The Billionaire Playboy and Me

Chapter 1 MIDBA new

Ethan’s POV

"You're watching the news?" Clara's voice came before I even opened my eyes. "Seriously, Ethan. You almost die and the first thing you do is watch yourself almost die."

I didn't answer. The TV was already on when I woke up, and my face was already on it. Younger. Glossier. Mid-smirk at some award show I barely remembered attending. The anchor's voice filled the room like she owned it.

"...multiple Grammy awards, international chart dominance... miraculously survived a horrifying crash on the 405 Southbound, early Sunday morning..."

Miraculously.

I looked down at my hand. The bandaging ran from my knuckles to my wrist, and underneath it, I knew, were screws and plates and whatever else they'd used to hold the bones together. The doctor had called it complex. Had said the word physio like it was supposed to comfort me.

There goes playing guitar anytime soon.

"Turn it off," I said.

"Ethan…"

"Clara. Turn it off."

She crossed the room and hit the power button. The silence that followed was worse. I could still hear the anchor's voice in my head, and underneath it, the sound the windshield had made. The sound everything had made.

Clara sat in the chair beside the bed. She'd been crying, which I knew because her mascara had done something dramatic under her eyes and she hadn't fixed it, which meant she'd either forgotten or stopped caring, and Clara never forgot anything. It was why she'd been my manager since I made my career debut.

"You scared me," she said quietly. "You really scared me."

"I know."

"The press is already…"

"I know."

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she reached out and put her hand over mine, careful of the bandaging. "No concerts. No interviews. No anything. You just get better. That's the only job you have right now."

I nodded. It was easier than telling her that getting better assumed I'd wanted to survive in the first place.

Melody’s POV

"More?" Felix set his pen down like he was doing me a favour just by holding it. "You want more, Melody? You have recognition. You have credits on three platinum records."

"Credits," I said. "Not a name. Not a face. Not a cent more than what that contract says, which, by the way, is criminal."

"It's standard."

"It's theft." I put my notebook on his desk. Not gently. "Three records, Felix. I wrote the bridges, the hooks, the second verse of 'Seventeen' that made Anya cry on stage at the VMAs. She cried. I watched it on my phone while Lila was getting dialysis. You know what I got for that? A wire transfer and an NDA."

Felix leaned back. He had the kind of face that was permanently relaxed, which meant he'd never had to worry about anything long enough for it to stick. "You're a songwriter, Melody. This is the job."

"Then I quit the job."

That made him sit up. "You have six months left on this contract."

"Sue me." I picked up my notebook. "On what I've been paid, you'll win nothing."

I was almost at the door when he said it. Quietly, like he was sure it would stop me. "You'll never get another room like this one."

I thought about Lila. About the number on the hospital invoice I'd been ignoring for three weeks because looking at it made my chest close up. I thought about my parents, and the truck, and the dark water, and how I'd spent every day since then trying to be enough for all the people who hadn't made it out.

Then I turned around and slapped him.

Not hard enough to hurt him. Hard enough that we both knew I meant it.

I walked out before he found his voice.

———

Lila was awake when I got there, which was good. She was also watching a music video on her phone with the volume too loud, which meant she was feeling okay, which was the most I could ask for on a Tuesday.

"You look like you punched someone," she said.

"I slapped someone."

Her eyes went wide. "Who?"

"Felix."

She burst out laughing, and for a second she looked exactly like herself, like the version of herself that existed before the diagnosis, all sharp edges and mischief. Then she stopped because laughing made her ribs hurt, and the version I was currently allowed to have came back. Fifteen years old and exhausted in a way no fifteen-year-old should be.

"Did it feel good?" she asked.

"Honestly? Yes."

"Good." She shifted against her pillows. "You stayed too long with him anyway."

I didn't tell her about the money. I never told her about the money. I pulled out the napkin from my pocket instead, the one I'd been scribbling on during the bus ride over, and hummed the start of a melody I didn't have words for yet. She closed her eyes and listened with the small smile she saved for when she thought I wasn't watching.

She was asleep in ten minutes.

I stayed until the nurse came to check her vitals, then slipped out through the side corridor and took the stairs up to the roof. I needed air. I needed to think. I needed, if I was being honest, to stand somewhere that wasn't a hospital room or Felix's office or the apartment where the unopened invoice was sitting on the kitchen counter.

The city spread out below, orange and endless. I breathed in and let myself be nobody for a minute.

Then I saw him.

A figure at the far edge of the roof, both hands on the railing, leaning forward over nothing. Something about the way he was standing made my stomach drop before my brain had caught up.

"Hey," I said. My voice came out quite steady for someone that wanted to sob after the day she’d had , which surprised me. "You shouldn't be that close to the edge."

He turned.

I knew that face. Everyone knew that face. Dark hair, sharp jaw, hazel eyes that had stared out from a hundred magazine covers and twice as many tabloid pages. He looked different in person. Thinner. Like something inside him had been switched off.

Ethan Steele. Billionaire. Grammy winner. The man who'd crashed his car on the 405 three nights ago and walked away, if the news was to be believed.

Except he wasn't walking away right now. He was standing on the roof of the hospital at midnight, leaning over the railing with the kind of stillness that didn't look like someone enjoying the view.

"I'm fine," he said.

He didn't sound fine. And I'd heard enough people say those words when they meant the opposite to know the difference.

Chapter Two

Melody’s POV

Ethan Steele hadn't moved. Still at the railing, still leaning forward like the drop below was the most interesting thing in the world.

"I'm fine," he said again, without turning around. Like he'd heard that question so many times it had become a reflex.

"You're on a hospital rooftop at midnight in a gown," I said. "So you'll understand why I'm not taking your word for it."

He turned then. Slowly, like he wasn't sure I was worth the effort. Up close, he looked worse than the photos from the crash. Thinner. The bruising had faded to yellow at the edges, but his eyes were the real damage. Hollow in a way that had nothing to do with the accident.

"You know who I am," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Everyone knows who you are." I didn't move closer. Not yet. "Ethan Steele. Three Grammys. The 405 crash. Currently standing somewhere he shouldn't be."

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