He Wants Her Back: The Billionaire's Leading Lady novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Building

Damon wants her back on his old terms, Juno walks out of the building he secretly owns, and his mother's envelope arrives with a photo of the test.

"How did you get in here?"

Damon didn't stand up.

"You blocked my number in an elevator," he said. "I was told within a minute."

"That's not an answer."

"You'll get one."

He rose then, slowly, and the room got smaller.

He was still in the suit from the hospital.

I could smell the antiseptic on it.

"Get out of my apartment, Damon."

"Come here first."

"Are you serious? You just stood there and let her call me a copy."

"I let her talk because she's been in a hospital bed for five weeks."

"You held her hand."

"Yes."

He said it with no shame at all.

I laughed, and it came out wrong.

"Who is she to you?"

"Not your business tonight."

"It was my face on her pillow. That makes it my business."

He took a step toward me.

I took a step back and my shoulders hit the door.

"Nothing changes," he said quietly. "You'll finish the film. I'll come by on Thursdays. You'll stop reading the comments."

"Nothing changes," I repeated.

"Nothing that matters."

"Three years in your garage didn't matter?"

"You liked the garage."

"I liked you," I said. "I hated the garage."

His eyes went to my mouth.

My fist was in my jacket pocket, closed around the test so hard the plastic edge bit my palm.

He put one hand flat on the door beside my head.

"Say you're done again," he said. "Say it while I'm this close."

"We're done."

He kissed me.

It wasn't gentle.

It never was when he'd been made to wait.

His mouth was hot and angry, and mine opened under it before I told it to.

His other hand slid up my throat to my jaw and held my face where he wanted it.

My back arched off the door into him.

For three years this had been the one place I knew exactly who I was to him.

He pressed his thigh between mine and I made a sound I hated.

"There you are," he breathed against my lips.

His hand went down my side to my hip, to my pocket.

To the fist inside it.

I bit his lip.

Hard enough to taste copper.

He pulled back and touched his mouth with two fingers.

There was blood on them.

He looked at it, and then at me, and he almost smiled.

"That's new."

"Everything's new," I said. "Get out."

"You don't have anywhere to put me out to."

"What does that mean?"

He looked around my living room.

"I bought this building last year."

I stared at him.

"You what?"

"The old owner was letting the elevator die. You complained about it twice."

"So you bought the building."

"I bought the building."

"And didn't tell me."

"You'd have moved."

"Yes," I said. "I would have."

I walked past him into the bedroom and pulled my duffel bag out of the closet.

He followed me to the doorway and leaned on the frame.

"What are you doing?"

"Moving."

"At eleven at night."

I threw in jeans, two shirts, underwear, my chargers, my script.

I went into the bathroom and swept my makeup into the bag with my forearm.

I didn't take one thing he had given me.

There was a cashmere sweater on the chair. A watch on the dresser. A first edition of a play I loved.

I left them all where they were.

"Juno. Put the bag down."

"Move."

He didn't.

I stood in front of him with the bag over my shoulder.

"You can own the walls," I said. "You don't own what walks out of them."

For a long second he looked down at me with that stillness he used in boardrooms.

Then he stepped aside.

"This isn't over," he said.

"It's been over since you said not here."

The doorman looked up when I came through the lobby with my duffel bag at eleven at night.

He looked past me at something behind me, and stood up very straight.

I didn't turn around.

Bea opened the door of her bungalow in Echo Park in a T-shirt that said "Ask Me About My Lawyer."

She took one look at me and pulled me inside.

"Guest room's made," she said. "I made it in the car. Mentally."

I sat on her couch and took the test out of my pocket.

Bea stared at it.

Then she sat down next to me very carefully, like the couch might break.

"Oh, honey."

"He doesn't know."

"Are you going to tell him?"

"No."

She nodded once.

"Good. Then neither am I. Want me to key his car?"

"He has eleven cars."

"So I'll pace myself."

I laughed for the first time all day, and then I was crying, and she held me until I stopped.

At one in the morning her phone buzzed.

She looked at it and swore.

"Don't look," she said.

I held out my hand.

Vivica Lane had posted a selfie from her hospital bed.

Her face, my face, tilted toward the window light.

She was holding up her wrist.

My sapphire bracelet glittered on it.

The caption said, "Some things find their way home."

Forty thousand likes in an hour.

I gave Bea the phone back and lay down in her guest room with my hand on my stomach.

I didn't sleep.

At six, something slid across the hall floor with a soft scrape.

A heavy cream envelope lay just inside Bea's front door.

Nobody had knocked.

Inside was a photograph.

It was me, in a baseball cap, at the counter of a drugstore on Sunset, two days ago.

I was paying for a pregnancy test.

Clipped to the photo was a card in thick, old-fashioned handwriting.

"Lunch. One o'clock. H. Strade."

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