Everyone Used Me for Free, So the Billionaire Taught Me to Send the Bill novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Itemized Bill

Troy pays the money back on the spot, the locks at home are changed, and at dawn Mrs. Lund's courier delivers an itemized $412,000 bill for Jo's childhood.

Troy took his phone out in front of three hundred people and started typing.

His thumbs were slow.

Kayla grabbed his sleeve. "Don't. He can't make you."

"Kayla," Troy said. "It's the lease."

My phone buzzed against my hip.

The screen said: Deposit received, $14,200.00.

I held the microphone another second, because I couldn't remember what to do with my hands.

Then I set it on the stand and walked off the stage.

Nobody clapped.

I went out through the kitchen, past the line cooks who had been listening at the pass.

One of them handed me a bag of rolls without a word.

I took it, and then I felt stupid, because I was crying and holding a bag of rolls.

The apartment was a twenty-minute bus ride from the hotel.

I let myself think the whole way that Kayla would come home crying and say she was sorry.

My key didn't work.

I tried it four times in the lock on our third-floor door.

Then I saw the trash bags on the landing, two of them, tied at the top.

On top of them sat my shoebox.

It held every receipt for every meal anyone had ever bought me, going back to a vending machine in the ninth grade.

I don't know why I kept them.

I think I was afraid someone would ask.

The new lock was brass and shone under the hall light.

The locksmith's sticker on the frame was dated that morning.

They had changed the locks before the gala, and Kayla had texted me to be useful.

I sat on the stairs with a bag on each side of me.

I had a hundred and ten dollars in my wallet and fourteen thousand in my phone, and nowhere to put either.

A car idled in the street below.

It was long and black, and the man who got out of the back seat wore white.

Mason Greer climbed three flights of stairs in a suit that cost more than my rent.

He stopped two steps below me.

"I'm not going to ask what you're doing here," he said. "I'd like to offer you a room."

"I don't take rides from strangers."

"I'm Troy's landlord, and I chair the Home's board. I'm not a stranger." He tipped his head toward the bags. "The hotel has fourteen hundred rooms and about two hundred empty tonight."

"I can't take a room."

"Why not?"

"Because I'd owe you."

He said nothing for a moment.

I thought he'd say I was being foolish, which everyone says when I refuse.

Instead he took a pen from his breast pocket and the small notepad from the hotel that was clipped inside his jacket.

He wrote for half a minute, tore the page off and held it out.

It read: Room 1412. One night. $189. Payable at checkout by Jo Pennock.

At the bottom he had signed it, M. Greer, and under that: Paid in full from her own money. No favors owed.

"That's the invoice," he said. "You pay it yourself in the morning. If you'd like it itemized, I'll add the toothbrush."

My laugh surprised me.

It came out wet and cracked.

I took the paper.

He picked up both trash bags before I could stop him, and carried them down three flights himself.

The driver held the door.

I carried the shoebox myself.

Room 1412 had a lake view and a bed bigger than my bedroom.

I lay down on top of the covers in my green dress with my shoes still on.

I didn't sleep.

At six in the morning someone knocked.

It was the night manager, still in her blazer, with a flat cardboard box under her arm.

"A courier left this at the front desk at five," she said. "He said the Home's director called ahead and asked that it go to you in person."

Mrs. Lund had known which room before I did.

I carried the box to the desk by the window and lifted the lid.

On top lay a cream envelope in her careful handwriting.

Inside was a bill.

It was five pages long and typed, with a column of dates down the left side.

School uniforms. Winter coats. Braces. Chicken dinners, per portion, for twelve years.

At the bottom it said: Total cost of care for Joanna Pennock, $412,000.

And under it, stamped in red ink: Due on receipt.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend