The Billionaire's Playmate ✔

30 | WINNER

PRESENT DAY

"You win."

That's what she says.

That's what she says, her light brown eyes, usually so bright, now dark, cold and hurt, brimming with tears again, even though she just wiped them.

That's what she says to me in a way that I just know that her heart is breaking because I've spoken like that before.

That's the last thing she says in a voice that's so close to breaking that I can hear the hitch in her tone, before she turns around and walks away.

Trouble walks away from me.

Maybe, it's a good thing that Trouble walks away from me.

That's what I've called her from the moment I first laid eyes on her.

Trouble.

With a capital T.

I knew, from the moment I saw her, even before she opened that intoxicating mouth of hers, that she would be Trouble.

And, she's been nothing, but Trouble since then.

She has filled my life with nothing, but her own brand of Trouble.

It's intoxicating.

She's been constantly threatening to make me feel again.

I feel her.

I felt her from the time she laughed with me as we fled the scene of the crime that was Al's Twenty-Four-Hour Diner, leaving Crazy by Patsy Cline playing on a loop.

I've felt everything she's done, everything she's said, every time she's touched me since then.

I've also felt everything she hasn't done, everything she hasn't said, every time she hasn't touched me, every question that she hasn't asked me that I could see in her eyes.

Not because she reminds me of anyone like she thinks I do.

I feel her because she's her.

I haven't felt anything for anyone since I walked out of that house years ago. My heart never felt a single thing.

Until her.

Trouble.

The irony of it all.

I called my first love my angel, and I'm calling her –

I don't know what she is.

Whatever she is, she's Trouble.

Bonnie.

Isa.

Isabella.

Even when she's not there, I feel her.