Rejecting the Reborn Tycoon

When Caspian Thorne lost everything, every girl in my circle told me to cut him loose. I didn't. My allowance dried up. I got demoted from kept woman to glorified roommate.

I stayed anyway. Then he clawed his way back. Richer than ever, several times over.

The day he moved out of my apartment, he sat in my cramped little living room looking relaxed, pleased with himself even, and told me I could name any condition I wanted.

So I named one. "A penthouse downtown. Three thousand square feet." "And?" "That's it." That was when the smile slid off his face.

His hand was tucked behind his back, closed around something small and dark and velvet, and his knuckles went white around it. "...That's it?" Chapter 1 "What— what else is there supposed to be?" He looked genuinely angry, so I tucked my chin in and edged a little farther down the couch. "I could... throw in fifty years of HOA fees?" He drew in a slow breath.

His brows climbed. "Eden. Are you insulting me?" Fair point. A man this rich, and I'd asked for one measly threethousandsquarefoot penthouse. Borderline rude of me, honestly.

So I gave him the truth. "Sorry. It's just, I'm not planning to get married.

So if it's only ever going to be me, plus a dog maybe, that's already more room than I'll know what to do with." Something caught in his throat.

The hand behind his back came loose and shoved into his pocket. The watch on his wrist caught the light, a Patek, the kind that costs more than the apartment we were sitting in.

His voice cooled by several degrees. "Funny. I'm not planning to get married either." A beat. "Your terms are accepted. The contract's finished anyway.

I'll wire another two and a half million to your account. Call it thanks for the company these past few years." Two and a half million. So generous.

I lit up like a kid on Christmas morning and completely missed whatever he'd muttered under his breath right before it. "Thank you so much, Caspian!" His mouth went to a flat line.

He said nothing. When he slammed the door, the trash can out in the hall went over with a hollow clang. I took the whole thing straight to the group chat.

The truth is I don't really have friends in New York. The "girls" are the women dating the men in Caspian's circle. We call the chat the Diamond Birdcage HOA.

Halloran Spoils Me Rotten: [Eden. The opportunity of a LIFETIME and that's what you ask for?? Babe.

Touch grass.] Calderon's Rebound: [Next time keep the lowball offers out of the group, some of us are trying to stay motivated.] Did Autumn Skip Town Pregnant: [Land a sugar daddy, strike it rich, zero side effects.

She really cracked the game.] Only one of them was actually reading the question. Mr. Yuen Is My Baby: [The Lowells have wanted to marry into Caspian's family for years.

Word is they had dinner last week. The engagement's probably already on the calendar.] Mr. Yuen Is My Baby: [Also, in case you forgot what he is.

The man once ruined his own brother. Stripped him to nothing, put him out on the street, didn't blink. You think Eden has the nerve to squeeze him for more?

She'd be doing time by morning.] Me: [RIGHT??? He looked so mad when he left, it was terrifying] They all knew it. Caspian Thorne was a nightmare to handle.

Gorgeous, loaded, and completely insufferable, with a temper like a downed power line and a rulebook a mile long. The stamina of a man with something to prove, too.

There were mornings I could barely walk. But back then I was a good kept woman. For the right number, I could swallow just about anything.

And then the news came down the line: Caspian Thorne was bankrupt. Chapter 2 "Eden. Go. I don't have money anymore." The Thornes had thrown him out.

His suit was a wreck of wrinkles, and the line of his shoulders looked abandoned, like the world had set him down on the curb and driven off. I did want to go.

But my brain ran the math first. A golden boy like Caspian, crashed all the way to the bottom. Prop him up now and he'd remember it later, when he climbed back.

And he would climb back. A brain like his always finds the money again. Sooner or later. Beat working some ninetofive, didn't it?

My foot, already halfway out the door, came back inside. I tested the water. "...So. Those bags and shoes you bought me. I sold a few. Quietly.

Used the cash to buy a little place of my own." "Caspian. You want to come home with me?" He nodded. Barely. So I brought him back to my sixhundredsquarefoot shoebox.

We renegotiated. I added a few clauses to the bottom of our old contract. One. While broke, the tenant works off his rent. No free room and board. Two. No tantrums. Three.

My house, my rules. Make me mad and you sleep in the second bedroom. That night, at my tiny kitchen table, he ate every bite of the chicken noodle soup I'd cooked.

Didn't leave so much as a spoonful of broth.

Then he got up and did the dishes, which had never once happened in the whole time I'd known him, quiet the entire way through, like a big dog that had been left out in the rain.

Later, in the dark, he had me pinned under him, working that little pink bed of mine until the frame screamed.

I lodged a formal complaint about this disgraceful conduct toward one's benefactor. "Can you go easy? If it breaks I can't afford a new one!" I kicked at him. He caught my foot.

Then he kissed his way up from my ankle, his breath scorching, every word careful as glass. "Eden. Thank you... for still being willing to love me." "I swear to you.

I won't let it stay this hard for long." Here's the thing, though. A place of my own, any size, four walls that kept the rain out and a hot meal three times a day.

That was the only dream I'd ever actually had. I didn't think any of it was hard. But Caspian seemed to think it was.

Seemed to think I was gritting my teeth through something, holding on for his sake. Whatever. Let him. At least he looked fired up again. There was a light back in his eyes.

He'd kicked the trash can by the door clean to death, so I hauled the dented thing downstairs.

There's an old man on the ground floor, a sweet, slightly scrambled neighbor who wanders the building collecting other people's castoffs.

He looked at that dead trash can like it was Christmas. So I did the decent thing and gave it to him. Somewhere in there, a transfer from Caspian landed in my account.

He'd fatfingered the amount and sent me onepointfourthree million dollars. One. Four. Three. I knew that one. Everyone our age knows that one.

One letter, four letters, three letters. The cutesy way of typing I love you without having to actually say it. Which was exactly the problem.

A transfer loaded with a number like that is the easiest thing in the world for the sender to claw back later. Or worse, to wave around as hush money. As extortion.

So I kept a clean, boring, legally bulletproof one million, and wired the odd four hundred and thirty thousand right back to him. He didn't take it. So I sent a text to nudge him.

Me: [Caspian, you overpaid. Sent the extra back, fyi] The message wouldn't send. Then a second one bounced. Not Delivered, in red. I stared at it. He'd blocked me.

This is just what he does when something sets him off. No idea what it was this time. So I let it go, and went back to scrolling paint colors for the new place.

Chapter 3 More days went by, and still nothing from Caspian. The phone went to voicemail. Still blocked on every app.

Which was deeply out of character for a man who threw money around like confetti. What about my giant penthouse?

I couldn't sit still anymore, so I went over his head and called his assistant directly. "I'm sorry, Mr. Thorne has a private engagement today.

May I ask who's calling?" I stammered. Came up with nothing. Right. I kept forgetting. His new assistant didn't know me from a wrong number. The contract was over.

Every privilege that came with being his kept woman, gone. "Nobody, really. Just a friend." I hung up, ears burning. For the penthouse, though, I decided to show up in person.

I waited outside his building a long time before a black car finally rolled up. A Maybach, quietly obscene. The door opened, shut. And there was Caspian's face, all sharp lines.

A second figure slid out after him. Willowy. Unhurried. She had her back to me, a woman in a pale couture gown, and her voice came out delicate and bright. "Caspian.

I'm satisfied with you." "The face, the family, the pedigree, you check every box on my list. I have no objection to letting the feelings develop slowly, after the wedding." Well.

Straight to business, then. You could tell from the back of her alone that she had to be a stunner. This was the woman the Lowells had picked out for him.

Genevieve Lowell. "I'll leave you to it for now. You have three days to give me your answer." Caspian's face was blocked from my view. I couldn't read it.

A bombshell like this had to reach the girls immediately. I pressed myself behind the wall, dropped my screen brightness all the way down, and started broadcasting live to the chat.

Me: [@everyone GET IN HERE. Lowell heiress just proposed to Caspian to his FACE] Me: [hiding behind a tree.jpg] The chat detonated into a wall of popcorn reactions.

Then someone asked a question. Someone: [Eden. Three years.

You're telling me you never once caught feelings for him?] Someone: [Hearing him say all of that... that really doesn't hurt?] My thumb hovered over the screen.

And for a second, I didn't have an answer.

A low voice went off right over my head, reading the chat name out one word at a time. "The Diamond Birdcage HOA?" Caspian was standing behind me.

I had no idea how long he'd been there. I locked my screen like my life depended on it. He had one hand in his pocket and used the other to give his tie an impatient tug.

The rims of his eyes were flushed, there was liquor on him, and something churned in his face that I couldn't name. "Eden.

When did you pick up a peeping habit?" My heart slammed against my ribs. I took a step back. "I came to find you." His eyes lit. His throat moved. "To find me?" "Yeah.

You left this at my place." I held up the box. "You ran out so fast that day you forgot to take it. Figured I'd bring it over." The light went out of him.

Then he smiled. "You really can't wait, can you. Was my stuff such an eyesore?" "Honestly? It took up a lot of room.

Place feels a lot bigger now that it's gone." His breathing got heavier. Noticeably.

Chapter 4 He turned away to collect himself, and when he spoke again his voice was level. "Everything Genevieve just said. You heard all of it?" I nodded.

His gaze pinned me. "Anything you'd like to say about it?" I dropped my face lower, wrung my fingers together, and answered in a small voice. "There is." "Mm?" He waited for my answer, and there was something almost hopeful in the way he waited.

Wind moved down the street, and the rustle of it sounded like it was hurrying me along. I gathered my courage and said it with total sincerity. "I wish you both every happiness.

A houseful of kids. Fifty wonderful years." "And also, um. That threethousandsquarefoot place on the water you promised me.

When does that come through?" There was no movement in his tone at all. Nothing you could read