A hard, jagged lump forms in my throat, and I try to swallow it. It cuts all the way down.
I blink really hard to keep the tears away. I hide my hands in the sleeves of my coat as my fingernails dig into the flesh of my palms.
No, I don’t care what this woman thinks. I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I love him and that’s all that matters to me.
“Fletcher isn’t here right now, and I have to go.”
I leave behind the smirking red-head and slam the front door behind me.
Chapter 14
Fletcher
I stare at the emerald ring in a beam of sunlight, the gems scatter a rainbow of colored lights all over as I play with it in my hand. Amelia is at the hospital right now and I just got back in town. We agree to meet for lunch at the restaurant right across from the hospital for lunch to celebrate my return. The waiter comes by and refills my water. I know she recognizes me since she gets all flusters and then goes off to tattle to the other staff behind the counter. A posse of onlookers form and I pretend not to notice. I hope Amelia doesn’t mind. It’s already bad enough in this small town since word got around about who I am, and it only gets worse back in New York.
Initially, before I left, I had our whole life planned out in my head. She’ll move to New York with me. She can bring her mom, and I’ll cover all of her living and medical expenses. We’ll get married, and she can quit the whole nursing idea and raise our children. It doesn’t really matter to me if she works or not, since I know that I’ll take care of her. I want her right by my side for the rest of our lives.
Now, I’m not so sure if everything will pan out exactly the way I pictured. Alfred Worth has run a bogus story about how my company is riddled with non-existent products and accounting fraud, that it is nothing but an empty black hole ready to suck up the cash from any unwitting investor I am planning to defraud. Lies. Complete lies.
Still, it made the Japanese investor nervous because of the lack of progress on our project. We have no product that is ready for market, and we’re months behind the competition. We have been burning cash like crazy and we badly need this new infusion of money to stay afloat. No matter how much I plead and beg and revise the deal to be ridiculously attractive for him, the Japanese investor still pulled out at the last second. Alfred Worth and his unscrupulous cronies had another field day at my expense. So now, other investors caught wind of what happened and avoided me like the plague.
The game is over. We’ll be out of cash by the end of the month and I’ll be out of business forever. I have sunk my entire net worth into this and the only thing I’ll have under my name is this colossal failure and my parents’ old, empty house.
This feels like when Rachel left me all over again. I have no one to lean on. No one to turn to. No one is there to help me. I have to weather the storm completely alone. Except worse this time. I don’t even have my work to throw myself into.
I haven’t even told Amelia about what happened. I just told her that the Japanese investor pulled out and I have more work to do. Yet, like a coward, I came back here again to avoid the publicity and the shame. I have skipped town to avoid the pity look in people’s eyes. I just want to avoid all that. I just want to see Amelia’s sweet face and hold her in my arms. I just want to feel her soft body against mine and know that things will be alright.
But will it? I was confident that I would eventually win Amelia’s heart and get her to marry me when I was a high-flying billionaire. Now that I am practically penniless, I am not so sure. I know that money isn’t everything, but it is power in my world. My money was like an invisible superpower that has always made me feel invincible. I thought I could do anything and achieve everything. Now that I don’t have my wealth and success to bolster my ego, I find I am just an ordinary man, capable of failures and hubris. Why would anyone want to be with an ordinary man? Why would anyone want to be with a failure?
I stuff the ring and its pouch back into my blazer pocket. My fingers tremble as I reach for the pocket flap. Amelia is the last bright light in my life and I don’t want to lose her now more than ever. If she rejects me, I will truly have nothing left. But why would she say yes? She hasn’t even agreed to move to New York as a billionaire’s girlfriend. Why would she agree to marry a poor man?
Even if she agrees, what are you going to do? Live in your parents’ old house while she supports the two of you with her nursing job? Oh, how far you
