Breaking the Billionaire's Rules

by Annika Martin

And then the next moment, I see Maximillion Plaza on the roster. And the sun goes behind the clouds. And shadows move across the land at terrifying speeds. Giant birds with dinosaur faces screech across the sky.

Our building kind of adopted her. She lost her family, but she has us.

Like he knows all of your secrets because you trusted him for a little while, and he stomped all over your heart. And you stupidly still love him.

whereas when I do it with my considerably shorter and less willowy limbs, it just looks like pasta-fed girl of sturdy Italian stock is sooo weary. Pasta-fed girl needs to work on cardio. Pasta-fed girl shouldn’t have gotten bangs, but she’s doing the best she can, so give her a break already.

I mimic putting down a meal, then I put my hands on my hips and strike a pose, determined to commit. I focus on channeling personal power, on putting style and moxie into the line, even if it makes me sound ridiculous and rathetic. “Meowwwwww!” I emote. Sienna looks stunned. Rollins barks out a laugh.

Impressive. You had to be a student at the Shiz to fully understand the meaning of “impressive.” Impressive meant style over substance. Flash over soul. As if you were striving to impress. It meant you were pandering to the audience as opposed to being a serious artist. Impressive suggested that you cared only about looking good to people.

“If you knew the underbelly of Milano as I did,” Antonio says, “you would not think it.” “The underbelly of Milano,” I say. “Is that near the hardscrabble alley behind the Keebler Elves’ Factory?” I ask. Jada raises a finger. “I believe it’s located east of the Pepperidge Farms killing fields.”

Personally, I find that adding lavender to a blend introduces a wistful note of longing, a nostalgic edge, an ache for what once was, what never could’ve been. In the end, that’s what nostalgia is; the past seen through rose-colored glasses.

“She looked like she was about to cry.” Something twists inside me. I need more. Did I upset her? For a wild minute, I think about ejecting him from my office and going after her.

Or we go with a Max Hilton who sings weepy show tunes and who still can’t get over his first love who rejected him?”

Though science tells us that the cells of the body replace themselves over time—nine years for an entirely new body. So he really is a different person in every way.

“A smile with no subtext is but a shape of the lips.”

“There we go,” he whispers, “there’s your non-galpal face.” My eyes fly open. “Oh my god!” I push him away. “You are so full of shit.”

I brush my lips lightly over hers. Our connection is electric. What am I doing?

Stage kisses are all style; this one’s pure substance.

Everything, I think. The one who kissed my skinned knees and sung me lullabies. The one who brought laughter to my grim childhood. The one who took the sunshine when she died.

But I won’t fall for him again. I know better. Make me fall for you once, shame on you. Make me fall for you twice, shame on me. I fell so hard for him that summer. I really thought he cared. I didn’t know he was playing me.

Something unpleasant rises up in me at his calling Max an asshole. I’m the only one who gets to insult Max.

Everything falls away but her. She just doesn’t give a fuck—she never did. Even back in high school she was like that.

I start to assemble myself, like it’s all no big, but really, I’m cracked open. Only Max can do this to me. Only Max.

“Please, Max,” I whisper softly, adjusting my apron. I really am begging him, but not for sex. I’m begging for him not to hurt me anymore. I’ve got nothing left.

Wrong. Wrong doesn’t come close. I need a bigger word, the kind of word that the Germans might invent. A word that means that you’re dreading something that will be painful, but you also very much want that thing to happen.

She takes a breath, and I breathe, too, because that’s what Mia Corelli does, she reaches into your chest and pulls your breath out. Mia Corelli, always longing for more. Fighting for more. All brave and beautiful and tragic, but yet always somehow out of reach. Like a not-quite-remembered dream that floats away as soon as you grab for it, laughing as it goes.

“You’re too terrifying,” I finally say. The light flooding in the windows is a faint dot of white in each of his eyes. “So are you,” he says.

“Sometimes the journey is the destination,” I say.

He didn’t play like a robot because he feels nothing. He didn’t create the cold, careless Max Hilton persona because he feels nothing. He did those things because he feels too much.

“All of them. The businesses you built and loved and lost. Do you ever look back and say, I quit too soon? We should’ve kept hammering away?” “Usually we held on to those businesses too long,” she says. “You think things should work out. You put all your heart in. It’s hard, emotionally, to look at facts, when your heart and your sweat is in a thing.”

“The point is, it doesn’t matter. You can never know the outcome of a thing, Mia. The only thing that you have is how it feels. We were always so focused on schemes to build our wealth, move to the other side of the tracks, get a pie-in-the-sky moment, we didn’t concentrate on what made us happy. All of the other concerns beyond that, you just have to be bigger than those concerns.”

“You’re scared right now, but you thought up this scheme when you weren’t scared. Your bravest self thought up this scheme. Trust that girl who’s brave.”

“She was playful and outrageous,” Max says. “A little bit bossy. And so goddamn beautiful, it killed me.”

“They say cynics are just disillusioned idealists. You should know that writers of pickup books are just heartbroken romantics.”

Then he kisses me. And there are not enough stars.