Page 68 of Billionaire Hunt

Chapter 13

As I rode back to my place, I did my best to memorize the feel of his body pressed into mine. I held back tears as I knew I had done the right thing, but it had been hard, oh so hard. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just love me like I loved him. He was a good man. I couldn’t deny that. But he kept me at arm's length...he clearly never wanted my love.

I had complicated things by developing feelings for him. All the pain I felt was technically my fault, but falling for him had never been my plan. It had never been my plan to fall in love. But life was funny like that.

He pulled up in front of my apartment and I promptly jumped off without his assistance. Nothing more needed to be said and he didn’t look at me anyway. As soon as I was off his motorcycle, he started his bike and drove off without a backward glance. He hadn’t even looked at me.

Feeling defeated, I walked up to my apartment and went in. I was emotionally exhausted and I thought to myself yet again how I had terrible taste in men.

It was funny though because, of course, life had a funny way of mixing things up. The moment I realized that I could stand on my own and just be me also happened to be the moment that I realized that I was in love.

I put my feet up on the couch and was determined to just go to sleep there when a knock sounded at my door.

I knew who it was before I even opened the door.

“Hi,” he said, simply standing there still looking perturbed. “Can I come in?”

“We’re done, Erik.”

“Please, I just want two minutes...if you don’t want to hear what I have to say then feel free to kick me out.”

“No. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”

“I want to tell you.” He paused and said with a sigh, “I want to tell you about Shana.”

“Shana?”

“My ex-wife.”

All plans of taking a nap on the couch faded as I moved to let him cross the entrance. I closed and locked the door, gestured for him to sit down and then sat in the loveseat across from him and said, “Alright, go.”

He sat down heavily on the couch and brought his eyes up to mine. “We were high school sweethearts. We met when we were both 14.”

“Let me guess. She was beautiful, a cheerleader maybe?”

He laughed. “She was beautiful to me. She wore really dark lipstick and eyeliner. Totally goth.”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“She was really into Alice Cooper and Black Sabbath.”

“Wow, I wouldn’t have expected that.”

He shrugged. “I liked her. I followed her around most of the time. Sort of like a puppy. She finally noticed me when we were sophomores. I felt it was the luckiest day of my life when she said hi to me. But I was always getting in trouble in school and her parents didn’t think I was good enough for their daughter. And they were right at first.” He shrugged sheepishly. “I wasn’t. But she was loyal. She stayed with me. She went off to college and I started working construction jobs. She even married me after she graduated.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Shana could have had any man she wanted and yet she chose me. I thought I was special.”

When he didn’t continue, I prompted him with, “And then what happened?”

He shrugged. “We were happily married for about five years. At least, I thought we were happily married.”

He got up and went to look out of my window. The view from my window was only the parking lot. I knew he wasn’t seeing the view in front of him, he was just staring into a void, thinking of his past. “I came home early from a job that had gotten rained out and I saw a car in front of our apartment. I didn’t think much of it. It was a big complex, visitors came and went all the time. I walked upstairs and I could hear them from the living room as soon as I stepped through the door.”

My heart hurt for him. “Did you confront them?”

“I needed proof...so I made myself walk in. I was just going to turn around and walk away. But I made my legs walk toward our bedroom. I pushed the door open and saw them going at it.”