Million Dollar Devil (Million Dollar #1)(83)

He nods. “Get it, Jimmy.”

I wipe my hands on my jeans, fix my gloves on my hands, and fasten them at my wrists.

Luke gives me a wink from the cab of the junker truck we got from the dump. I climb up to the bed and get myself situated behind the cab, standing with my legs shoulder-width apart for a solid base. “You getting this, Charlie?”

He nods.

I bang on the top of the truck, signaling to Luke to put the pedal to the metal.

And he does. We’re far away so he can build up speed, and I’ll be hitting the glass tubes at around thirty miles an hour. As the truck speeds up, I catch sight of a gray sports car streaming down the road toward us, kicking up a cloud of dust.

It looks like Lizzy’s Audi.

But it ain’t Lizzy’s, of course. The last time I saw her, a week ago in New York, she called me a liar, an asshole, and a fraud.

All things I’ve owned up to.

What I haven’t done is capitalized on my fifteen minutes. I got calls from every news outlet in the country, including GMA and Today, wanting me on to discuss what had inspired me to go through with it. I turned them all down.

What inspired me? Not the money. Not the clothes. Not the chance to be someone I wasn’t.

Lizzy inspired me. She inspired me right out of Tim’s Bar, because I had a feeling about her.

She’s inspiring me now to be something other than a liar, an asshole, and a fraud.

Inspiring me to just be me.

Even if she hates who I am, that’s the best I can do right now.

I hear the car’s brakes squeal to a stop as the truck reaches full speed. I place my gloved hands on the surface of the truck’s roof and brace for impact, when out of the corner of my eye, a dark-haired wet dream steps out of the car.

I lose it.

Impact.

Glass shatters in my face. A million little knives sting my skin, and the truck jolts to a stop, but my body is still moving. My boots lose contact with the truck bed, and I’m propelled over the cab of the truck, flying forward weightless into the dirt, headfirst.

“Jimmy!” voices yell in chorus.

Charlie. Lizzy.

LIZZY?

Everything goes black.

A minute or an hour later, I blink and hear Luke saying to me, “Hey. Jimmy. You all right, man?”

I lie there in the mud, dazed, on my side. “Gimme a minute.”

Luke again. “Hey. Count to ten. One. Two. Wiggle your fingers.” I do. “One. Two. Wiggle your toes. That was sick, man.” Then, farther away. “He’s okay. Just got the wind knocked out of him.”

“Thank god.” A familiar female voice now.

Lizzy?

I open my eyes and grab on to Luke’s arm, pulling myself up. Lizzy. She’s here. Like I’ve died and gone to heaven. “What are you doing here?” I croak out, shaking glass particles out of my hair and lumbering toward her, rubbing my neck.

“You’re bleeding.” She sounds concerned.

I wipe my face. I have blood and glass shards embedded in my cheeks. “Then you should be happy, huh?”

Charlie says, “Jimmy. I’m still filming.”

Right. I almost forgot. I have him face the camera toward me, and I say, “Well, sickkid09, you’re five hundred dollars poorer. To all my viewers out there, thanks for watching, and see ya next time.”

He cuts the camera. I punch him in the shoulder and tell him to go hang out in Luke’s pickup for a minute.

“Why, so you can talk to your girlfriend?”

I flick him in the head. “Get outta here.”

He runs off.

I look at Lizzy. She’s about as out of place as a girl can be, in a gray suit, her pumps sinking into the mud. But damned if she isn’t a sight for sore eyes. “Well, heiress, this is a little out of your zip code.”

“Where’s your Porsche?” she asks.

I wave that away. “Piece of shit kept getting stuck in the mud. Got myself a used F-150. And I can still afford to put Charlie in Westminster. Drive’s a bitch, but whatever.”

“Hmm. I see you got right back into your daredevil stuff,” she says, her words clipped.

I shrug and rip off my helmet. “Yeah. Well. You can take the street rat out of the sewer, but you can’t take the sewer out of the street rat. Right?”

She winces. “About that . . . I was dru—”

“You were right, Lizzy. This is who I am. My only mistake was in pretending I was someone else.”

She shakes her head.

I nod.

She stops shaking her head and just stares at me, biting down on her lower lip as if to hold back from saying something. She reaches into her purse and pulls out an envelope, which she hands to me. “Here.”

I open it. It’s a check for $500,000, made out to me.

I hand it back to her. “I don’t want this.”

“What? Of course you do. It’s a lot of money.”

“No, Lizzy, I don’t. I got all I need.”

She hands it back to me, her voice a little uneven. “It’s yours. You fulfilled your end of the contract. In fact, Banks has never been so successful. My father wanted me to ask you if you’d be interested in a three-year contract.”

I shoot a disbelieving look at her. “You’re serious, heiress?”

She nods.