Million Dollar Devil

by Evans, Katy

  I ruffle Charlie’s hair and take him to a safe distance where he can stand and point the camera. “Got it? Don’t move from this spot, no matter what. Okay?”

  He nods. “Get it, Jimmy.”

  I wipe my hands on my jeans, fix my gloves on my hands, and fasten them at my wrists.

  Luke gives me a wink from the cab of the junker truck we got from the dump. I climb up to the bed and get myself situated behind the cab, standing with my legs shoulder-width apart for a solid base. “You getting this, Charlie?”

  He nods.

  I bang on the top of the truck, signaling to Luke to put the pedal to the metal.

  And he does. We’re far away so he can build up speed, and I’ll be hitting the glass tubes at around thirty miles an hour. As the truck speeds up, I catch sight of a gray sports car streaming down the road toward us, kicking up a cloud of dust.

  It looks like Lizzy’s Audi.

  But it ain’t Lizzy’s, of course. The last time I saw her, a week ago in New York, she called me a liar, an asshole, and a fraud.

  All things I’ve owned up to.

  What I haven’t done is capitalized on my fifteen minutes. I got calls from every news outlet in the country, including GMA and Today, wanting me on to discuss what had inspired me to go through with it. I turned them all down.

  What inspired me? Not the money. Not the clothes. Not the chance to be someone I wasn’t.

  Lizzy inspired me. She inspired me right out of Tim’s Bar, because I had a feeling about her.

  She’s inspiring me now to be something other than a liar, an asshole, and a fraud.

  Inspiring me to just be me.

  Even if she hates who I am, that’s the best I can do right now.

  I hear the car’s brakes squeal to a stop as the truck reaches full speed. I place my gloved hands on the surface of the truck’s roof and brace for impact, when out of the corner of my eye, a dark-haired wet dream steps out of the car.

  I lose it.

  Impact.

  Glass shatters in my face. A million little knives sting my skin, and the truck jolts to a stop, but my body is still moving. My boots lose contact with the truck bed, and I’m propelled over the cab of the truck, flying forward weightless into the dirt, headfirst.

  “Jimmy!” voices yell in chorus.

  Charlie. Lizzy.

  LIZZY?

  Everything goes black.

  A minute or an hour later, I blink and hear Luke saying to me, “Hey. Jimmy. You all right, man?”

  I lie there in the mud, dazed, on my side. “Gimme a minute.”

  Luke again. “Hey. Count to ten. One. Two. Wiggle your fingers.” I do. “One. Two. Wiggle your toes. That was sick, man.” Then, farther away. “He’s okay. Just got the wind knocked out of him.”

  “Thank god.” A familiar female voice now.

  Lizzy?

  I open my eyes and grab on to Luke’s arm, pulling myself up. Lizzy. She’s here. Like I’ve died and gone to heaven. “What are you doing here?” I croak out, shaking glass particles out of my hair and lumbering toward her, rubbing my neck.

  “You’re bleeding.” She sounds concerned.

  I wipe my face. I have blood and glass shards embedded in my cheeks. “Then you should be happy, huh?”

  Charlie says, “Jimmy. I’m still filming.”

  Right. I almost forgot. I have him face the camera toward me, and I say, “Well, sickkid09, you’re five hundred dollars poorer. To all my viewers out there, thanks for watching, and see ya next time.”

  He cuts the camera. I punch him in the shoulder and tell him to go hang out in Luke’s pickup for a minute.

  “Why, so you can talk to your girlfriend?”

  I flick him in the head. “Get outta here.”

  He runs off.

  I look at Lizzy. She’s about as out of place as a girl can be, in a gray suit, her pumps sinking into the mud. But damned if she isn’t a sight for sore eyes. “Well, heiress, this is a little out of your zip code.”

  “Where’s your Porsche?” she asks.

  I wave that away. “Piece of shit kept getting stuck in the mud. Got myself a used F-150. And I can still afford to put Charlie in Westminster. Drive’s a bitch, but whatever.”

  “Hmm. I see you got right back into your daredevil stuff,” she says, her words clipped.

  I shrug and rip off my helmet. “Yeah. Well. You can take the street rat out of the sewer, but you can’t take the sewer out of the street rat. Right?”

  She winces. “About that . . . I was dru—”

  “You were right, Lizzy. This is who I am. My only mistake was in pretending I was someone else.”

  She shakes her head.

  I nod.

  She stops shaking her head and just stares at me, biting down on her lower lip as if to hold back from saying something. She reaches into her purse and pulls out an envelope, which she hands to me. “Here.”

  I open it. It’s a check for $500,000, made out to me.

  I hand it back to her. “I don’t want this.”

  “What? Of course you do. It’s a lot of money.”

  “No, Lizzy, I don’t. I got all I need.”

  She hands it back to me, her voice a little uneven. “It’s yours. You fulfilled your end of the contract. In fact, Banks has never been so successful. My father wanted me to ask you if you’d be interested in a three-year contract.”

  I shoot a disbelieving look at her. “You’re serious, heiress?”

  She nods.

  “And what do you want?” That’s all I wanna know.

  She looks confused. “What do you mean?” Before I can say more, she says, “I was wrong, what I said about you. I shouldn’t have said those things. I’m a liar and a fraud too.” Her voice cracks.

  I tear off my gloves, take the check, and tuck it in her expensive purse. “Tell your dad thanks, but no thanks. I’m good. That world? It ain’t me.”

  It takes everything I got to turn away from her. When I look back, she’s still standing there, frozen.

  Finally, she says, “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

  And she turns to leave, stumbling a little, her heels sticking in the mud.

  I watch her wobbling a few steps away, a thousand things I want her to know flooding my head.

  “It ain’t you, either, you know,” I call.

  She turns.

  I take a breath, stroke my week-old stubble. “All I seen when I was in your neck of the woods were people who’d cheat. Disrespect. Blackmail. Treat others like lesser beings because of how they made a living. I should’ve told those people to go to hell, but I found myself thinking I needed to join them in order to get what I wanted. But you ain’t like that.

  “So as far as I’m concerned, the whole of ’em can go to hell.” I rub my neck and fix my stare on hers. “Except you.”

  A small smile appears on her lips. She looks like she wants to say something. She looks vulnerable, unsure. Frustrated and hurt. All at the same time. “Take care of yourself, James.”

  “It’s Jimmy. And don’t let those assholes eat you alive, okay? You’re better than all of them.”

  She starts to walk to her car, and every step she takes makes me wonder what the fuck I’m doing. She drives away in that car, I’m never going to see her again. Our worlds are too separate.

  By the time she gets into her car and pulls away, I’m already regretting this.

  I’m mad as shit at myself. At life. At myself again. At everything.

  I stuff my gloves into my pockets and shove my helmet under my arm as I walk back to the truck, where Charlie and Luke are waiting.

  Just my luck. I’m in love with a fucking princess who I’m never going to be worthy of.

  And I hate myself for not being up to snuff.

  The boys are sitting in the cab, giving me identical looks like I just shot Bambi between the eyes.

  “What?” I mutter, angrily throwing my shit in the back. I motion for Charlie to scooch to the center
and climb into the cab of the truck.

  Luke shrugs. “I don’t know why you let her go.”

  Charlie nods. “You love her, don’t you?”

  I look at them both. Grab my ball cap and fix it down low over my eyes so they won’t see it when I lie. “Just drive.”

  Charlie grabs the cap from my head. “Answer the question.”

  “Yeah,” Luke adds. “Listen to the boy. Answer the question.”

  I sink down in the seat. “Yeah. So what? She’s a princess. And I’m—”

  “A prince,” Luke finishes. “Believe me. She thinks so. We all do.”

  “Not the kind that can give her a single thing she wants in this world.”

  Charlie laughs. “She already has everything, Jimmy. Maybe she just wants you.”

  I put my hat on Charlie and smash it down on his head as Luke says, “For the last time. Listen to the boy. He obviously got the brains in the family.”

  Yeah. Maybe I don’t belong in her world.

  But . . . I think she’d fit like a fucking glove into mine.

  Would she do that?

  Would she give it all up for me?

  “You’re telling me to . . . ,” I mumble, the wheels in my head turning as I look down the winding road stretching through the woods toward the highway. Her Audi’s already disappeared from sight. “What are you saying I should do? Go after her?”

  They both nod like bobbleheads.

  Charlie holds up the camera. “I dare ya.”

  Damn that kid. He knows there ain’t nothing I won’t do on a dare.

  “All right,” I tell him. “But if you’re gonna film it for my channel, I’m gonna do it right.”

  CHANNEL

  Lizzy

  “Thanks, LB,” I say from my home office when an email pops up in my inbox. “I’ll take a look at them and let you know.”

  “All right, Lizzy. Take care.”

  “LB. Wait!” I say before disconnecting the call.

  At some point, I’m going to have to eat crow and admit that I was wrong about him. We’ve been getting along great lately, and I don’t want to hold back on what I have to say. “LB. I’m sorry for what I said at the launch. I was mean and rude, and you’ve been a great help to me after this—”

  “I didn’t only do it for you, Lizzy. I did it for your dad, and for Banks Limited. Though I may have also done it for you,” he adds with a smile in his voice. “You’re a Banks, after all. In all probability, you are going to be my boss someday.”

  “You may end up being my boss,” I say.

  “Yeah. Well. I wouldn’t mind it the other way,” he says.

  I smile when I hang up. I guess I should be happy. My father charged me with finding next season’s new face of our line. Someone who can be rugged and sophisticated, like our last model, who shall remain nameless. LB is helping. I see now why my father trusts him. He knows his stuff, and he’s loyal to Banks’s success.

  It’s okay that my dad decided he’s postponing making a decision on Banks’s future CEO for the time being. Maybe I’ll be CEO one day because of my outside-the-box thinking, or maybe LB will, because of his longevity with the company, but either way, Banks LTD will be in the hands of someone who is totally devoted to it.

  And that’s all I want.

  That’s a long way off, though. My dad embarked on a new exercise program after his health scare, and he’s been feeling better than ever.

  And Banks LTD is doing just as well. The buzz died down about James after a couple of weeks, but the ads with James are hands down the best-performing ads we’ve ever done. Our line is killing it. My father was upset about not being able to snag James for additional seasons, but he’s glad he wasn’t snapped up by the competition.

  And of course, I haven’t seen James.

  It’s been two weeks since I left him in that field south of Atlanta. Since he turned down the rest of the money. Since I drove away, wishing to god he’d come after me and call me back. I would’ve settled for anything. A call. A text. Just a little something, to know he was okay. I thought about texting him, but we’re of two different worlds, and I didn’t think I could bear it if he never responded.

  Sometimes, I’ll drive around his area of town. I’ll go past Tim’s Bar and think of going in. I imagine him sitting in there, in his “office” in the corner, with all of his fans. I even went past his house once, but I didn’t see an F-150 in the driveway.

  The only thing I have now is YouTube. Aside from the stunt I witnessed firsthand in the field, he hasn’t uploaded anything new. His Facebook page says he’s planning something really big, but he’s been mum on what.

  I think about doing stunts of my own.

  Of breaking free of this ivory palace where I live.

  Of not just surviving, but living.

  Turns out that I wasn’t the only one doing the teaching during our time together.

  So I’m going to live. Jeanine and I always joked about backpacking through the wilds of the Australian Outback. We said we’d never survive two days out there without breaking down and crying over a broken fingernail.

  I booked a trip. Next summer, I’m going. Even if Jeanine ends up with some last-minute lawsuit that keeps her from coming, I’ll go alone.

  Without anyone to hold my hand or pay my bills or buy my groceries or tell me who I can or can’t associate with.

  I’m living.

  I wish I could tell James that. I think he’d be proud of me.

  I open up the files for all of the potential models that LB has sent me. They’re handsome and rugged, yes. But not one of them is James. Not even close.

  I’m starting to type in my recommendations so that we can narrow it down to three men to bring in for interviews when my phone rings. It’s Michael.

  “Hey,” I say, happy to hear from him. I haven’t spoken to him since just after Fashion Week, when he told me that he was devastated that he’d never have a chance to dress James again. “How are you?”

  “Honey,” he coos. “Do you hear the sirens?”

  Sirens? I pull the phone away from my ear. Yes, there are definite sirens in the distance, coming closer. “What’s going on?”

  I start to rush to my balcony when Michael says, “Woman. Turn on channel four news, quick.”

  Heart in my throat, I switch directions, find the remote, and flip on my TV. What, is the building on fire? My eyes bulge when I realize there’s a reporter standing in front of my building, the Paramount. “Wha . . . ,” I breathe out as the reporter begins to speak.

  “If you’re just joining us, we’re at the site of one of the tallest condominium complexes in Midtown, where it appears a man is trying to scale the side of the building in a tuxedo, with absolutely no climbing equipment.”

  No.

  NO.

  Numb, I walk toward my balcony and throw open the french doors.

  I step outside, still holding the phone to my ear. Michael is talking a mile a minute, but I can’t make out a word he’s saying. I slowly edge to the railing and peek over.

  James.

  “Hey, heiress,” he calls out, as if he’s just out for a morning stroll.

  He’s about three floors away from me, hanging on to the bottom of one of the balconies below me. And I’m on the twentieth floor.

  “James! What are you doing?” I shout.

  “Jimmy. Told ya. This is how I make an entrance.”

  “Oh my god,” I mumble, watching him easily scale the balcony so that now he’s standing on the rail of the balcony two floors below me. It’s actually like perfect steps, if you’re feeling a lot adventurous, or a little suicidal. But still . . . the view from here gives me vertigo. “You could’ve just used the elevator.”

  “Now where—” He pauses and stretches up, grabbing the railing of the balcony directly underneath mine. “Would be—” He pulls himself up, so now he’s dangling, using all his upper-body strength to pull himself up. “The fun in that?”

  I hold my b
reath as he easily lifts himself onto the balcony, pausing for a second, hunched over, hands on his knees.

  He holds up a finger, catching his breath. “Good workout. Almost there.”

  I’m just staring at him, half-scared to death he’s going to fall, half-embarrassed. Because now there’s a fire truck below, and residents are all stepping out on their balconies. Two police cars are out there too. A police officer with a bullhorn is shouting something I can’t make out. Somewhere, I bet Charlie is filming this.

  And I can’t . . . even . . . believe it.

  He starts to climb again, reaching for the railing of my balcony. When he pulls himself up a little, I realize he’s wearing a Banks Intrigue. “Are you crazy, Jimmy Rowan?” I say to him as he leans his torso on the rail and grins at me.

  “Yep. And I’m also probably going to jail.” The second he gets up, I grab him so he won’t fall, though I know he’s got it. I pull him over the railing, and he collapses on the floor of my balcony. “Bail me out?”

  “Of course. But why did you . . . ?”

  He shrugs, gathering his breath. “Because I was dared.”

  “You were . . . dared?”

  He stands up and takes my hand, bringing me to the edge of the balcony. He waves at the people below and the helicopter that’s now circling nearby to let them know he’s okay. “Yep. Dared to show and tell you how batshit-crazy in love with you I am.”

  I am sure this is a dream. I must be dreaming. My voice comes out a breath. “You are?”

  “I sure am. So now I’ve got a dare for you, heiress.”

  “You do?”

  He smiles, his gaze on me hotter than a thousand suns. “Actually, more of a very lucrative offer.”

  I’m still dazed. “I’m listening.”

  “Yeah. It’s going to involve drinking large amounts of crappy tequila. Eating shit with whatever fork is clean. No shaving,” he says, rubbing the scruff on his chin. He pulls on his tie and sends it flying over the side of the balcony. “And fuck the bow ties.”

  He reaches over and unbuttons the top button on my blouse, and I swear, for the first time in weeks, for the first time since LA . . . I can breathe.