Rescued By the Billionaire by Lisa Kaatz

13

The apartment management company was so afraid that I’d sue them that they’d given me another place to stay, rent free for six months. It was in a different building, a nicer one in a nicer neighborhood. The only problem was that it was across town.

How was I supposed to move all of my shit in 24 hours?

It turned out, by throwing out most of my shit. Yeah. That did it.

Most of it was old anyway. Yearbooks from long forgotten times in my life - times that I’d rather forget, actually. So I wasn’t sure why I’d held onto them for so long anyway. And then there were some old paintings I’d done when I first got to the city - man, they were terrible. That was the nature of my artwork, though. Every six months, I looked back on old work and cringed.

A teacher once told me that hating your old work was a sign of growth.

To me it was a sign of the misery that having a career in art inflicted on you.

This city had chewed me up and spit me out. My face was beaten and my drawing arm was in a sling - which seemed like some sort of cruel metaphor, when I thought about it. Poetic justice, I guess? For leaving my hometown behind? For trying to come here, for daring to believe that maybe there was something better for me here than what my family had back home?

It took three trips downstairs to get all of my shit thrown away. Every time I passed a neighbor, they just stared at me with a mix of horror and pity in their eyes. I knew my bruise had turned bluish-purple overnight, and would like to think that this is why they were staring. But I knew that they knew what had happened. Maybe some of them had even heard me screaming.

When I was done purging, my apartment felt larger than it had ever felt. The sounds of the city street below, which had seemed deafening when I first moved in, were now like soothing white noise to me. A lullaby that I had slept to every night for nearly two years.

I could fit everything that was left in a suitcase. The apartment company had hired movers to come get my bedframe and other furniture, as a courtesy to me. The apartment manager I’d known when I first came here, who had been crass and impatient with me at every turn, had been recently replaced with a mild mannered guy who had accommodated my every need. More than once, he’d called just to make sure I’d been able to get up to the apartment okay, whether I needed his help to call a cab, or some boxes.

I’d declined. Nobody was this friendly in New York City without some sort of motive; they were covering their asses, at the very least. And at worst, he was another creep.

I’d taken to ignoring the news, but the little that I did see revealed that Jerry had a record of exploiting women, breaking into their homes, even installing hidden cameras in their apartments. My apartment was a crime scene now. The NYPD had stripped it down and searched it, and though I knew that they were just doing their jobs, somehow it felt like a second violation, adding insult to injury. It was yet another invasion of my space and privacy.

I was relieved when they finally left. Though I’d already given a statement, the detective kept asking me the same questions again and again, as though hoping I might give a different answer.

The neighbors looked on curiously when they passed the splintered doorway, but they didn’t say anything to me and I was grateful for that. My previous anonymity had been shattered like that door. I just wanted to get to the next place. Where maybe they wouldn’t know what had happened to me. Where I could start over - again.

Six months rent free was a lot of runway. More time than even Lincoln had been willing to offer me. His offer had capped at one month.

I looked around my empty apartment again. It hurt to be here. It hurt to think of Lincoln’s name. More than once I’d picked up my phone and started to call him, only to put it down before I could hit the call button. Finally, I just deleted his number altogether. I didn’t have it memorized. So once I deleted it from my phone, I knew it was gone for good. There was no danger of calling him on an impulse late at night, the way that I knew that I would if I let myself be near temptation.

He’d lied to me the way so many had done before. I thought I’d protect myself from this sort of disappointment. My insulating shield had failed. Somehow, Lincoln had gotten through. It hadn’t taken long at all.

My driver loaded my suitcase while I waited in the backseat, looking at my face in a compact mirror. I’d tried to cover it with makeup, but foundation and concealer could only do so much; they weren’t miracle workers. I put my sunglasses back on my face and sank low in my seat. I couldn’t start job hunting until this damn bruise cleared up. And I couldn’t even draw until my arm healed - which my doctor estimated would take eight weeks, at least.

The cab driver shut the trunk and climbed into the front seat, and we were off. I looked out the window through the lenses of my glasses, at that old building where my adventure began. So much had changed. I had changed. I wasn’t naive anymore. Cynicism had taken innocence’s place in my heart and mind.

We drove in silence for twenty minutes. The bumps in the road pounded out a rhythm that lulled me to the edge of sleep. My eyelids were heavy when we pulled to a stop outside of my new building.

“Wait,” I said, looking up. “I think you’ve got the wrong address.”

“This is the address your apartment manager gave me,” the driver said, scowling at me in the rearview mirror.

I looked out at the old brick building. This was Lincoln’s neighborhood. Lincoln’s building. And as though I’d summoned him by merely thinking his name, Lincoln exited the double doors in front, unaccompanied by Gus for once, looking through the cab’s window at me.

He reached out and opened the car door. I didn’t move.

“What the fuck is going on?” I asked.

“This is the new place,” he said, gesturing behind him.

“Is this some kind of game?” I cried, looking at the cab driver as though maybe he would have some sort of insight. He shrugged and looked away.

“Your building manager assigned you to a flat in this building,” he said.

“How would you know that?” I asked.

“Because I bought your building,” he said simply. “I mean, I’m in the process of buying it. And I bought the apartment management company that oversees it.”

“The new building manager,” I said to myself. “You hired him.”

“He’s one of my interns,” he explained. “I fired everyone who had anything to do with hiring the piece of shit who hurt you, starting from the top and working my way down. The staff is almost entirely new.”

This was too much to take in. Lincoln made this pronouncement - that he’d fired all of these people, that he’d taken over my building - with pride and fury in his eyes, as though he wanted nothing more than to hurt the people who had hurt me back. Double.

“You lied to me,” I said at last.

“I know,” his eyes softened. “I know that. And I’m so sorry about that, Abby. I’ll never forgive myself for that. But you can’t ask me to stay away from you.”

“Actually I can,” I said.

“You can,” he said. “But why?”

He knelt down on the sidewalk so that he was eye level with me. I crossed my arms and looked away.

“You’re scared,” he said. “I was scared too. That’s why I lied, Abby. I just...you didn’t know who I was. And you have no idea how rare that is. How much I needed that. To just meet you as a regular person. As me. Lincoln. Without the money. Without the fame and the cameras and the history.”

When I said nothing, he continued.

“It’s been so long since I’ve known anyone who didn’t already think that they had me figured out,” he said. Then he breathed in deeply, shakily, as though his lungs couldn’t quite handle it.

“If you’d told me the truth,” I said. “It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“Are you sure about that?” he asked. “Are you really, really sure?”

“No,” I snapped. “Because I’m not like one of your gold diggers. I’m not like your little blonde friend Dani - ”

“I don’t mean it would have changed things like that,” he said. “I know you well enough by know to know you wouldn’t use me for my money. But I mean...Abby, you’re so damn proud. You don’t take shit from anyone. And I love that about you. I do. But what do you think you would have said to me if I’d offered to help you, if you knew my net worth? If you knew who I was and what I had? How would that have felt?”

I didn’t answer.

“Like charity,” he answered for me. “Like I had the upper hand. Like you owed me something. Do you think you would have gone to bed with me that night? Do you think you would have even asked me to do what you asked?”

Tears wet my eyes now. My shirt felt too tight, too hot. I wanted to get out of the car. I wanted him to go away.

He was getting too close. How had he gotten so close in such short a time?

“You don’t need me,” he said, coming even closer. He put his hand over mine and squeezed. “I know that. I know you could do it by yourself. I know that you could conquer the whole world all by yourself. But Abby...why would you want to?”

Tears were falling hard now and I wiped them hastily with my sleeve. In the front seat, the cab driver had put on his headphones and was looking out the window.

“Why do you want to do it by yourself, Abby?” he asked again.

“Because everyone leaves,” I whispered. “And everyone lies. Even you.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” he said, squeezing my hand again. “That’s life. I messed up. And I’ll spend however long it takes making it up to you, Abby. I will. But I guarantee you, I’ll mess up again. And so will the next guy, and the next guy. The thing you’ve got to decide is who is worth taking that risk with.”

“Maybe I don’t want to take the risk at all,” I said with a watery sob. “Maybe I like being alone, Lincoln.”

“You don’t,” he said. “You know that. I know that. Why are we doing this to ourselves, Abby? Why are we throwing away a shot at happiness for the sake of...of…”

“Pride?”

“Self preservation,” he finished. “You think holding me away from you is protecting you. And maybe it is, in some way. But it’s also holding you back. It’s keeping you from experiencing love, and joy, and pleasure. Why did you wait so long to make love with a man, Abby? If I had to guess, it’s because you figured that if you didn’t do that with someone, then they wouldn’t be able to hurt you and disappoint you.”

I sniffed.

“Well, I think it was worth it,” he said. “I think you’re worth it, and I know I’m not worthy of you but I think we had something really amazing. I think we could have something amazing together again.”

“Stop,” I whispered. “Just stop.”

“I love you, Abigail Hope Walker,” he said, turning my chin and forcing me to look at him. And then I saw it too, those icy blue eyes had gone soft and watery. A rare window of vulnerability in an otherwise unshakeable man.

“I love you,” he said roughly. “And I will never stop loving you. I don’t care what happens here or what you say to me, I will never stop fighting for you. I’ll never stop protecting you. Finding you in that apartment like that...I never want to see you that way again. I never want to have to wonder where you are. Who you’re with and whether you’re safe. Whether your foolish pride has gotten you into trouble. Whether your stubborn ways have led you down the wrong road for the sake of independence.”

I laughed a little.

“I love you, Abby,” he said again. And he kissed me on the forehead gently over my bandage. “I love you. I love you.”

He repeated it again and again, each time kissing another spot on my face until he hesitated, hovering over my lips, those soft blue eyes looking at me as though asking a question.

“I love you too,” I whispered.

“Stay here,” he pleaded. “Stay with me. Let me help you. Let me love you.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I will.”