Chapter One
He guilt-trips better than a mother .
Amber
Bambi:
I sincerely hope this email finds you well (before I do). Given your behavior yesterday, it’s a miracle my ego doesn’t bruise (Barbie Princess and the Pauper, Preminger reference, but you should know that, unless you’ve wiped everything of importance from that pretty brain of yours).
If you deign to recall, we have a deal (photocopy attached).
One might be so compelled as to call this deal a plan, and I think given our history, you are well aware of my emotions concerning plans.
(I 3 3 3 3 3 plans. PlansXme 4ever.)
Anyway.
Amber Tempest D’Amore, if you do not marry me within a single business week, I will have a breakdown.
And also sue.
But my emotional response is of far more concern. (I’ll cry. Openly. Sob, even. And it will be all your fault.)
Get your black heart over here immediately, so I can keep it.
Or else.
Absolutely teetering on an edge,
Your Cutie
I…genuinely don’t know if I want to throw up or call a mental health professional and have this man admitted.
Every cell in me wants to ignore the stupid email in favor of continuing to stare at my blank Google document, willing words that won’t come to appear. Inevitably, I’ll get frustrated and check my Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard…to find a subtotal of zero pages read and zero sales.
That normally either motivates me to Keep trying! You just need to write a book that takes off! or to Give up, because you’ll never have a book take off, and also your writing sucks .
Truly, it is entirely up to my hormone levels at any given moment which reaction is most forthcoming.
With February 1st looming, though, maybe the stark truth of my poverty will bypass hormonal mood?
Regardless, I do not want to respond to the email, or check the attached address and schedule to see when I could feasibly get my black heart over to William Warrick’s fancy office building .
Lungs tight, I do not switch to my Google doc. I open the first attachment, then I stare at the gray-on-gray schedule and clench my jaw so much it hurts. He has marked up his available times with bright pink hearts. They are, entirely, lunch breaks.
Threading my fingers into the mass of my loose blond curls, I grimace. Pulling free from my hair, I rap a steady rhythm against my white desk. I groan.
My eyes flick to the other attachment, which is a photocopied napkin. A Taco Bell napkin. There is a Mild sauce stain in the corner, but it does not obscure the text scrawled across the stiff brown material.
My handwriting.
Our signatures.
I wish I could claim that, in high school, I was a druggie with an alcohol addiction who spent all my free time out of my mind, but I was not. I was the good, sweet girl , whose teachers kept asking if I’d skipped grades because I was so small.
Everyone, always, my entire life, has treated me like a child.
Except, notably, Liam.
Unless, of course, Liam isn’t an exception at all, and he just enjoys the idea of tormenting an innocent without the legal repercussions of tormenting a child . He is evil, so who knows what goes on in his brain?
After all, I can’t believe he kept this stupid thing.
I barely remember writing the dang napkin contract—claiming that if neither of us were married by the time I turned twenty-six, we would marry each other. That entire lunch period is a blur. Maybe “back in the day,” Taco Bell put cocaine in their burritos. It’s the only logical conclusion for the course of events, really.
I mean, seriously, without severe mental impairment I certainly wouldn’t have told Liam I’d be a famous author by now.
He certainly wouldn’t have told me he’d be a millionaire first.
And I, certainly, wouldn’t have laughed, and he certainly wouldn’t have smirked and scoffed and said, Face it, Bambi, you won’t be able to afford health insurance when you’re twenty-six unless you marry someone like me.
Naturally, the proper response to that would have been throwing my Baja Blast in his face, but thanks to the cocaine , I instead grabbed a napkin out of our Taco Bell bag and threw down an impromptu contract.
Which he has saved.
For reasons unknown.
Once upon a time, I thought I knew him. At least a little bit. He was absolutely maddening , but I thought I understood something about him. Then, graduation happened, and he vanished from my life without a single goodbye.
I blame the entirety of my relationship with Liam on teenage delusion.
It’s just, well, I would have thought both of us capable of outgrowing that kind of thing. Unfortunately, his rigid attention to detail and ironclad irritation in the face of broken rules appears unshaken, though.
Clenching my fist, I chew my cheek, reread the email, twitch at the fricken colon after my name. The man wrote this email with business letter rules .
That is so him.
The gray schedule is less him, but I’m excusing it, because some poor sap of an assistant probably made it for the William Warrick that the world sees. Dark. Broody. Angry. Strict. Crass. Mean.
Lord. If they only knew that he drew hearts in pink and referenced Barbie on a whim.
My attention lifts up the paragraphs, specifically to where he says if I don’t stop by, he will cry.
I stare at those words, then I close my eyes, rock my head back, and whimper. “Fine,” I whisper as I reach for the little slip of packing material my laptop came with. It separates the screen from the keys, and I can’t close the darned thing without fixing it perfectly in place.
It reminds me of how I kept my first ever phone in the box. For months.
I’d use it, sure. Obviously. I mean, duh . But then I’d package it back up like new and put the entire thing away in my purse.
Liam loved that. Liam teased me about that. Liam kept his phone in its box in his backpack, too.
This is ridiculous.
So ridiculous.
Almost as ridiculous as the fact I may not have become a famous author yet, but he also did not become a millionaire.
No.
Strictly speaking, he became a billionaire .