One Night Stand with Billionaire: BOOK 1

*Chapter 24: Confrontation with the past

Every person has a story behind their scars and every single one of us had them, be it that they rest on our skin or on our heart, so it's pointless to go around judging people without knowing them.

I was stunned, silence revolted around me. With each step I got to know Blake I became more and more surprised from the outcome of my curiosity.

My lips parted trying to voice out something, but no words came out as I finally understood his words. Max and Melissa, they were once engaged! Surely, when I looked at them, they bickered like a real couple, but I could never guess that they would have been engaged in the past. My mind stopped as I recalled Blake mentioning how Lucas had to do something with it. Did he stop the wedding or something?

"What? When?" was all I could ask for now. The longer I stayed with Blake, the more I came to understand why he acted the way he did, why he was so distant and cold with his family.

Why I couldn't read him.

Was I also about to unravel the mystery behind his hatred for Lucas? Blake wasn't some rich spoiled guy I thought he was when we first met. He was normal, he suffered and he was telling me about that suffering despite it being painful. He seemed like an adult, keeping his distance, but also being unable to hold back from grasping light and getting involved with people dear to him.

He said that he had a bad relationship with his family, but he was also someone who'd simply sit down with them on the same table, play around and act spoiled when happy.

He was only a man of flesh and blood, not some unattainable idol.

I only now noticed that the light was off in his study. I couldn't understand why it hadn't bothered me when I first came in. He's probably been working on his laptop for so long that he hadn't even noticed when the night fell. I smiled. Even without light in this huge room, you could perfectly see the environment due to the lights from the outside and moonlight breaking through the windows. It seemed so peaceful, but I knew that there was more than meets the eye.

Darkness that once seemed so peaceful was about to engulf us, I already knew that this conversation of ours wasn't going to be some nice chitchat. And for some reason, the sole thought of having it with Blake brought chills to my skin. Blake rarely spoke of his past. No, he avoided talking about it. But now, he chose not to run away.

"When Melissa was eighteen, and Max twenty, it was seven years ago," Blake began to tell the tale that almost seemed like a dream. He was simultaneously looking my way, carefully observing my face. "They were a high school couple, you could say. Max even stayed to repeat a year just so that he could remain by her side while she skipped a grade. You'd be surprised at what he was like back then. I think that our high school didn't know of any bigger delinquent than him," he chuckled and I smiled at this newfound information. I could already imagine macho Max as a school's playboy and shy Mel despite how odd it seemed.

Max was rather nice now, cool and composed while the wild look was more suited for Melissa who went around provoking fights with everyone. They did sound cute. I would've loved to have met their younger selves.

"Everyone thought that they were going to get married and he proposed to her on her eighteenth birthday." His smile dropped as he returned the sandwich he was eating back on the plate. This conversation made him lose his appetite, and if I knew one thing about Blake, that's that he never wasted his food. "She said 'yes' and everyone was happy about it. Everyone but Lucas!" The way he said his father's name with such hatred made my skin freeze so much that I wanted nothing more but to crawl in some far corner and hide. He didn't hide his hatred for Lucas. I was familiar with this emotion. At one moment I even began to think that I didn't want to know. But I knew that I had to. I had to know if I truly wanted to understand Blake.