Billionaire Happy After

Seven

*******

I had no idea where Christian was.

He hadn't spoken a single word to me since our fight yesterday and had gone out of his way to make sure we were together as little as possible. He had even booked a hotel room last night so he didn't have to sleep in the RV with me. I hadn't seen him since the presentation at Arizona State and was desperately hoping he wasn't enough of an asshole to leave without me.

I tapped my fingers against the edge of my laptop, debating whether or not I should try a Google search for his phone number. The last time I had done that in public hadn't warranted good results, but the campus café was pretty much deserted.

There were a couple workers bustling around behind the counter, a guy in the far corner who was playing his music way too loud since I could hear it from him while he had his headphones in and a woman on a TV broadcasting some kind of news story.

The last one didn't even count as a person.

"Another iced coffee?" A passing worker asked me, eyeing my empty cup pointedly I glanced at the time on my laptop. Whoops, I had broken the unspoken rule of ordering something every hour when staying in a café like this.

"Uh, could I get a frozen lemonade instead, please?" I had already been here for three hours and too much caffeine probably wasn't a good idea. "Thank you."

She pressed her lips together tightly. "No problem."

Given that the cafe was pretty empty, it didn't take very long for them to complete to my order so I was getting up a moment later to get it from the counter.

As I walked over, an image of a girl on the TV caught my attention but when I turned to look at it completely they had already changed stories. All I caught was the girl's first name, Reil

"Excuse me," I asked the worker at the counter. "Did you see what the news was about?"

He paused in wiping the coffee machine and gave me a blank stare. "What?"

I shook my head. "Never mind." I picked up my lemonade and headed back to my seat. I had Google, but I was pretty certain just having the name, Reil, wouldn't give me the results I wanted.

But I had to know who she was. I had seen her before.

With Lucas 

We were still on thin ice two weeks after the incident on Lucas' birthday.

He hadn't apologized yet, neither of us had even brought up what had happened. Still, I decided to skip my last period of the day and head over to see him since he had said he would be working tonight.

I stepped off the elevator to see him talking to a girl. They were half-in, half-out of his doorway, like she had been on her way in or out but they had stopped to talk. I slowed down, wondering who the hell she was. She placed a hand on his arm, laughing at something he said, and Lucas didn't brush her off, instead giving her a charming smile.

What the hell was going on?

Could Lucas be cheating on me with her? I had never seen her before, nor gotten any hints of him drifting. Did that mean I was oblivious or that it was recent? Had it been because of what had happened on his birthday? Was he fed-up or something with me and had decided to move on?

Would Lucas be this obvious if he was? He knew that I chose Calc if I decided to skip a class to come see him since I was ahead in that class. Maybe he wanted me to know? Just as I was about to stumble back, He glanced up and saw me. He raised an eyebrow, causing the girl to turn around and look at me.

She was strikingly pretty, with wild red hair and a smattering of freckles across her cheeks that somehow made her look fierce instead of childish.

I couldn't run now that they had seen me.

Thankfully, the girl turned to Lucas and said something, then started down the hall towards me. Her shoulder knocked against mine when she brushed by me, but she wasn't big, or strong enough to push me around.

I walked over to Lucas then turned and watched the girl step into the elevator after giving him a flirty wave goodbye. "Who was that?" I asked.

He glanced down at me. "Someone from work."

"I've never seen her around the shop," I remarked. I didn't visit him there very often, but still I knew most of the people he worked with and I had never seen her before. But the idea of her leaning against the side of a car talking to him as he fixed whatever was wrong with it made me nauseous.

"Not that work," he said.

I blinked. "You have another job?"

"Dont ask me questions I'm not allowed to answer, Gigi," he told me.

"Not allowed to answer?" I repeated.

He raised a hand, and before I could stop myself, I winced slightly. My thoughts instinctively going to wonder if I had pissed him off too much. Instead, though, his eyes and softened, and he stroked his thumb across my cheek. "I'm sorry," he said.

I stared up at him.

He sighed, moving a hand to brush a strand of my hair behind my ear. "I don't like fire or my birthday. But I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

The vulnerable sound of his voice made me relent. Nik was so rarely ever soft like this. "I'm sorry for pushing it."

"It's not your fault," he said. "You didn't know."

"Are you sure?" Something about the way he said it, with a tiny bit a stiffness made me unsure in whether or not he was alright.

He nodded, giving me a crooked half smile. And I let it go, because although his smile was small, it seemed sincere.

I should've known Lucas could fake a smile as easily as he told a lie.

I had never been able to find out who the girl had been, but I had a chance now that she had been on the news.

I opened Google and typed in 'Reil, Arizona' in the search bar, then hit enter. Except didn't come up with anything helpful. I hesitated, biting my lower lip then added today's date on the end before trying again.

The second result looked promising, with the headline 'Local Arizona runaway found and hospitalized'. I clicked on it to find a brief article and a picture of the girl.