” he said once we were back in the car.

I had ruined everything many times over and was so sick over it I could barely speak.

“I’m sorry.”

“I wanted it for you, not for me,” he said. “I’ve danced at plenty of these things. I wanted you to dance.”

Something about that statement made me start to cry. He took my hand and kissed it.

“I am going to say something, and it is going to hurt you,” Patrick said.

“I deserve it.”

“You don’t deserve it. But it’s going to hurt all the same.”

“I’m ready.”

“I don’t think we should be together anymore.”

It was a sucker punch that literally made me lose my wind, sucking in air to fill my deflated heart.

“What we have is killing my son, and I can’t keep doing it without stabilizing him first,” Patrick said.

“I agree,” I said, surprising both of us.

“You agree?” He blinked at me, clearly shocked, even though it was hard to discern his exact expression in the dark car.

“I love Shawn so much, and I hate seeing him hurt himself, hurt his future,” I said. “I would do anything to make it right.”

There was a long pause. “Now I’m going to say something that’s going to be confusing,” Patrick said.

“Okay.”

“I don’t want to be without you. I love you too goddamn much.”

And suddenly, his seat was pushed back, and I was straddling his lap, and we were together again, and everything was right—only nothing was. We were just two people trying to make sense of the world in a secluded parking lot the only way we could fathom doing it—together.

It was hard to get ahold of Shawn, to pin him down in one place. He wouldn’t answer calls or texts from Patrick or I, and he hadn’t been back to the house since that awful day when he’d found out about my relationship with his father. But in an effort to save him—because I knew he needed help, and he wouldn’t admit it until it was too late—I reached out to anyone and everyone.

I hung around the spaces between buildings where the motley assortment of people he’d taken to spending time with could be found. I left my own classes early—and at a dead run—to arrive at his classes just as they were letting out.

But Shawn had stopped going to his classes, as far as I could tell. When I talked to his professors, they all had similar stories—that he said he was developing a special project that could only be completed at his studio at home, and that he would be sending them updates remotely.

It was a lie, of course. Patrick hadn’t seen Shawn at all since that confrontation. He hadn’t been at home.

Not for the first time during this entire debacle, I felt like a bad friend. I thought I knew Shawn, and I thought I could anticipate his movements. But I didn’t know where he would go when he wasn’t acting like himself. He could be anywhere in the city—or out of it. He could be anywhere in the world. With the access he had to Patrick’s money, and the loathing he felt for the both of us, he could be literally anywhere he wanted to be.

Just not with the girl he most wanted.

It was that vein of thought that gave me a pretty terrible idea.

“If we want to help Shawn, I think we have to hurt him first,” I told Patrick as we shared dinner on the back deck of his house. “Draw some blood to draw him out.”

“What do you have in mind?” Patrick asked, only hesitating for half a beat before returning his loaded fork to its path toward his mouth.

“He hasn’t been back here or been in contact with you because he has everything he could possibly need.”

Patrick nodded, chewing. We were having salmon served over a fat row of asparagus and fragrant rice, courtesy of Patrick’s chef. Both of us were hopeless in the kitchen.

“What I’m proposing is that you put a freeze on all of Shawn’s cards and accounts,” I continued, my stomach churning too much for me to enjoy the chef’s expert touch on dinner. I noticed that Patrick stopped chewing. “If he realizes that he can’t buy what he needs—or can’t go where he needs to go—because something’s wrong with his access to money, there’s only one person he can go to in order to get it fixed.”

“You’re suggesting I starve him out.”

“He’s not actually going to starve,” I scoffed, if only to hide my uneasiness about doing this. “He’s not stupid. He’s resourceful. And since neither of us can track him down ourselves, I think this is the next best bet. Unless you want to hire a detective or something. I don’t know. Would that be more extreme or less extreme?”

Patrick heaved a sigh and put his fork down on the edge of his plate. “I wish he’d just reach out.”

“He will,” I assured him. “But this just expedites it. He’s not going to his classes, Patrick. I’m worried that he won’t be able to graduate.”

I didn’t voice the fact that I was worried that I wouldn’t graduate either. Our grades—and our graduations—were linked directly to our joint senior project. As far as I knew, Shawn hadn’t been so much as thinking about it, let alone working on it. For not the first time, I wondered about breaking out of the project and pursuing something on my own. No one would fault me for it…no one except for myself. Pulling out of our joint project would mean that I was giving up on Shawn, and I didn’t want to give up on him. He was making mistakes, sure, but he wasn’t completely unredeemable. I couldn’t ignore the guilt that I felt at being the cause behind some of his most recent failings, either, and I didn’t want him to think I was giving up on him by going a different direction with the project we were supposed to share.

“I think it’s a good idea,” Patrick said, jolting me out of my worries. “You’re right. He’s not going to starve—or suffer. He’ll have to come to me, and that’s when we can intervene. Air our concerns.”

“And how do you think he’s going to take that?” I asked, a stab of apprehension scuttling any further desire to eat the rapidly cooling dinner the chef had prepared.

“I can’t imagine he’ll take it well,” Patrick admitted, “but these are things he needs to hear. He can’t think that he’s doing himself any favors by laying waste to every achievement he’s made so far. I just think he needs to hear it from us that it’s time to take a good, hard look at the havoc he’s wreaking on his future. And his present.”

I was glad Patrick knew everything I knew about just how self-destructive Shawn had become. It was a secret I couldn’t keep to myself, a problem I couldn’t handle alone. It was an issue that a parent needed to deal with, that only someone who’d known a person for their whole life could help solve. Shawn felt less frightening now that I could share the burden of my knowledge with Patrick.

Of course, it didn’t really help things that I was prepared—just as Patrick was prepared—to end our relationship if that was what it took to get through to Shawn. It made me sad to think that we could be throwing this entire thing away—a relationship that took my breath away at every turn and made me feel things I never realized were possible.

But if I could throw all of that away in order to save Shawn, I’d do it. I wanted to be a good friend to him, no matter what the cost was.

Even if the cost was my own happiness.

Patrick made all of the necessary arrangements for my plan to draw Shawn out, and then it was just a matter of waiting—waiting to see just how long Shawn was willing to go without access to his father’s money. If he happened to have a lot of cash on him, which was possible, given the state he’d been in when I bailed him out of jail, it would be a while until Patrick heard from him. But if he was cash poor at the moment and tried to withdraw money to feed whatever habits he’d developed to cope with the reality of his situation—that his best friend was sleeping with his dad—we would hear from him much sooner.

It was as much a relief as a worry that we heard from him sooner than later.

I was on campus, still going through the motions of attending school even if I didn’t feel the least bit engaged, when my phone vibrated in my hip pocket. It was Patrick. He began speaking without so much as a preamble.

“How soon can you be at your apartment?”

“I’m on campus right now, so no more than ten minutes,” I said. “Why?”

“I’ve sent a car to pick you up there,” he explained. “Shawn is on his way over.”

I felt a stab of trepidation that I hadn’t expected. This was what we’d wanted, wasn’t it? We wanted him to get in contact with us so we could tell him that he was in danger of ruining everything he’d worked so hard for in this life. So why did I wish he’d just disappear and never come back to bother us? I chalked it up to just being nervous. There wasn’t a delicate way to tell someone that they were screwing everything up. I fully expected the encounter to be nasty.

“Loren?”

“I’m here,” I said.

“I really need you to be here for this.”

Patrick was a billionaire. He had unpleasant conversations and made difficult decisions every day of his life. But somehow, I knew that everything regarding his own son was much different. The fact that he wanted my support on this—needed it, even—made me quicken my pace across campus to a jog.

“I’ll be there,” I assured him.

It was perfect timing; the car screeched to a halt in front of the apartment complex just as I ran up to it, and I flung open the back door before the driver could get out and open it for me.

“Just go,” I said, hoping we could make it to the house before Shawn. I wanted to be there for Patrick, whom I loved, but I also wanted to be there for my best friend—even if he didn’t consider me his best friend anymore. That couldn’t make any difference to me. I just had to support him.

The ride seemed longer than usual. It was probably my impatience to get there, or perhaps the lunch break traffic clogging the roadways. But I was relieved to find that Shawn’s car wasn’t in the driveway yet. I’d beaten him here.

I jumped out of the car—again before the driver could hold my door open for me—and ran into the house, opening my mouth to call for Patrick to let him know I was here.

Instead, I was greeted to the sight of both Shawn and Patrick standing awkwardly in the foyer, almost just like the confrontation the three of us had already had, when Shawn first found out about the relationship I shared with his father. I furrowed my brow, a question on my lips.

“I didn’t see your car outside, Shawn,” I said. It wasn’t a question, or what I’d wanted to ask, but it would have to do.

“I took a car, but I don’t see why you care,” he said, sounding like his voice was coming out of the bottom of a well. He didn’t look good—a scruffy beard covering the bottom half of his face, his eyes deeply shadowed and far away. Had he really shown up here drunk or on drugs? Maybe this little intervention was happening far too late.

“He sold his car,” Patrick clarified, crossing his arms over his chest, clearly disgusted.

I blinked in surprise as Shawn laughed. “We live in San Francisco,” he said. “I don’t need a car. Plenty of people get by without cars, right, Loren? I just need to find a rich idiot to glom onto so I can get all the car services I need.”

Shawn was angry, but I tried not to let his barbs pierce me. He’d come here only because he was desperate, and this would be the best time to try and get him to admit that he needed help turning his life around.

“Don’t disrespect Loren,” Patrick boomed, his voice echoing. “She came here because she cares about you. We both do.”

“Is this the point of the conversation when you’re going to tell me to start calling her
stepmother
?” Shawn sneered.

“Maybe we should all just sit down,” I suggested, my voice shaking. “Maybe in the den or the kitchen? I…I could ask the chef to make some lunch or something, and we could all do with something to drink.”

“Very good, Loren,” Shawn said, clapping his hands. “You’ve slid right in to the role of stepmother and hostess. Do you live here now? Feels like home, doesn’t it?”

“That is enough.” Patrick glowered at Shawn, and they were the doppelgangers once more, their expressions of wrath mirroring each other. I’d tried to diffuse this situation but failed miserably. It seemed like my very presence was riling Shawn up, and I wondered if it was a mistake to participate in the intervention. Maybe it should’ve just been a father-son talk. I was intruding and only making things worse.

“Look, I only came here to figure out what’s going on with my credit card,” Shawn said, yanking out his wallet and waving the offending bit of plastic at his father. “The purchases aren’t going through, and the bank said I needed to take it up with you. Tell me what’s happening and I’ll gladly get out of your life.”

“I don’t want you to get out of my life,” Patrick said. “That’s the last thing I want. You’re my son.”

“Just…don’t.” Shawn held his hands up. “Don’t even start. I’ve come here on business. I have things to do, as I’m sure you do, too. Tell me what’s going on with the card and I’ll be on my way.”

“I put a hold on the card,” Patrick told him.

“A hold?” Shawn peered at him. “And why the fuck would you do that?”

“What is this? Where is this coming from?” Patrick passed his hand in front of his eyes, like something might magically change if he looked at it in a different way. “Who are you? This isn’t the son I raised. This isn’t the Shawn I know.”

“Are you only just starting to try to get to know me?” Shawn retorted. “You had your chance, old man. I don’t have the patience for you to try to be a father anymore.”

This was getting too serious, too real, and I wished that I could leave. This wasn’t something I was supposed to witness, this battle between father and son. This was too personal.

“How can you say that?” Patrick was asking. “Maybe your mother and I had you too young. But you were never unloved. I loved you—I still love you—very much. It’s something you can’t understand. You won’t understand it until you have a child of your own—a son. It’s something I can’t explain to you.”

“Then explain why you’re sleeping with the girl I’m in love with,” Shawn suggested, eyeing me. “If you care so much about me, then why are you doing this?”

“It’s not something I’m doing to hurt you, Shawn,” Patrick said. “Love just…happens. There usually isn’t a good explanation for it unless two people fall in love with each other. People have been trying for centuries to explain that.”

“And me?” Shawn asked, thumping his chest violently. “What about me?”

“One person fell in love, not two,” I said quietly. “Just one.”

He looked at me like he forgot I was here. I wished I hadn’t spoken up, but I couldn’t be a bystander at this juncture of the argument. This was about me, and I had to defend myself and my relationship with Patrick. Patrick was the greatest thing in my life right now. He was keeping me motivated and keeping me strong, even as I struggled to cope with what Shawn was doing to himself. I wasn’t about to forsake this man or what he meant to me, even if it was hard for Shawn to hear. This had to be said, and he had to understand it.