Read Online Irresistible (Underneath it All Series: Book One) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) by Ava Claire - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ava Claire
Tags: alpha male, alpha male romance, Billionaire, billionaire romance, billionaire erotic romance, alpha billionaire, ava claire, billionaire love
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absence and work full-time, or the woman could have lost the remote or ran out of booze and she was calling me home to go grocery shopping. With Rose in the middle, I’d drop everything, and my mother knew it.
I turned up the radio and tried to distract myself with lyrics about living it up and champagne and all the things that pop culture seemed infatuated with these days. What pop stars and famous faces would I find if I Googled Jackson Colt?
“And that’s enough radio for me,” I grumbled, deciding I was better off with silence. Even if I had half an hour to go. If only I could silence the voices in my head.
Had I inherited my mother’s bad taste in men? I’d spent so many years navigating her crappy love life that I had no time nor interest in building my own. There had been dates of course. Things here and there on campus. My roommates used to call me Frozen, and it wasn’t because I loved singing “Let it Go.” They’d pine and make their guys Facebook official as soon as they could swing it, then they’d cry and lament when things went south. In my world, no guy lasted long enough to make it official on social media. I didn’t let anyone stick around and make themselves comfortable. I used them, then discarded them, before they could use and discard me.
Just like Jackson used you.
Just like he threw you away.
The tears I didn’t cry last night, of frustration, of loneliness, filled my eyes. Blurred my view. The similarities between me and the guy I told to fuck off couldn’t be more clear. My scars ran deep; I carried them with me. I saw them every time I looked in the mirror. What were his scars? Who hurt him so deeply that fate tossed us together? Who broke his heart so deeply that booking it as far away from me as possible was preferable to having a conversation?
A tear sliced down my cheek. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t get to know.
I swiped my hands over my face and sat up straight. Forward. Put the billionaire that piqued your interest behind you and focus on your endgame. Life after the debt is paid, Rose settled at Yale, and you can close the door on your mother, able to honestly say you tried your best.
I should have been hit by the vast, seemingly endless ways my mother disappointed me, but there was only bitterness. ‘Mom.’ When was the last time I’d called her that without sarcasm? Without it being a silent plea to put away the cabernet, shut off the TV, and notice me? Notice Rose?
When the tears wouldn’t stop, I turned the radio back on. I could weather tales of broken romance. I could even take bragging about a lifestyle I’d never lead and had only glimpsed from afar, when I was killing myself just to survive. I couldn’t take my mother. She was the one person I should be able to turn to and count on, but she couldn’t get outside of herself. She was willfully blind to the desolation she left in her wake.
The city fell away and the distance between the woman I was trying to be and the girl I was running away from shrank. Over the bridge, the buildings didn't kiss the sky. The roads stretched their limbs since the congestion was in the rear view mirror. Taxis and luxury cars were traded for rimless sedans and minivans. The city was made for the screen, with the bustle and the smells and the business suits. This was home, where everything moved a little slower and the people didn't have time for glitz and glamour. They were just waking up so they could work hard and get back to their families, so they could go to sleep and do it all over again.
I got so caught up in escaping where I grew up that I forgot the things that would always be home. The ‘Curl up and Dye’ just off of Main Street with the worn, neon-colored chairs and Miss Betty, an older stylist who gave me and Rose a discount because she knew things were tight at home. The movie theater that had been around since the town was founded and still had all the original seats and fixtures that looked grand, cobwebs
I turned up the radio and tried to distract myself with lyrics about living it up and champagne and all the things that pop culture seemed infatuated with these days. What pop stars and famous faces would I find if I Googled Jackson Colt?
“And that’s enough radio for me,” I grumbled, deciding I was better off with silence. Even if I had half an hour to go. If only I could silence the voices in my head.
Had I inherited my mother’s bad taste in men? I’d spent so many years navigating her crappy love life that I had no time nor interest in building my own. There had been dates of course. Things here and there on campus. My roommates used to call me Frozen, and it wasn’t because I loved singing “Let it Go.” They’d pine and make their guys Facebook official as soon as they could swing it, then they’d cry and lament when things went south. In my world, no guy lasted long enough to make it official on social media. I didn’t let anyone stick around and make themselves comfortable. I used them, then discarded them, before they could use and discard me.
Just like Jackson used you.
Just like he threw you away.
The tears I didn’t cry last night, of frustration, of loneliness, filled my eyes. Blurred my view. The similarities between me and the guy I told to fuck off couldn’t be more clear. My scars ran deep; I carried them with me. I saw them every time I looked in the mirror. What were his scars? Who hurt him so deeply that fate tossed us together? Who broke his heart so deeply that booking it as far away from me as possible was preferable to having a conversation?
A tear sliced down my cheek. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t get to know.
I swiped my hands over my face and sat up straight. Forward. Put the billionaire that piqued your interest behind you and focus on your endgame. Life after the debt is paid, Rose settled at Yale, and you can close the door on your mother, able to honestly say you tried your best.
I should have been hit by the vast, seemingly endless ways my mother disappointed me, but there was only bitterness. ‘Mom.’ When was the last time I’d called her that without sarcasm? Without it being a silent plea to put away the cabernet, shut off the TV, and notice me? Notice Rose?
When the tears wouldn’t stop, I turned the radio back on. I could weather tales of broken romance. I could even take bragging about a lifestyle I’d never lead and had only glimpsed from afar, when I was killing myself just to survive. I couldn’t take my mother. She was the one person I should be able to turn to and count on, but she couldn’t get outside of herself. She was willfully blind to the desolation she left in her wake.
The city fell away and the distance between the woman I was trying to be and the girl I was running away from shrank. Over the bridge, the buildings didn't kiss the sky. The roads stretched their limbs since the congestion was in the rear view mirror. Taxis and luxury cars were traded for rimless sedans and minivans. The city was made for the screen, with the bustle and the smells and the business suits. This was home, where everything moved a little slower and the people didn't have time for glitz and glamour. They were just waking up so they could work hard and get back to their families, so they could go to sleep and do it all over again.
I got so caught up in escaping where I grew up that I forgot the things that would always be home. The ‘Curl up and Dye’ just off of Main Street with the worn, neon-colored chairs and Miss Betty, an older stylist who gave me and Rose a discount because she knew things were tight at home. The movie theater that had been around since the town was founded and still had all the original seats and fixtures that looked grand, cobwebs
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