Tapping The Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires #1)(93)

BAD_Ruck (6:45AM): I get it. I do. But I think we should meet in person, just the two of us. Please, Rose.



I white-knuckled my phone as I stared down at the screen in disbelief.

I don’t think I breathed for an entire minute. I felt like someone had reached down my throat and pulled my heart straight out of my body.

My eyes closed of their own accord, my mind in self-preservation mode. My heart roaring in my ears, I took a cavernous breath and found the strength to open my eyes again, hoping—no, praying—I had missed something along the line.

But I hadn’t. I f*cking hadn’t. The screenshot, Kline’s response, it was real. One-hundred percent real.

I scrubbed a hand down my face, pressing into my lids to stop the tears wanting to spill down my cheeks. A shaky sigh escaped my lips as I tried to focus through the blurry mess of emotions.

His message was timestamped from this morning at 3:45 a.m. Pacific.

My throat constricted, cheeks straining in agony to stop myself from losing it.

I won’t cry. I will not sob in front of a plane full of strangers.

This morning. He sent that message in between playfully asking me questions and making love to me. Or was it faking love to me? Because that was what it felt like now. I’d never felt so betrayed, so utterly devastated in my entire life.

The pain built in my chest, burning like I had swallowed hot coals. I was hanging by a thread, my free hand gripping the armrest in a pathetic attempt to hold myself together.

“Miss, we’re about to take off. You need to turn your phone off now.”

I pulled my eyes from the screen, finding a flight attendant with long blonde hair and a pink smile standing above me.

All I could do was stare at her. Honestly, I didn’t even know what she was saying to me.

“Your phone?” She nodded to my hands.

I followed her eyes and realized what she was asking. “Oh, sorry,” I mumbled, and with shaky hands, turned it off.

I felt like I was a passenger in a crash-and-burn landing, going from the highest high, only to be catapulted into the lowest of lows.

Memories flooded my mind.

The night at the Hamptons, when I had given myself to him.

I choked on a sob as a few tears slipped down my cheeks. I swiped at the liquid emotion, telling myself I could do this. I could get through this flight.

A man across the aisle glanced in my direction, his head tilted to the side in concern.

Oh, God, don’t look at me like that! I wanted to scream at him. I did not want pity. I couldn’t handle someone recognizing that I was falling to pieces. That would for sure make it impossible to hold this in until I was somewhere private.

Long, slow breaths were inhaled through my nose and exhaled from my lungs. I stared down at a nonexistent piece of lint on my pants, plucking at the material just because it was something to do, something else to focus on besides my heart falling out of my chest.

More memories drowned me.

Last night, with each kiss, each touch, each soft caress, he had silently been asking me to fall the rest of the way with him. And I had. I had followed his lead, and on the way down, he had made love to me until my heart was beating like he’d wanted it to. Like I’d wanted it to. My world had changed. Inside, my walls had fallen down and he was all around me. All I knew. All I wanted to know.

Kline had gone from being my boss to my best friend, my lover, and my intoxication until he let the needle break off in my skin. This wasn’t a little cut that would scab over and flake off. No. He had cut me so deep I hadn’t even bled.

The pain was so unbearable that all my emotions fled the scene. I switched from distraught—fighting the sob threatening to bubble up from my lungs—to robotic.

I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to ask him why, after the night we had shared together, he would still want to meet someone who wasn’t me. Initially, when I’d found out Kline was Ruck, and he had been chatting with TAPRoseNEXT without knowing it was me, it didn’t upset me. I looked at the entire situation with a rational, understanding head. Because I had done the same thing.

But the second I had met Thatch, the guy whose picture was on Bad_Ruck’s TapNext profile, I’d known I needed to stop. I knew I wanted Kline. I knew I was falling in love with him, and I didn’t want anything to ruin that. Which was why I had told Cassie to take the reins. Who would’ve thought that the whole time I was chatting with Ruck, I was actually talking to Kline?

It was the ultimate mindf*ck.

Unfortunately for me, that mindf*ck had just gotten a whole lot worse.

This was different from a simple response to another woman on an online dating profile. He was requesting to meet someone that wasn’t me, someone he knew was my best friend.

What on earth did he think he was going to gain from that? Was he planning on being in a relationship with me while screwing Cassie on the side?

God, it didn’t add up, didn’t seem like the Kline I knew, but the proof was right in front of my face.

I felt so devastated. Knowing what we shared and all of the possibilities of what we could have been, why would Kline have risked that? In a matter of a few sentences, he had just ruined everything. Destroyed us. Destroyed me.

I felt sick. Nausea coiled my stomach, constant and unrelenting.

The minute the seatbelt lights went off, I made a beeline for the lavatory. My breakfast filled the small metal toilet within seconds. It took a good five minutes before I could stop dry heaving. I held myself up over the sink, staring at a woman I didn’t even recognize. I did my best to clean up, splashing cool water on my face and rinsing my mouth out, before I made my way back to my seat.