Billion Dollar Love

by Sam Crescent

  A humorless laugh works its way out of his chest. “I thought I told you not to—”

  “I’m not apologizing for that,” I explain softly. “I’m sorry for what I said that first day. I didn’t know you. And I—” I pause for a second. “I was wrong.”

  Somehow, I have never noticed how small an elevator car is. Packed in as we are, when Sawyer turns to me, I can smell his cologne. The scent of mahogany and clary sage washes over me again, and something else, something simply … masculine.

  As if I’ve been forced into slow motion, I blink up at him drowsily. He’s staring with an inscrutable expression down at me, that jaw covered in dark stubble only inches from my face. I step closer.

  “I was wrong,” I repeat, enjoying—for once—the fact that I misjudged someone.

  One of his hands gently lifts my hair and rests on the back of my neck, powerful and restrained against the delicate bones that support my head. I close my eyes, tip back my chin, and give myself over to the storm inside me. So what if it’s wrong? It feels right.

  With painfully slow tenderness, Sawyer Blake bends down to kiss me, one unruly curl brushing my cheekbone. I can feel his breath on my lips, his wide palms on either side of my face, and then—nothing.

  The elevator dings that we are on the ground level, and just like that, the spell is broken. The double doors slide open again, and with a wild look in his eyes, Blake stumbles backwards out of them and into the dark lobby. Pausing for only a moment, face twisted with cruel humor, he speaks.

  “I don’t think you were.”

  ****

  For the next three days, I arrive at work to an email with directives from Blake in it. Always, they are clipped, professional, and never once does the tone verge on what was formerly a playful banter. And what’s more? They always plot me on a path far away from him. Even Hannah the Secretary notices how often I’m at my desk, and true to form, she calls to gossip about it immediately.

  “How’s the Leighton case going?” she asks.

  “You know I can’t really discuss it,” I remind her. “But it’s going as well as can be expected.”

  My meeting with the women from Leighton’s office is still scheduled for this week, so I must not have fucked things up too badly. Just badly enough that he hasn’t even wanted to see my stupid face for three days.

  “Good, good.” I can practically hear her squirming on the other end of the line, itching for some juicy bit of information. “The client seems so…”

  “Yeah, well, they’re not all roses,” I mutter. She’s treading on thin ice, and she knows it. Wisely, she moves on to personal matters.

  “So, how’s Jason?”

  The question is innocuous enough, and I could easily lie. A simple “good” would go a long way with her, but something makes me answer differently. Maybe it’s because the mention of him reminds me how guilty I feel for the almost-kiss with Blake in the elevator. Maybe it’s because I suspect the mention of Jason is the reason he didn’t kiss me. Maybe it’s because, try as I might, when I look at Jason now, I can’t remember what I saw in him to begin with, and that has nothing to do with Sawyer Blake or an almost-kiss.

  “I think I’m going to end things.”

  There is silence from the other end of the line, and even I am taken aback. Who is this Violet who says what she means when it actually matters?

  “Oh,” Hannah murmurs. “How do you think he’ll take it?”

  “It’ll be fine,” I lie. “Now I just have to make rent by myself.”

  I make an attempt at a laugh, but it falls flat. A slow, churning feeling begins in my gut. How would he really take it? Not well, that’s for sure. I rifle through the memories of all our fights over things as trivial as my clothes or not texting him back fast enough. I think of the way, last week, he threw his gym bag so hard against the wall that plaster dust is still pooling on the wood floor from the impact.

  What would he do to me?

  Chapter Four

  I am pacing the floor of my apartment, stomach in knots. I have rehearsed the speech a dozen times over the course of the weekend, but it still seems off. What if I choke? What if I chicken out like I have a thousand other times? There’s one question above them all that keeps me going.

  What if it works?

  Before I met Jason, I might have been lonely, but I was free. I wore what I wanted, went where I wanted, did what I wanted. And despite the fact that this case and Sawyer Blake and life in general has been nothing but shitty and confusing lately, I do know one thing: I don’t love Jason anymore. Maybe I never did.

  And that’s why, when his key turns in the lock, I swallow my anxiety and square my shoulders. He greets me like he always does, with something between a grunt and a huff. Dropping his gym bag, he pulls off his ballcap and throws it frisbee-style to the coffee table. Something about the action, so familiar and intimate, makes me stiffen. I have already started thinking of the apartment as just mine, and he is violating my space.

  “Jason, I was hoping we could talk.” I feel myself rock nervously onto my toes, and I take a deep breath.

  “Yeah?” He throws a suspicious look over his shoulder. “About what?”

  “I was just thinking…” I sit down on the couch again, and immediately, I want to stand back up. Jesus, what was I going to say? “I think maybe we are growing apart.”

  Slowly, Jason turns to face me, and I’m struck, not for the first time, by how big he is. “What do you mean?” he asks carefully.

  “I mean…” I cast my eyes to the arm of the couch, rubbing the back of my arm. “Things haven’t been the same for a while now, and I think—I think maybe we should…”

  “Should what?” His tone is deadly low, and it sets my heart to beating in my throat. I feel like I’m going to throw up. “Break up? Are you breaking up with me, Vi?”

  “Maybe that would be best,” I whisper, then clear my throat. I want to say more, but it’s out there, now. I’ve said my piece, and now is probably one of those times I should just shut my mouth.

  For nearly thirty seconds, Jason is quiet, still. I’m almost fooled into thinking that yes, he is actually taking this well, when he speaks.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he snarls. “Who is he?”

  “What?” I blink, confused.

  “There’s somebody else, right?” A manic expression somewhere on the spectrum between a grin and a grimace pastes itself across his face, and I feel my pulse quicken. “Who the hell is he? Someone at work? Or some stranger? Who is he, Vi? I swear to God, if you don’t tell me…”

  “There’s no one!” I rake my fingers through my hair, agitated, trying desperately to remain calm.

  Even if Sawyer Blake was an option—and he is decidedly not—I’m not ending things with Jason because of him. I’m ending them for the same reason I applied for that job: I’m finally realizing I’m living a life that isn’t mine. Centering myself and closing my eyes, I stand, taking a step toward Jason hesitantly.

  “There’s nothing left here, for either of us,” I whisper gently. And I’m telling the truth. We loved each other once, maybe. But now we are little more than roommates, two people who share the outskirts of each other’s lives, and not gracefully.

  “You don’t get to decide,” he tells me calmly. And then his hands are around my throat.

  It’s blindingly fast, fractions of seconds before he drops his hands, looking at them as if they have betrayed him, but it’s enough. Terror in my middle, I scramble backward away from him and nearly topple over the coffee table.

  “Get out,” I gasp.

  He steps forward, both hands outstretched in a pacifying gesture, but I back up the side of the couch, not above hiding behind it if I have to. Something animal has awakened in me, and now, all that matters is that he doesn’t touch me.

  “Vi, I’m so sorry, I never meant to—”

  “Get. Out.” The words are clipped, furious, terrified.

  With tears streaking his chee
ks, he does.

  ****

  I stumble into work early—paralegals don’t really get sick days, and today is the meeting with Leighton’s plaintiffs—puffy-eyed and on the edge of tears. I didn’t sleep more than twenty minutes at a clip all night long, completely convinced that every unexpected sound was Jason returning for some revenge. In the darkness, the piles of laundry or softly billowing curtains became Jason looming over me, holding a knife or a gun. It’s ridiculous, I know, but before last night I would’ve said the same thing about him choking me.

  Now, my definition of ridiculous is slightly narrower.

  When I reach my desk, I’m actually comforted by the pileup of weekend emails and intraoffice mail. I slide an unmarked envelope off my keyboard to begin answering them when my phone rings.

  “Outside call for you,” Hannah chirps.

  My heart skips a beat. “Jason?” I squeak.

  “No,” she responds, “it’s Mary Wilson.” At my silence, she clarifies. “One of the Leighton plaintiffs.”

  “Oh. Put her through.”

  There is a pause and click, then I can hear labored breathing on the other end of the line.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. Is this—is this Ms. Graham?” The voice, young and vulnerable and striving for strength, throws me off.

  “Yes, it’s me.” It’s intimate—the wrong response, but the one that comes from my lips nevertheless.

  “I’m sorry, we can’t meet today.” Her words tumble over each other like a rockslide. Out of control. Manic.

  “Please, Ms. Wilson, I promise that it will be different from—”

  “We can’t.” She repeats, her voice hoarse. “We … won’t.”

  I open my mouth once more, ready to use that persuasion that got me into law in the first place, but suddenly I’m paralyzed. How can I convince her to come in here and face me?

  “Okay.” I swallow hard, listening to her shaky exhale. “Okay.”

  I hover my index finger over the hang-up button, for all intents and purposes ready to end the call, but I don’t press it. She’s still there, breathing softly. “Mary?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I—I’m sorry for what he did to you,” I whisper. It goes against all the written and unwritten rules of working on a case to admit a client’s guilt to the plaintiff. It’s downright stupid. But I no longer care if I we settle. I no longer care if we win or lose the Leighton case. I no longer care if I even keep this job. I can’t be beholden to men like Stephen Leighton and Jason Rosello, not anymore. And when Mary speaks again, just before the click that signifies the end of the call, it’s all worth it.

  “Thank you,” she whispers.

  ****

  It isn’t until halfway through the afternoon that I remember the envelope from my keyboard, and after rifling through the stack of paperwork, I find it. Inside, there is only one thing: a check written for seven hundred fifty dollars, the exact amount of my rent. And the name signed on the line?

  Sawyer Blake.

  I don’t take The Devil’s Asshole to floor twelve; I don’t even take the new elevator. Too slow. I take the stairs, two at a time, until I’m drenched in sweat. I storm past the janitor’s closet, throw open the glass door to Blake’s secretary and outer office, then stomp past her directly into his office.

  “What the hell is this?” I throw the check forcefully at his desk, but maddeningly, it scallops through the air as gently as a feather before resting on the mahogany.

  He turns from his monitor calmly, jerking his chin slightly to shake a curl out of his eyes. “That would be a check.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” I snarl, taking the check up and tearing it to pieces. “I don’t need your help.”

  He looks mildly shocked. “I was trying to help you.”

  “Well stop trying.” I feel tears threatening to overflow from the anger and hurt coursing through my veins. He thought he could buy me. “How did you even know?”

  A look of dismay and guilt dawns on his face. “I listened to your conversation with the secretary.”

  I blink, and hot tears finally spill over, trailing little mascara rivers down my cheeks.

  “It isn’t that much,” he tries, rising from his seat, “and I’m happy to help while you get back on your feet—”

  “Stop.” I drag my forearm across my face, undignified. I don’t care if I smear my makeup. I don’t care if I’m covered in snot. What does it matter now? “You’re making it worse.”

  “Violet—” He breaks off, brow furrowing as his eyes alight on my neck. “Are those bruises?” Another pause. “Did that son of a bitch put his hands on you?”

  I glower at him. “If he did, it’s no business of yours.”

  Finally, he looks stung. Drawing back with hurt in those blue eyes, he’s silent. I have my opening, and I deliver the killing blow.

  “Take me off the Leighton case. I quit.”

  Chapter Five

  It takes some convincing, going back to Turner and Blake after my explosion in Sawyer’s office. And if it were Sawyer himself or even Hannah who called to convince me, they wouldn’t have been able to get through to me. But when Paul Turner turns up to my apartment, in the flesh, to beg me to return, I feel I have no other option. After all, any request from Paul Turner could turn into his dying wish, and even I am not frigid enough to deny a man that.

  So I go back with one caveat: I will finish my work on the Leighton case this week, and then it will be over. I’ll collect unemployment for a while maybe, and with any luck, I’ll get the job at Cooper, Price, and Smith. If not, there’s got to be other jobs. I’ll flip burgers if I have to. I’ll do anything to avoid looking at Sawyer Blake’s smug face. Turner agrees. One last meeting with the client, and I’m done.

  That’s how I find my way back to conference room B, shifting uncomfortably in the black leather rolling chair. Stephen James Leighton III is here early, too, which is practically unbearable. He readjusts his posture every four seconds, causing the leather on his chair to squeak obnoxiously. It makes it extremely difficult to imagine I am alone.

  “You’re Ms. Graham, right?” He finally breaks the silence.

  “Yep.” I bite my top lip, hoping my lack of eye contact and truncated response are enough to shut him up.

  It doesn’t work.

  “I remember you from the first meeting.” He smiles down his nose at me. “You were wearing black that day.”

  “Yep,” I repeat.

  “You don’t talk much, do you?” He leans forward now, and I feel a squirmy feeling in my guts.

  “Nope.”

  “That’s okay.” He’s still looking at me with that hungry stare, making me feel like I’m suffocating under his gaze. “Even better, actually.”

  My head snaps up. “What?”

  “Oh, c’mon.” He cocks an eyebrow. “You can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. I have more money than you could ever dream of. A little bird told me this is your last week. After that, you’re going to need some source of income, right?”

  Under the table, he slides a hand up my thigh, practically under my skirt. Like I’ve been struck by lightning, I leap up, sending my chair askew. The clatter of it hitting the floor pulls up the heads of every person waiting in the lobby, and I freeze, chest heaving, staring down at Leighton in fury as the conference room door swings open to admit Blake. With Leighton’s handprint still stinging on my skin, I forget everything I’ve been seething over for the past two days.

  “He touched me,” bubbles out before I can stop it. “He touched me.”

  In an instant, Blake is throwing himself across the glossy black table, hands around Leighton’s throat. The pair topple over backward, and Leighton’s head hits the tile, drawing blood almost instantly.

  I should be angry or shocked or upset or any combination of the three. I should stomp out, completely secure in my original decision to quit. But all I can think of is how sexy Sawyer Blake looks beating the shit out of t
he sexual deviant he was supposed to defend.

  ****

  There is something to be said for Stephen Leighton’s tenacity. After three orderly stitches to the back of his relatively large blond head, he actually comes back to the firm. All three of us fully expected for him to return with cops, with threats of another lawsuit, and—at the very least—a formal declaration that we were no longer his legal counsel. Instead, he shakes Sawyer’s still-bloodied hand and apologizes, albeit not very sincerely. But there’s something about his icy eyes that makes me squirm. This isn’t over.

  But the meeting is. We have a plan for the court date, Leighton is in relatively good spirits (which truly makes me wonder if he had a more serious head injury than what the doctors realized), and I am wrestling with ever-complicated feelings about my shitshow of a life. And the absolute last thing I should do is put that maelstrom of thoughts on another person. So naturally, I find myself marching numbly up the staircase to Sawyer Blake’s office ten minute after five. Can’t take either elevator; too many memories.

  The nook outside his office door is deserted and darkened even this early in the evening, and for a moment, I’m afraid he isn’t inside. But then I see the light. There is a beam spilling from the partially opened door onto the gray, commercial carpeting. It isn’t particularly beautiful, but something about the image makes me commit it to memory all the same.

  “Sawyer?” I knock gently on the open door, vaguely impressed that I’m brave enough to use his first name.

  “Come in,” comes the soft reply.

  Carefully, suddenly conscious of how tired I am and my hair sliding out of its twist, I weave around the heavy wooden door into the lamplit room. I have been here before, plenty of times. There is the same expensive-looking desk set against the right wall, the same worn-in armchair in which Howard Blake must have spent days of his life. But everything looks different now, warmer. Everything, that is, except Sawyer Blake.

  He is standing, eyes wide and shoulders thrust slightly forward and giving him the impression of caving in on himself. His knuckles are bandaged, his hair is askew, and more than anything, the look in his eye gives him away. I came here to untangle the mess in my own head, but suddenly that doesn’t matter.