A Billionaire for Christmas

“That’s actually kind of beautiful,” Raji said.

“It’s not. Remember that it all started with me not believing her and not standing up for her when I should have. It all started because I’m an asshole.”

“How long were you an asshole, though? How many years?”

“About a year and half, from when we got back from Tanglewood until she finished her credits and walked away.”

“So, eighteen months? You gave up your whole life plan because you gave someone the silent treatment for eighteen months?”

“Eighteen months is a long time to make a mistake and double down on it every day, over five hundred days.” Peyton pulled the car under the wide, cement awning of the kiss and fly. “Here we are. You should run to catch your flight.”

This guy had just poured his heart out to her in a high-speed car ride that had turned into a therapy session. “Yeah,” Raji said. “I should run.”

“You should,” he said.

He stared at her, leaning over the console between their seats. The morning sunlight shone in his eyes, turning them sea green, and glanced off the hard planes of his cheekbones and jaw. Blond stubble on his cheeks glinted in the sunlight.

She asked him, “How long have you been with Killer Valentine?”

“Four months.”

Four long months. “You’ve been trying to make it up to her all that time,” Raji said.

“Every day, I try never to be that guy again.”

“Then you’re not.” Her heart hurt for him. “Then you’re not that guy any more. We are the sum of our choices. You’re choosing to be someone else.”

“I’m still the same guy.”

“Not if you are choosing to do differently and following through on it. If you’re choosing to be different, then you are different. You’ve changed.”

“I don’t feel like I’ve changed,” he said.

“You can’t do penance for the rest of your life because you were an ass to an ex for eighteen months when you were a teenager.”

“This feels like the right thing to do,” he said.

“It’s been four months. You broke a contract with the L.A. Phil for her. You’ve paid your debt. You shouldn’t be your ex-girlfriend’s caddy for the rest of your life. Is that what you plan to do, give up the rest of your life because you fucked up for a year and a half when you were in high school?”

“No.” He frowned, a line drawing between his light brown eyebrows. “Not the rest of my life.”

“So what is your plan?”

“Not to fuck up again, I guess.”

“That’s not a plan.” She grabbed him around the back of his neck and pulled him to her mouth for one last, hot kiss. She pressed her lips to his, opening her mouth. He tasted like mint gum and almonds.

His warm hand touched her waist, and he kissed her back.

She broke it off, breathless. “It was wonderful to meet you, Peyton-Cabot. I like you, and I think you’re a good man. I think it takes a good man to realize that he’s not one and to change. I think that we are the sum of our choices. Thank you for getting me to the airport in time, too. I would have been up shit creek if I’d have missed this flight. Good-bye, Peys.”

Raji jumped out of the car, yanked her rollie bag from the back seat, and sprinted for the ticket counter.

She made her plane with seconds to spare before they closed the door, and then she realized that she hadn’t given Peyton her phone number.

That was for the best, really. A guy who was trying to become a good man shouldn’t hang out with a soulless, heartless, reptilian psychopath such as herself, someone who harvested hearts from one dying person and sewed them into another, wrist-deep in chest meat and blood.

He needed someone better than Raji.Chapter EightBestie’s Advice“But you’re not going to see him again, right?”

Raji paused, her scalpel poised over the man’s sternum. The blue surgical drape covered most of the patient, just leaving a clear window for where they were going to cut him open and sew some new veins on his heart. “Of course not. It was just a wedding hook-up.”

Beth stared at her from the other side of the anesthetized patient’s chest. Her blue eyes widened behind her plastic visor. The bright surgical lights above them printed white circles on the plastic shield over her face. “It doesn’t sound like it was just a wedding hook up, not if he told you all those deep, dark secrets.” Her emphasis on the word sound sounded like Beth thought Raji was lying.

Raji had spilled everything while they were scrubbing in for the procedure. “I’m not even sure how deep and dark the secrets are. I mean, he had a teenage relationship that didn’t work out, and when he tried to get her back five years later, she wasn’t interested anymore. That’s not a scandal. That’s the plot line of a boring teenager movie.”