How To Catch A Billionaire(26)
Author: Helen Cooper

“I’m sorry, Sarah. I shouldn’t have just left you here tonight.” He pulled back and looked at me seriously. “I owe you better. We are in this together.”

I nodded my head in understanding wondering if perhaps Harry had realized that he loved me as well. That would make this the best weekend in my life, I thought to myself.

“I should have told you about Angelica before we came home. I knew it would come up. I just wasn’t prepared for it. I haven’t talked about her in so long.”

“I see.” I didn’t really understand and I didn’t want to hear anything else about her. I was consumed with jealousy. “It’s okay, Harry.”

“No. I should explain.” He ran his hands through his hair and looked out of the window. “I had to leave tonight to clear my head, to sort through all the different emotions.”

“Ok.”

“I had to go and talk to her.” His voice was pained. But when I looked at his face, it looked like he was trying to hide a smile.

“You went to see Angelica?” My voice held disbelief. And my heart broke into a thousand pieces.

“Yes.” His voice broke. “I haven’t been to see her in years. Not since the night we broke up.”

“Oh.” My voice was low.

“I took her flowers.” He sighed. “Just like yours. They’re pretty, right?”

“Yes,” I answered coldly. He bought me the same bouquet of flowers that he bought his ex? Maybe these were even the same flowers. Maybe she didn’t accept them so he decided to give them to me as some sort of pity gift instead of throwing them away.

“She always loved flowers.” He laughed. “She said flowers helped people see the beauty in the world because they were so colorful and bright.”

“I see.” I closed my eyes, not wanting to hear anything else about this perfect girl. “So what did she have to say, are you guys getting back together?” I couldn’t stop the rush of words from coming out of my mouth. I was annoyed and depressed. I didn’t think any amount of money was worth me going through these awful emotions.

“What?” Harry looked at me in shock and shook his head. “Sarah, Angelica is dead.” His voice rose melodramatically and he flung his arm out wide.

I looked up at him in disbelief. “What? But you just said you went to visit her.”

“I went to her grave.” His voice was sad and I felt my heart break for his obvious pain. “Can you believe I’d never visited before? Not in all these years?”

I shook my head, unsure of what to say. I had so many questions that I wanted to ask but I didn’t want to appear too nosey.

“She was my soul mate. My best friend. My lover.” He smiled sweetly at me then. “So you were right, Sarah, they do exist.” He sighed. “I was lucky. We started dating when we were fifteen, seems awfully young to find your true love, doesn’t it? But we had been friends since kindergarten. We’d gone to a movie one night and shared some popcorn and it was like magic. Our fingers touched and it was like we had an electric current running through our bodies.”

“You don’t have to tell me all of this if you don’t want to, Harry. If it’s too painful.” I looked up at him in distress hoping he would stop. I wasn’t sure I could stand to hear him talking about this woman he loved so deeply much longer.

“No, I want to tell you.” He smiled at me sweetly. “I owe it to you.”

I stifled a groan and the urge to tell him that no, he didn’t owe it to me. That I would be fine not hearing about any of it. But I kept my mouth shut.

“So after that movie, we started dating. We were young and each other’s first loves. It was like a fairytale. Everything was perfect. She was perfect. And then we lost our virginity to each other when we were sixteen. And we thought that nothing could ever top that moment in our lives.” His voice drifted off and we sat there in silence for a couple of minutes before he started talking again. “It was Angelica that introduced me to Genny.”

“Genny?” I looked up at him curiously. “Who’s that?”

He sighed and continued. “You know, Sarah. Even soul mates can have issues. Even soul mates can drift apart. Love is not everything.”

“It can be,” I whispered.

He looked at me in pain and whispered, “No, it can’t.” He shook his head and the words came tumbling out. “It was the weekend after graduation. One of our friends had a great big party at his parents’ house. It was the blowout party of the year. We were all off to college and wanted to celebrate big, one last time. Angelica and I were both going to Harvard so we weren’t worried about it. Everything was seemingly perfect. But it wasn’t really. We’d been arguing a lot over little stuff.”

“Oh?”

“She was a lot more adventurous than I was as a boy. Capricious and daring and she liked to experiment.”

“Experiment?” I frowned in confusion.

“She bought all sorts of sex books. She wanted us to explore our sexualities in different ways. We had sex at school, sex in a public swimming pool, sex in the backseat of her parents’ car as they were driving.”

“Oh ok.” My stomach churned.

“But that wasn’t enough. She needed to go further and further. I didn’t understand it.” He grimaced. “Most boys would have been happy to be with someone who wanted to try all sorts of sexual tricks but I was happy just getting laid the regular way.” He rubbed his hands through his head and sighed. “And then she had this idea that she wanted us to try anal sex.”

“Anal sex?”

“You do know what that is?” He looked at me in shock and wiggled his eyebrows. I wanted to tell him how inappropriate I thought his mannerisms were but I kept my mouth shut.

“Yes, of course.” I rolled my eyes annoyed. “I’ve just never heard of the woman wanting it and not the man, I guess.”

“Well, she did. She begged me to f**k her in the ass.” He laughed bitterly. “And I said no. I didn’t want to. And we argued about that for weeks. Can you believe that?”

“Not really.” I sighed. I didn’t really want to hear any more.

“So we went to the party and she disappeared. I went to find her and opened a door and there was Mark Classman f**king her from behind.”

I looked at him in shock, totally not expecting that part of the story. “Oh no, I’m so sorry, Harry.”