19. Bottoms First, Bottoms Last
CHAPTER 19
bottoms first, bottoms last
MICK
I watched from the edge of the beach as the ferry pulled away, Belle's figure growing smaller until she was just a speck against the horizon. My heart felt heavier than I could have ever prepared for. I stood, feet buried in the sand, wondering if I'd just made the biggest mistake of my life.
Eventually, I dragged myself over to Coral Cove, where Franco, Cato, and RiRi were at the bar as usual, along with Nick and the other regulars.
The minute I walked in, I felt their eyes on me, all of them sizing me up, waiting for me to say something so they could kick my ass for it.
Franco was the first to speak. "You're an idiot, Mick."
I forced a smile. "Yeah, tell me something I don't know. Espresso, double shot, RiRi."
As the espresso machine whirred, RiRi folded her arms, shaking her head. "Why da fuck did you do that, Mick?"
"Do what?"
"Be so cruel to her." RiRi all but slammed the espresso cup in front of me, making some of the coffee spill on the counter .
"I wasn't?—"
"Lie on your own time, not here," Cato cut me off. "Son of a bitch."
"Well, it's good to know who my friends are," I muttered.
"We are your friends." Franco glared at me. "That girl didn't deserve that. She was here looking for you, sure, but she's no emotional bamboozler."
"You could've been nice about her finding out you're da doctor she was looking for," RiRi accused.
"She was here for her fucking career, okay? So, she's a cool chick, but that's all. Why the hell are we discussing her?" I didn't want to talk about Belle. I didn't want to think about Belle. I wanted her out of my head.
"She told us why she was here, and it wasn't about business. She really needs you to sign something so she can go save some lives," Franco stated. "Come on, man, you got to know her? She's quirky, sure, but she's not deceitful."
"Yeah, not like da other women you fuck around with," RiRi chimed in.
I quirked an eyebrow and looked at her sardonically.
"Well, except me," she amended. "And we don't do dat anymore. We're friends."
"That's what I thought, but you're all Team Belle." I felt like a child ready to stomp my feet. These were my friends—not hers. But they weren't wrong. I'd been a jackass. I could've handled it a hundred different ways, but I'd chosen to be…well, a coward who was cornered. "Was she okay?"
"No." RiRi threw her towel at me. I caught it and put it on the bar counter. "She wasn't okay."
"She was crying," Franco admitted.
"She was heartbroken," Cato added.
I finished my espresso, which did nothing to clear the cobwebs in my head.
"I can't go back," I breathed softly. "I won't get dragged back to… all that. "
Franco held up his hand. "What does all that mean?"
I sighed. "I worked seventy-hour weeks. A lot like what Belle does. The rest of the time, I was with Mia."
"That the fiancée who fucked her trainer?" RiRi frowned.
I nodded.
"Can't blame her if you were working all those many hours, can you?" Cato mused.
"With friends like you," I muttered again.
"Nuh-huh," RiRi protested. "She talks to him then and tells him to fix his shit, or it's over, and then she fucks her trainer."
"Anyway, when that happened, I'd just lost…one of our clinical trials bombed and people died. We were working on an experimental treatment, and we'd done everything—meticulous testing, regulatory checks, countless safety protocols. But sometimes, no matter how much you control for risk, it doesn't work. And in our case, it didn't."
I took a shaky breath, knowing I needed to continue. "When patients are in a trial, they sign a detailed consent form that lays out all the potential risks—death included. We make sure they know, fully and honestly, what could happen. But knowing that legally we covered everything didn't make it any easier when the worst happened."
I paused as the weight of the memories crushed me as if it were three years ago, and I was staring at my life's work crumbling around me. "The families…they were devastated. Some understood that it was experimental, that it was a last-resort treatment for something with no other options. But others…they blamed us. And honestly, I couldn't fault them. It's hard to forgive yourself, knowing the hope you gave them turned into something so much worse."
My friends looked at me, their expressions softening, and I felt a small release of the tension I'd been holding onto .
Cato put a hand on my shoulder. "Maybe you don't want Belle to see the patients she's trying to save die."
"But they could do that anyway and using my fucking patented process." I closed my eyes and shook my head. "I don't want to feel responsible for that, not again."
"But if you don't sign, they die anyway, and Belle is devastated…you're in the same place," Franco pointed out.
"I think it's because of how passionate she's about her work that you fell in love with her," RiRi said gravely.
I blinked. "Excuse me?"
"Yeah." RiRi shrugged and both Cato and Franco nodded.
"I'm not in love with Belle. I barely know her."
"What's time got to do with anything?" Franco picked up his beer. "You saw her, you talked to her, and boom, you were all in. We all saw it, man."
"And you made us commit crimes so you could have a couple more days with her," Cato reminded me.
"Papa Lou was pretty upset," Franco said thoughtfully. "But then magically the parts appeared, he said."
"Well, I didn't want to fuck his business up." I had ordered the parts for Papa Lou and made sure they got to him via express delivery. I had almost been tempted to buy him a new ferry, but then there'd be questions, and I didn't need to be in the middle of that.
Cato leaned forward, his elbows resting on the bar counter. "I think you're protecting yourself by pushing Belle away, but all you're doing is making sure you're alone."
"I did push her away," I admitted wearily.
"And guess what? It worked. She's gone," RiRi mocked.
"What the hell do you want from me?" I demanded, furious.
"Get your head out of your ass and go read the folder she put together for you," Cato suggested and added, "I told her I'd make you. "
"And how were you planning to do that?" I asked angrily. "By putting a gun to my head?"
"That can be arranged," Cato replied seriously.
I felt a sting in my chest, but I didn't argue.
"Fuck you all," I said without humor and gave them all the finger. I mumbled a half-hearted goodbye and left, feeling lower than I'd ever felt as I made my way back to the hut.
Once inside, I opened the folder Belle had left, which I'd put on my kitchen counter. Inside was a sticky note in her handwriting. It said: Just read it, Mick. Please .
The ache in my chest deepened as I thumbed through the papers. Charts, research, detailed notes all in her neat, careful hand—notes on the kids, her treatment plan, and the enormous effort she and her team had put into making it all happen.
She hadn't been lying. This wasn't only about her career. This was about saving lives, about putting something good into the world in a way I'd long since given up on.
Without thinking, I grabbed my phone and dialed my mother's number. It rang a few times before she picked up, her voice as light and airy as ever.
"Darling! To what do I owe the pleasure?" she trilled, clearly surprised to be hearing from me.
"What do you know about Dr. Isabelle Volnay?"
"Well, hello to you too," she quipped. "Only that she was looking for you and needed your help to save someone's life. She sounded so sincere. Why?"
"She found me."
"Oh! And?"
"And nothing."
"There must be something since you called me, and you never call me," she said, amused. "Did she swindle you or something?"
Yeah, she swindled my heart right out of my body !
"No, she didn't. She…we had a thing." My voice was rougher than I meant it to be.
"Nick, darling, I don't mean to be a prude, but I want to just confirm, by a thing, you mean you had intercourse with her?"
I laughed despite the heaviness in my chest. Only Lady Arabella Augustus would be so fucking prim about fucking.
"Yeah, mother, we had intercourse ."
"Is she pregnant?" she asked excitedly.
"I doubt it." But maybe not. I did, for the first time in my life fuck a woman without being suited up. That should've been a big freaking neon sign that I was gone for her.
"What's the problem then?"
"I…I think…I fell in love with her."
She gasped and then, after a long moment, said, "Being in love is like being pregnant. Either you are, or you are not; there is no thinking. So, are you?"
I groaned. "Yes."
"Wonderful," she chirped. "When's the wedding? Where will it be? Maybe we can have the ceremony here in London and then a reception in Boston or New York. What do you think?"
"I've known this woman for like a few days."
"But you fell in love," Mother asserted.
"In any case, she's gone. I majorly fucked up."
"Of course you did."
My friends weren't on my side, and neither was my mother. I was feeling pretty lonely.
"What does that mean?"
"Oh, darling," she said, immediately switching to that maternal tone that somehow felt both comforting and clueless. "You don't want to fall in love and that means you probably ignored how you felt and then created a situation where she had no choice but to leave. Am I right? "
For a woman who I thought was vapid, my mother could be pretty insightful.
"Maybe."
"Well then, run along, find her, and apologize."
"And you think that will work?"
"Nick, you're a handsome, intelligent, wonderful boy; I can't imagine any woman not falling all over herself to be with you."
And that was where the insightfulness ended !
I let out a long breath. "I don't think she's going to just forgive me. I was a complete asshole."
She made a sympathetic noise, though I could almost picture her fiddling with some jewelry or flipping through a magazine as I spoke. "Darling, as smart as you are, and you are very smart, you don't understand matters of the heart."
"Right!" I said, the word dripping with sarcasm.
"You're going to have to make a big gesture, show her that you love her, and apologize for being an arsehole , as you put it. Maybe you'll have to court her, grovel in front of her, make her feel special…you know, do the things normal men do when they're into a woman."
"I'm a normal man," I said diffidently.
She let out a long breath. "I love you, Nick, but you're not normal . You're ridiculously handsome and wealthy, so women fawn over you. You never had to work to win anyone over."
She wasn't wrong. "Are you saying I'm an arrogant, entitled arsehole ?"
"Yes, darling, I'm exactly saying that," she said sweetly.
"Damn it, Mother, how did this happen?" I muttered, rubbing a hand over my face. "I kept the pillow she slept on and…like a complete pervert, have been hugging it."
"That's adorable."
"That's daft."
"I love it when you use British slang.” She laughed this time. "Nick, you've got to go get her. You know what Willy said?"
"Who's Willy?"
"Willy Shakespeare," she explained. " Faint heart never won fair maiden ."
"I didn't realize how much I needed her until she was gone," I whispered as I looked around my hut and saw her everywhere; remarkably, she'd been in it for about half a minute if you looked at it from the span of a lifetime.
"Oh, my baby." Mother's voice softened, probably surprised by my vulnerability. "Sometimes we don't realize these things until it's too late. But I know you're going to win the fair maiden ."
I huffed a small, bitter laugh. "You think so?"
"Of course, darling," she said, a hint of her usual whimsy sneaking in. "After all, you're my son, aren't you? There's bound to be some charm in there somewhere. Now, as Virgy said, fortune favors the bold ."
"By Virgy, I'm assuming you mean Virgil?" My mother was batshit nuts. She and Belle would get along like a house on fire.
"Yes, darling. Now, I have a tea party to get to, so I'm going to say ta-ta. Keep me appraised on your attempts to win her back."
I felt lighter after the conversation and then looked at Belle's notes spread around on the kitchen counter.
Yeah, I knew what I needed to do because, as the American adage went, "Go big or go home." I was going to have to do both.