Ditch the Ex. Ditch the Billionaire .Chapter 113:.Isabella starts crying again sometime in between Archibald reaching over to buckle her seatbelt for her and driving out of the parking lot. These tears are silent counterparts to the hurricane from earlier, but Isabella has just as little control now as she did then. They come without her say so, slipping down her cheeks and dropping onto the seat, her lap, her thighs. Once she starts she doesn’t know how to stop, and even Archibald curling his fingers around her own aren’t enough.The next few minutes are a flurry of activity; Archibald is as good as his word and informs one of the waitstaff that they’re leaving. No one so much as glances at Isabella, her red-rimmed eyes, or her shaky grip on Archibald’s hand. Someone cracks the seal on a water bottle and pours it into a to-go cup of ice, handing it to Archibald when Isabella doesn’t reach out to take it.By the time they reach the front door, a valet has brought the car around.
Ditch the Ex. Date the Billionaire .Chapter 114: .“What was it specifically about tonight that was so upsetting to you?”Isabella winces. That’s a question that flies like an arrow and hits straight to the quick of the matter. She’s not sure how to talk about it without talking about everything else.Isabella wrings her hands in Archibald’s blankets.“I didn’t realize how—how much overlap there was going to be,” she says finally. “Until you said a name I recognized. You don’t get it— nobody liked me when I was working and it was—you don’t even know —it was bad, the whole thing was bad. The whole place was bad. The work culture was just, you know, eat or be eaten, everyone just waiting for the next person to fall? And when it was my turn, people just—they thought it was funny. That I was so bad at my job that I even got disowned too. Everybody knew about it and I—I didn’t want to be laughed at. In front of you. I didn’t want you to know what people thought about me.”Archibald make
Ditch the Ex. Date the Billionaire .Chapter 115: . “Did he touch you?”“What?” Isabella jerks her hand away from her nape, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.“Did he touch you?” Archibald repeats. “Did he put any part of his person onto your person without your express permission, desire, or request?”“I don’t think, uh, it doesn’t—““Please don’t tell me what should or shouldn’t matter to me. Did that man put his hands on you?”“Just, um. He grabbed me by the back of the neck, but I made him let go,” Isabella finally admits. Almost instantly, a strong hand that feels absolutely nothing like Nathaniel’s presses gently against the back of her neck and holds. Isabella relaxes into it with a soft exhale and feels the tension in her body begin to uncoil. “He made a shitty comment about my— our arrangement and, uh. He made an offer.”Archibald’s hands, which have been continuously moving, go very still.“It was an offer that I—er. That I didn’t appreciate. And then he asked if y
Ditch the Ex. Date the Billionaire .Chapter 116: .If life was a movie, this would be where Isabella magically starts getting her shit together.Unfortunately, if Isabella’s life was a movie it would probably be some sort of excruciating indie film in a foreign language with an ambiguous ending and no subtitles for the sake of pretension because in real life a meltdown and a heart-to-heart don’t really fix anything.There are unexpected repercussions that Isabella doesn’t see coming. Spending the weekend with Archibald is nice, but for a solid two weeks afterwards she struggles to leave her apartment. It’s a strange, nebulous fear that she never had, even when she was small and the monsters were out in the open and not just under her bed, but it’s hard to shake now. It feels like being hunted, even though Isabella knows that it’s ridiculous.Nathaniel’s opportunistic, not dedicated, and Isabella was merely convenient, not a target.She’s simply not that special and, realistically,
Ditch the Ex. Date the Billionaire .Chapter 117: .“Good luck,” Isabella says, charmed and just a bit breathless. “Knock ‘em dead.”“That’s the plan,” Archibald replies. “Thank you.”And then he’s walking back towards the ring like he hadn’t just grabbed Isabella’s heart by the throat and slammed it up against a wall. A metaphorical wall. A very metaphorical and definitely not literal wall, and Isabella definitely (metaphorically and not literally) doesn’t have to press the flat of her palm to her chest to take in a breath after. The headgear goes back on and the two men in the ring, the other in sky blue, bow to one another.Archibald’s preferred weapon is a jian. It’s one that Isabella can appreciate, even if she wasn’t ever that skilled with it, but it particularly suits Archibald in the way that it requires precision. It’s a gentleman’s weapon, after all, and Archibald wields it like it’s merely an extension of his arm.He’s fast and his movements are so liquid smooth that Isa
Ditch the Ex. Date the Billionaire .Chapter 118:.“Father wants to talk to you about coming back.”Isabella’s mug is halfway to her mouth when Chantelle drops that sentence like a bomb. It slips out of her fingers and orange juice spills across the table; Chantelle rolls her eyes and does nothing, as if daring that puddle to creep closer to the edge.“What?”“Are you deaf now, too? Father wants to talk to you about coming back. He misses you, Izzy.”“Pull the other one,” Isabella snaps.“Always so dramatic. Fine. Father has admitted at long last that your quality of work was never in question and that your firing was a result of temper and duress. He says that he’ll take you back, no questions asked, if you’ll agree to stop kissing our family's competition in the newspapers.”There are always questions asked. Nothing in this world has ever come from her father that didn’t have strings attached. It’s taken a long time, but Isabella always learns her lessons. She also picks out what
Ditch the Ex. Date the Billionaire .Chapter 119:.“Oh my god.”Isabella waves at Dara where she’s standing next to her car. She’s dropped her eggs and doesn’t seem to care that yolk is getting all over her boots. Gross.“Sup.”“Isabella Huo, don’t you dare say ‘sup’ to me when you look like that. You look like you got hit by a truck and lost.”Isabella winces and gingerly wipes at her face. It’s not sticky anymore, and dried blood comes off in flakes. Double gross.The struggle is real.(Isabella thinks she might have a concussion.)“Can you yell at me later? I think I’m concussed.”Between one breath and the next, Dara yanks open the car door, and then she’s really, really close to Isabella’s face. She tries not to, but she can’t help the reflexive flinch after everything today that has her plastering her whole back against the seat, even though Dara’s hands aren’t anything but gentle when she reaches out for her.Her face drops when she pushes Isabella’s bangs aside and sees what
Ditch the Ex. Date the Billionaire .Chapter 120: .“Sweetheart,” He says, “of course you’re not fine. No one in the world would expect you to be fine.”Isabella wants to go out into the woods and bury herself facedown in the ground. Not just because of how incredibly not fine she actually is, but because having that not-fine validated so easily makes her want to die. This isn’t her first rodeo with her father that had her coming out of it with a head injury, but it’s the first time she’s actually stood up for herself.She keeps waiting for it to feel better, but all she feels is sad.Archibald’s uncomplicated affection is too much for her to be expected to handle.“How did you…?” Isabella trails off.“Your roommate called me,” Archibald explains. “She had to leave and thought it best if you weren’t alone when you woke up.”“How much did she tell you?”Archibald’s face goes cloudy like a thunderhead, even though his hands on Isabella’s body aren’t anything but gentle.“Enough to be