He looked up at the ceiling, swallowed and exhaled. “No. You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
She couldn’t breathe. Any doubt she’d had that the text wasn’t about her was gone. Lola gripped the phone until her knuckles were white. “What do I deserve? What plan?”
He looked at her again. “Listen to me. If I tell you the truth like this, you won’t understand.” He put his hands palm to palm in front of him. “Trust me on this. Go home. Talk to Johnny. When you come back, I’ll explain everything.”
That was the reverse of how she wanted to do things. She had everything on the line as she was about to throw nine years down the drain. “Do you honestly think I’m that stupid? Don’t tell me you’ll explain this after I uproot my life for you.”
“You don’t want to hear the truth,” Beau said with warning. “You have to trust me here, Lola.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t?” he asked. “You put yourself in front of that gun for me tonight, and now you can’t trust me?”
Her eyes darted over the floor. She’d done it without hesitation, and he’d protected her too. At least, she’d thought he had.
But there was a plan.
And it involved her.
“There’s always a plan, Lola.”
The text message was casual, as if it were nothing for Brigitte to call Lola a bitch to Beau—the man who was asking her to trust him. Her decision maker. The man who’d demanded her surrender and who’d received it. She was in his hands, and she trusted him, but in that text, Brigitte had a reason to believe Beau wasn’t on Lola’s side.
“No,” she said. “Before I walk into my home with the intention to walk right back out, I need you to tell me exactly what Brigitte meant by that.”
He took a threatening step toward her. “You aren’t the only one uprooting your life. You think this has been easy for me? Letting someone in who’s in love with another man?”
“You shouldn’t have,” she said, her voice rising. “I didn’t ask you for that. I didn’t want any of this.”
“And I wasn’t the one who was supposed to—” He stopped.
“Supposed to what?” she asked after a silence, but he only stared at her. “Come on, Beau. Tell me what the plan was. Tell me what I was supposed to do that I didn’t.” She grit her teeth. “I did everything you asked. I fought you tooth and nail but I gave you what you wanted.”
“Yes,” he said. “You did everything right.”
“So what is it then?” She cocked her head. The longer he clung to the truth, the more Lola had to know. Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to give it up easily, which meant she needed to go deeper. “Maybe it’s not what I didn’t do, but what I did.”
His jaw set. “What do you mean?”
“Power is a funny thing, isn’t it? Sometimes the one who thinks he holds it…doesn’t hold it at all.”
He shook his head in warning, narrowing his darkened eyes on her. “Don’t.”
“That’s it, isn’t it? You want to love me more than you want to control me, and it scares you. You’d let me have that power to keep me.”
“Nobody has that over me,” he clipped.
“Someone did tonight,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “That man could’ve taken everything from you with one bullet.”
He stepped closer to her. “He didn’t, because we protected each other. We were in control. I’m still in control.”
“That’s fine, Beau. Control isn’t what I want. I want truth. You can keep your ridiculous obsession with having it all.”
“Ridiculous?” he asked, his nostrils flarin
g. “You think power comes over night? You think I decide? No. I fucking earned it. I’ve worked my ass off so people would respect me. So I could buy you expensive dresses and drive you around in a car people would literally kill to have. That man tonight—he could’ve killed you if he’d taken you out there, all for what I have.”
“Who says I want any of that?” she countered, pushing back against his anger. “I could give a crap about your car or your empty lifestyle. Without it, you’re just you, and that scares you. I make you powerless.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He charged forward, and she retreated until her legs hit the bed. He snatched the phone away, launching it against a wall as she flinched. His large shoulders moved up and down as he breathed hard. “I can’t believe I let you get to me like this again.”
“Again—?”
“You’re so righteous, aren’t you, Lola?” He towered over her. “You don’t need or want anything like the rest of us. You can’t be bought. Your pussy’s not for sale.”
She flushed. He made her sound high and mighty for that, as if any other woman would’ve rolled over and given him what he wanted. She had nowhere to put her hands, so she covered her stomach.
He laughed, and it was as hollow as his eyes. That emptiness was even more frightening than his indifference had been. “You were wrong. You said it couldn’t be done, but I did it. Me.”
“What did you do?” she asked, dread softening her voice. Suddenly she didn’t want to challenge or push him—she just wanted him to be himself again.
“Imagine this, Lola. Ten years ago, it’s the biggest moment of my life—what everything else has led up to. I’ve just signed a contract to sell one of the companies I practically killed myself to build. For years, I’ve denied myself everything for work—women, fun, sleep, life. It doesn’t matter, though, because it’s finally paid off. I’m going to be a multi-millionaire.