Never in a hundred years.
Never in any galaxy, particularly the one she was forced to inhabit.
Never in any life or any lifetime.
She was safe. And given that her reunion was exactly one week away, she was also totally screwed.
CHAPTER 3
Trace
Receiving odd messages on an online dating profile wasn’t anything new for Trace Russell- or for the rest of the population who gambled on finding love online. He’d made the terrible decision to make a profile and join the ranks of the helpless and graceless men out there who had tried, and failed, to find someone in real life.
The online version of himself, of course, was much, much better.
He was funny online. Unreserved. Polite. Kind. He was just another person there. He wasn’t THE Trace Russell, self-made billionaire, owner of a massive chain of supplement and vitamin stores.
Oddly enough, money made it hard for a person to be understood and liked for who they were.
Go fucking figure.
After a year of dating around, dabbling in relationships, having fun, doing the whole going out and being social thing, he decided what he needed was a hiatus.
And maybe the chance to be a little less- conspicuous. All his life, he’d craved recognition. It was the ultimate irony that when he’d finally got to the place he wanted to be, a place where he figured he’d achieved it, he wanted anonymity.
Was it so much to ask that when he took a woman out they weren’t already contemplating dollar signs and bank account figures, clothes and jeweler and private flights to exotic destinations.
Oh right. Of course, it was.
He liked himself online. Mr. Nightshadow36, a ridiculous name that he’d had far too much fun making up and typing into the stupid site, was an intriguing man. A man who could carry on a conversation. A man who was witty and didn’t get tongue tied. A man, who deep down, wasn’t still that little boy kids used to throw rocks at, who went to school hungry, who ate mustard sandwiches for lunch since there was no meat in the house.
Yeah… online he got to forget all about his clichéd past. He wished he wasn’t a rags to riches story. That he was old money. That his parents were stodgy and held house parties and that he’d been forced into an arranged marriage with some snobby bitch who didn’t like him but had his kids anyway so that they could both live for them and ignore each other forever thereafter.
At least he’d be married.
At least he’d have someone to fight with and be pissed off with and annoyed with. At least he’d have done his duty and provided his mom and dad with a few grandkids.
It was fucking true that money didn’t bring happiness. It bought him a big house, which was totally empty.
Yup. Trace Russell wished, more than anything on earth, he hadn’t turned into the ultimate parody of the sad rich guy who made his money and found it didn’t add worth to his life in any sort of meaningful way.
He wished he could kick his own ass.
It wasn’t a surprise, that once again, he couldn’t sleep. He never slept. He walked around like a zombie all day, so fucking tired, but when night rolled around- wide awake.
It was like he was burning up inside, but he could do nothing to quench the flames.
Annoyed, Trace threw back the sheets, but didn’t get out of bed. He let the cool air in the room chill him. It was nice, the pinpricks and chills against his clammy skin. He reached for his tablet and logged into the ridiculous dating site. There really is no hope for humanity.
He received anywhere between ten and twenty messages a day and had since he first joined two weeks ago. It had never spiked or tapered off. His pictures sucked. He made sure of that. The point wasn’t to get laid. The point was to find someone who had no idea who he was and stick with that.
He knew he could have whoever he wanted. That his eligible bachelor status and bank account made him a good catch for just about anyone. Models. Singers. Actresses.
He didn’t want any of that.
He wanted something real.
Yeah, he knew he was on an online dating site, but hell… he was desperate.
Trace scrolled through his messages, starting from the bottom up. He was annoyed at the single word ones. The ones that said HI and left it at that. He deleted the lame ones. He deleted the ones about people wanting to lick melted ice cream off his abs. And the ones about sucking on his toes (which weren’t pictured in any photos), and the ones about his ass (also not pictured).
He stopped when he came to the most recent message, the last message in his inbox. He clicked on it and his eyes widened. He found himself smiling less than a second into reading. His eyes quickly devoured the rest of the strange message.