The Billionaire's Expired Pillow

For ten years, the Sinclairs paid me to lie in their son's bed so he could sleep.His body pillow. Hired. Salaried. A warm thing to hold in the dark.Tonight his mother slid a new contract across the table and didn't look at me while she did it."Salary's cut in half," she said. "His new girl can put him to sleep now. We don't need the pillow anymore."Ten years. I gave up every scrap of pride for that job.He ran through women like tissues. And every single night, he sent them home and fell asleep holding me instead.Long enough that he stopped imagining I could ever leave.Then he met her.Drove across the whole city for her at two in the morning. Three days without sleep. And not once did he reach for me.So I stood up.I pushed the contract back across the table."No," I said, gently. "I think that's enough."Chapter 1I'm the thing his family pays to lie in his bed so he can sleep. Ten years now.Tonight they sent me to clean up after him.Past midnight, I let myself into the hotel suite, and his girl of the week still hadn't left.The sheets were already changed. Fresh, hotelwhite. But the air hadn't caught up yet. It still held the warm, close smell of what had just happened in here.She was flushed, propped on one elbow, pouting at him. "You're really not going to let me stay the night?"Then she saw me in the doorway.Her face shut. "Sorry," she said. "We don't need the cleaning lady."Lucian laughed, short and low. "She's not the cleaning lady." A beat. "She's mine."The girl blinked. Then sat up, disbelieving. "One of me isn't enough? You've already got the next one lined up?"He stayed sprawled against the headboard, the heat not quite gone from his eyes, and looked at me.One brow went up. "She just sleeps with me," he said. "My little pillow. Problem?"I stood there and let the word settle over me the way it always did.His. Like a coat, or a watch. The girl in his bed got to throw his money back in his face. I didn't even get to be insulted.He pulled two checks from the nightstand, scrawled across them without looking, and held them out to her."We're done. You can go."I waited off to the side for her to take the money and leave, the way all the others did.She didn't.She slapped the checks back against his chest and tipped her chin up. "Keep your dirty money.""I had a good time too." A little smile. "We both got what we wanted, sweetheart."And she walked out without looking back.Lucian's thumb moved slowly over the check she'd left behind. For one second, something crossed his face that almost never did. Surprise.Then it was gone. He reached out, easy, practiced, and pulled me down into him. One arm around my waist. His face in the curve of my neck.That smell was still in the room. It wouldn't leave my nose.I looked down.Lipstick. On the back of his collar.Bright as a brand.He felt me go still. His voice came out rough. "Hm? What is it?"I pointed at his collar. "There's lipstick on your shirt."He was in a good mood tonight, apparently. "Bothers you? I'll change it."I pressed my lips together and said nothing.He thought about that for two seconds. "Then let's sleep somewhere else.""Your place tonight. Yeah?"It threw me. I had no idea why he'd want to, all of a sudden.But we'd shared a bed for ten years. Letting him into mine didn't change anything.I nodded.At home, he changed into the men's pajamas I kept for him and went straight for my bed. Lay down like he owned it.He's big enough that he could fold me into him without trying. He liked us face to face when he slept: one hand locked at my waist, the other spread across my back. My whole body gathered into his chest.Like I really was just a pillow.I'm particular about sleep. Pale sheets, pale duvet, a mattress soft enough to sink into. Pillows washed until they smelled clean and went soft as clouds. My stuffed animals lined up along the edge. The bed doesn't have to be big. It just has to feel safe.And there he was, all in black, crammed into my little palepink bed.He did not fit.When he bent his head, his nose touched the top of my hair.He held me for a while. Then, puzzled: "Liana. Why does your bed smell like this?"I was already half under. "Everything's just washed," I mumbled.He didn't let it go.He wasn't tired at all. He nosed around, here, there, and ended at the curve of my neck, where the skin is thin.A low laugh against it. "So this is where it's sweetest."His breath spilled hot over my skin and something in me went tight.My heart slammed once. I lifted my head to say something and my lips dragged across his jaw by accident.We both froze.I didn't know what to do. I was terrified he'd hear my heart, so I edged back, quiet, an inch of space.He hauled me right back in."Running from what," he said, flat.His big hand settled on my thin shoulder."Relax. I'm not interested in a scrawny little body like yours."Chapter 2I've always known Lucian doesn't like me.Can't stand me, more like.From thirteen to twentythree. Ten years, almost to the day.When he was thirteen, a rival of his family's had him taken. I don't know what they did to him in there. I only know what came back. Someone who couldn't sleep anymore, something in him broken at the root.The doctors said it plainly: find him a companion. Someone to keep him calm.So the Sinclairs put out a hiring notice.A line out the door. Parents, kids, hope. I took my number in my wornout clothes and folded into a corner, alone.I'd worked too late the night before. Somewhere in the waiting, I sank down and fell asleep.That was when thirteenyearold Lucian came out, hemmed in by adults, his small face sour. His eyes swept the room.And stopped on me. Asleep.He pointed, bored. "Her."That was the whole interview.But as I grew up, as my face filled out, Mrs. Sinclair's frown pulled tighter and tighter.She started warning me. Quietly. Over and over. Don't get ideas. Don't go wanting things that aren't yours to want.So I buried it. I took the small, stupid thing I felt for him and put it somewhere no one would ever see.I grew up watching him date one girl after another. Before he could finish his night, I'd knock and recite my line: "Mr. Sinclair. Time to sleep."To him I was no different from those girls. We were all there for the money.The difference was they could give him something. I was dull. All I ever did was end his fun.So he got tired of me. He even tried to sleep without me once. And then learned, furious, that ten years, half his life, had wired him to need me to fall asleep.A good mood helps you drift off faster, the doctors said. So for ten years I coaxed him, went soft for him, swallowed whatever I had to, just to keep him a little less unhappy.When his mood went bad, he didn't bother being kind about it."You're in it for the money," he'd say. "Spare me the fake concern."And the thing I'd buried, I buried again. I took it without a flinch."Right," I'd say. "I'm only in it for the money."I hid it that well.Even in my diary I kept him at arm's length. On the page he was never anything but Mr. Sinclair.Until I was nineteen, and he made the debt collectors hounding me disappear, coldfaced, not a single word about it.That night, in my diary, I finally let my hand do what it wanted. I wrote his name. Stroke by careful stroke.By the time I came back to myself, the page was full. Edge to edge, crammed, no white left.Like. Like. Like. Lucian. Lucian. Lucian.My hand jerked to tear it out.But it just sat there on the page, and in the end I couldn't make myself do it.Never mind, I told myself. The diary locked. It lived at the very bottom of my drawer.No one would ever find it.So when I woke the next morning and found Lucian sitting in my chair, the drawer hanging open...He held the open diary up. His voice was flat."What's this."My mind went white.Five years of small, shameful, hidden love, hauled out into the light at twentythree.The one time in my life I'd let my heart off its leash. And here it was, turned into a blade and pointed back at me.A long time passed before I could force the words out. "How did you... open it."He almost smiled. "Took me all morning. Turns out the passcode is my birthday."He lifted the diary and his eyes narrowed."A diary from four years ago. Baby. You buried this deep."His voice was unbearably soft, and it dragged my heart straight up into my throat.I dropped my head and gave up. I waited for him to pass sentence on my ridiculous little heart.Then I heard it.Paper, tearing.Expressionless, Lucian pulled the page free. One slow rip. Then another.He shredded my teenage heart into confetti and didn't change his face once.He let the pieces fall into the trash. The scoff he gave was small and cold."What exactly are you dreaming about?""Liana. You didn't really think one page of this would make me settle down?""They'll do anything to keep me entertained." A pause. "Can you? Hm?"Chapter 3For three days, nothing. Lucian didn't call.Maybe I'd finally disgusted him for good.And I could never find out where he went or what he was doing.On the fourth night, alone in my apartment, someone knocked.His assistant stood in the hall, holding up a Lucian who could barely keep his feet. He gave me a polite nod."Mr. Sinclair had a little too much tonight. Sorry to trouble you, Ms. Mercer."On paper, all I did was put him to sleep.But when he came home drunk, or ran a fever in the night, I was the one who looked after him.The thing was, Lucian could hold his liquor. How much did it take to wreck him like this?I got him into the bedroom and went to the kitchen to make something to cut the hangover.I was standing at the stove, waiting on the water, half somewhere else, when a body pressed up against my back. Burning hot.He found my waist like he'd done it a thousand times, leaned in, hooked his chin over my shoulder.His voice was wrecked. "Lia."I went still.He almost never called me that. It was my full name, usually. Or, when he was in the mood to needle me, baby, sweetheart, just to watch me squirm.He wasn't cold like four nights ago. He'd gone soft. Like a man asking for a truce.I kept my voice level. "Does it hurt that bad? The soup's almost done. Just give it a—"His mouth landed before I could finish.Warm. Soft. My cheek. The corner of my lips. The back of my neck.Everywhere he touched lit up, pins and needles.My breath snagged. My fingers found the edge of the counter and held on, because my knees had stopped being reliable.The thing I'd wanted at fifteen, at seventeen, at every hour I never said out loud, was happening, and it took my voice clean away.By the time I surfaced I was shaking, my hands coming up to push him off.Then he buried his face in my shoulder, drunk and wanting, and said it again, and again, like a thing he'd held under his tongue for years and finally couldn't keep down. "Lia. Lia."My hands stopped in the air.I'm no saint. For money, I'd already made myself into someone small and selfish.And when Lucian said my name like that, I'll admit it. I couldn't say no.It wasn't the first time.Years ago, the summer after we both finished school, before everything went hard between us, we were something else. We studied together. We planned to go to the same university. We'd each written the other into our future and never once said it out loud.Until he overheard me promise his mother, "I'm only in it for the money. I feel nothing for him." And then, shameless and on purpose, I asked her for a raise.I said it because she'd spent years watching me, waiting for me to want a thing I had no right to want. I said it to keep myself safe. He didn't know that. He only heard the words.It was the first time he ever looked at me like I was a stranger.By that night he'd hauled me into a room, his jaw locked tight. "Just for money? Fine.""So anyone'll do, then. Long as they pay. You'd even give them a whole night. That it?"Neither of us knew anything. He was rough, and clumsy, and not once did he soften it with a kiss. He only kept asking me the same thing, over and over."Anybody. As long as there's money. Right?"I bit down and couldn't answer, and I didn't dare let one ounce of what I felt reach my face.In the end I gave up and nodded. "...Right."It left me nothing but pain. The kind in your body, and the kind you can never point to.So now, with him drunk and gentle and saying my name, my actual name, I knew exactly what it would cost me.I turned around anyway.And I lifted my arms and wound them around his neck.Chapter 4That night four years ago is not a good memory. All it ever gave me was pain. The kind in my body. The kind in my chest.So tonight, with him drunk and kissing me soft and saying my name, I almost couldn't fight it.We were crammed together in that little pink bed.I met him. I gave in to one ridiculous thing after another. The scrawny, pale body he'd mocked went red under his hands.I wouldn't let myself dig into how much of the look in his drunk eyes was real and how much wasn't.At least the name in his mouth was mine.For years his girls had been nothing but a transaction to him. The same as that chaotic night four years back. No warmth. No comfort. Never a kiss.But tonight, after what felt like hours, when it was finally over, he pulled me into him and pressed slow, unhurried kisses to my mouth like he'd gotten a taste and couldn't stop.His hand fit easy around my waist.I was wrung out, still shaking in his hold, not all the way back in my body.Then I heard him, teasing. "Waist this small. How'd you even survive that?"He ran his palm up my spine, gentling me down.And held there against his chest, I let myself think it, very quietly.Maybe I'm a little different to him after all.For once, Lucian slept deep and easy. He didn't stir, not even near noon.Until his phone rang.I didn't want it to wake him. I pushed my tired body up and reached over to silence it.And there, lit up on the screen, was the caller's name.Mia.【建议收费节点】Everything in me went cold at once, the blood running the wrong way. The ringtone went somewhere far off. There was just a high, thin whine in my ears.Lia. Mia.The name he'd breathed into my neck in the dark, and this one burning on his screen. The same sound. The same shape in a mouth.The thought I couldn't stand surfaced anyway.I looked down, holding one last thread of hope, and met Lucian's eyes. Cold. Clear.He's vicious the second he wakes, always. Not now. Not a trace of it. He took the phone out of my hand.A voice poured out of it, sweet, familiar."Lucian. I hear you went three whole nights without sleep. Didn't even hold that little pillow of yours. Drove clear across the city in the dark just to come chase me down?""Mm. Since you're being so sincere about it, I suppose I'll forgive you.""Whatever you feel like doing tonight, I'm all yours."It was her. The girl from the hotel.Lucian answered her with a smile in his voice, one easy sound after another.I don't know how long it went on. Then the call ended.His smile cooled. His eyes moved over me, measuring, and his brow pulled down."Why was it you last night?"My hand closed until my nails nearly went through my palm.It landed, finally, a beat too late. Every soft thing from last night had been meant for someone else.I sat there a long while. Then I shut my eyes."It was me," I said. "Who did you think it was?"He didn't answer right away.Then a long breath, almost amused. "Baby. You really can't get by without me anymore, can you."He pulled out a few checks and slapped them against me, that cruel little smile sliding back on."You were good last night. This ought to cover it.""But from now on, just stay my pillow." A pause. "Don't go getting ideas."Chapter 5That night, Lucian didn't come back for me.His mother came instead.She slid the renewal contract across the table to me, and only then did it land: I'd known Lucian for ten years.The contract ran in fiveyear terms.When the first one ended, I'd just turned eighteen. To keep my spot at the prep school the Sinclairs funded, I'd groveled to this woman until she let me sign the next five.Now she pushed the renewal at me again, cool as anything."Lucian's new girl says she can get him to sleep too," she said, idle. "We may not need you after this.""Salary's cut in half. Sign it or don't, it's up to you."She said it like she already knew the answer. Like I'd grovel the way I had five years ago, too scared to let the job go.And I was grateful. The Sinclairs gave me this work at the worst point of my life. It put me through prep school and through college.But now I sat looking at that contract, and I couldn't move.Ten years went by behind my eyes, frame by frame.A long time passed.I pushed it back across the table. Shook my head, just slightly."I'm sorry, Mrs. Sinclair," I said gently."This contract ends here."For a second the whole drawing room went silent.She sipped her tea. When she finally spoke, she took her time. "You're certain."I nodded.A small crease touched her brow, and a thin warning came into her voice. "Don't get above yourself, Liana.""You're a pillow we pay to keep him asleep. He doesn't need you specifically."I just stood up and gave her a small bow."Thank you, Mrs. Sinclair. For everything your family did for me these ten years."I meant it, every word, and I think that was what unsettled her most. You can't wound someone who's already handing you the knife, hilt first, with a smile."You don't have to worry. I've made my decision. I won't take it back, and I won't come around making trouble."At that, her brow finally smoothed. I wasn't crying or making a scene, and she looked almost relieved.The contract had seven days left."Use the seven days to pack," she said. "When the term's up, you leave.""Go wherever you like. Just don't turn up in front of him again.""Can you manage that?"She said it cold, like she was afraid I'd trade on ten years of history and cling to her family.I just held the hem of my coat and promised, quietly, "Yes. I can manage."Outside the old Sinclair estate, I stood at the curb, and for once I felt lost.For years I'd put Lucian first in every plan I made for my life. I never once pictured this.When my advisor had asked, months back, if I wanted to apply for the research fellowship across the country, in New York, I'd turned it down without a blink. Even though the program lined up exactly with what I was studying.I stayed put. I waited for him.But standing there under the yellow streetlight, I messaged my advisor and asked if there was still a spot.She wrote back at once. There was. She'd fight to get it for me.And in that moment, I understood something.Old friends from a past life. Lovers we let slip by.No one's meant to wait for anyone.Chapter 6Seven days was tight. I had to pull my documents together, get everything ready to move across the country.I started clearing out my closet, packing it into a suitcase, piece by piece.The next night, Lucian let himself in like he always did and came into the bedroom.Ever since I'd brought him here to sleep, he'd taken a strange liking to this bed of mine. He'd stopped sleeping in the enormous one at his own place.He finished washing up, pulled open the closet out of habit, and went looking for pajamas.Then, out of nowhere: "Two of your pajamas are missing. Where'd they go?"My stomach dropped. I kept my face even. "What about them?"He frowned. "Those two had the best feel to them."I waved it off. "They were old. I bought new ones."He let it go.In bed, when his hand went to my waist out of habit, I flinched and pulled away before I could stop myself.My waist had been aching, on and off, for two days.In daylight I'd bitten down on my collar and twisted to look at my own back. There were fingermarks pressed into the skin where he'd gripped too hard