Free Big Brother Billionaire (Part Three) by Lexie Ray Page A

laughed, and I scowled. “Please tell me how you’ve made me waste my life,” he said, resting his chin on his fist, almost mockingly. Fury easily replaced despair.
    “You’ve not had a single meaningful romantic relationship in your life because of me,” I said. “You’ve had to swoop in and save me from myself. I’ve practically strung you along, you waiting for me to cave in, to forget about us not being able to be together. I decided I wanted to save myself, lift myself up, and yet here you are, still here after all these years, waiting for me. Look at us, Marcus. We’re old. We wasted whole decades.”
    After that tirade, all he did was turn my hand upward and plant a soft kiss on my palm.
    “I don’t feel old,” he said. “And I know that things take time. Maybe we did have to live one life apart from each other. What’s important now is what you want to do, how you want to go forward. If you want to do your own thing, then tell me. I’ll respect that. I’ll stay away. But the truth of my life, Parker, is that I can never stop loving you. I would drop all of this in an instant if I thought you were ready to be with me. All you have to do is tell me, Parker. Or write me a letter. It doesn’t matter. Being with you is all I’ve ever wanted.”
    He let my hand go gently—so gently—and stood up, smiling still, smiling in spite of everything, and then walked away.
    Walked away, right back out of my life.
    The door to the club opened and shut, and I realized I didn’t have another forty years to wait. I didn’t have another ten. I couldn’t wait any longer for him. I just didn’t want to.
    Why had my mom denied the existence of my absolute love for the man who was walking away from me right now? We’d been young then. Maybe it had been easy to just label our attraction as puppy love. But I wasn’t getting any younger, and neither was Marcus. It didn’t matter anymore that our parents had made us siblings by marriage. None of that mattered anymore.
    I’d finally started doing what I wanted to do just by retiring from the club. I’d paid it forward to Sol; something else I’d wanted to do.
    Now, when was the time when I was going to start doing the things that mattered to me the most?
    I pushed myself out of my chair, almost toppling it over in the process, and practically bolted to the exit, bypassing a fussing Sol and a number of surprised old friends. I shoved open the door and sprinted out in the parking lot despite the height of my heels and my aching knees, because this was too important.
    Knowing what I wanted, and knowing I was finally ready to have it without a single regret was far too important.
    A car door shut, and I wheeled around. There. The dark town car he usually hired for his trips to Miami. I’d seen it so often that I associated it as Marcus’ car. The driver was walking back around, and I was running across the parking lot, waving my hands over my head, shouting things that didn’t make sense to me, and not giving a damn about how crazy I looked. I would go crazy if I let Marcus slip away from me this last time.
    My high heels finally betrayed me, and I tripped and took a nasty tumble on the pavement. It didn’t even hurt. I more or less bounced back up and started to the car again.
    The back door seemed to fling itself open and an enormously irate Marcus stepped out.
    “Parker, what the hell?” he asked crossly. “Your hand is bleeding. What are you doing?”
    “What I should’ve done a long time ago,” I said, then tossed my hands around his neck and kissed him, even as his mouth opened in shock. Our teeth clashed, I nearly lost my balance again and dragged us both down, and it wasn’t a perfect kiss.
    However, when he took me by the waist and held me out to look at me for a moment, then brought me back in, it was the perfect kiss, our lips relearning the topography of each other once more, our tongues—once old friends—reuniting joyfully, our breathing