The Billionaire she threw away

Chapter 05

The Billionaire She Threw Away

Chapter Five

Professor Rhys canceled class that morning, some family matter she didn't explain, which left half the group chat free for the afternoon and Matthew Bening more than happy to take advantage of it.

"Why wait until the actual graduation week," Matthew said, holding court in the common room with most of their class crowded around him. His ribs still ached from yesterday, though he'd covered that up with a loose shirt and a story about pulling a muscle at the gym. "Let's do the dinner today. I know a place. The Meridian Room, top floor of the Grand Valmont. I've got connections there, I can get us a private room, and I'll cover it."

A few people whistled. Matthew loved that sound more than almost anything. He'd spent four years cultivating exactly this kind of reaction, learning which words made people lean in and which ones made them roll their eyes, and tonight he intended to get every last bit of mileage out of it that he could.

Colman frowned from his spot near the window, arms folded. "Isn't that place expensive? Maybe we should pick somewhere a little more reasonable. Not everyone's exactly rolling in cash here." He glanced toward Jensen without quite meaning to, the kind of automatic protectiveness that had become second nature to him over four years of friendship.

It wasn't subtle, and Matthew knew exactly who Colman meant by that. His eyes flicked toward Jensen, sitting quietly near the back with his arms crossed, and something sly crept into his expression.

"Worried about your buddy, Colman?" Matthew said it loud enough for the whole room to hear. "Don't worry. Jensen doesn't have to spend a cent if he doesn't want to. Some of us can actually afford to treat people."

A couple of laughs rippled through the room, quiet but pointed, the kind designed to land without anyone having to take direct responsibility for them. Charlotte Woodart, sitting near the door with a book she clearly hadn't been reading either, didn't laugh. She glanced toward Jensen for half a second before looking back down at her book, her expression unreadable, the way she usually looked whenever Matthew's comments started circling someone in the room.

Jensen didn't flinch. He'd absorbed worse from people who actually meant it. If anything, he almost smiled.

"It's fine," he said, voice calm and even, no edge to it at all. "The Meridian Room sounds great. In fact, I'll cover the wine for the table. Red, something decent. My treat."

The room went quiet for a second, the kind of quiet that came from nobody quite expecting that response. Matthew's grin faltered just slightly, caught off guard by an offer he hadn't expected and didn't quite know how to mock.

"Big talk from a guy who works nights at a club," Matthew said, recovering fast, though the comeback came out weaker than his usual material, thinner somehow, like even he could hear how little it actually landed.

"We'll see," Jensen said, and left it at that, already turning back to his phone like the conversation had stopped mattering to him.

What none of them knew, except Matthew himself, was exactly where the money for tonight had actually come from. He'd told Benjamin he needed the loan to teach Jensen a lesson, framing it as payback for the humiliation at the club, and Benjamin had wired it over without much hesitation, eager for any chance to see Jensen knocked down another peg. The two of them had built an entire friendship out of moments exactly like this, favors traded back and forth, money moving between them like it cost nothing at all because to them, it basically didn't.

But that wasn't really why Matthew wanted tonight to happen. Tonight was about Charlotte. He'd been trying to get her attention for two years, ever since she transferred into their class, and nothing he'd tried so far had worked. He'd offered to drive her places, offered to pay for things she never asked for, dropped hints about his family's money so often that even people who liked him had started to find it exhausting. Charlotte stayed polite and distant through all of it, never quite rejecting him outright, never quite encouraging him either, which Matthew had somehow convinced himself meant he just hadn't tried hard enough yet. Tonight, he told himself, would be different. Tonight he'd show her exactly what kind of man he really was.

The walk over to the Grand Valmont took twenty minutes, the whole group spread out along the sidewalk in loose clusters, phones out, half of them filming the walk for whatever story they planned to post later. Matthew made sure to walk close to Charlotte the entire way, talking louder than necessary about deals his father was closing, about a yacht trip he'd taken last summer, about a watch he'd just had shipped from overseas that cost more than most people's cars. Every few minutes he found some new reason to mention a number, a price tag, a brand name dropped just casually enough to seem like an accident, the kind of performance he'd clearly rehearsed in his head more than once.

Charlotte said almost nothing the entire walk. She nodded occasionally, gave the kind of polite hum that meant nothing, and kept her eyes mostly on the sidewalk ahead of her. A couple of times she pulled her phone out, glanced at the screen, and put it away again without checking whatever notification had come through, her expression tightening just slightly each time. If Matthew noticed how little she was actually engaging, he didn't let it slow him down, too focused on his own momentum to read the room he was supposedly trying to impress.

Jensen walked a few steps behind the group, half listening to Matthew's bragging, half lost in his own thoughts. Tomorrow, or the day after, he still had to decide how and when to tell Colman the truth about who he really was. Tonight, at least, felt simple by comparison. A dinner. A few hours of pretending to be exactly who everyone already thought he was.

The Meridian Room sat at the top of the Grand Valmont, glass walls looking out over the skyline, the kind of restaurant that didn't bother putting prices next to most of the menu items because anyone who needed to ask probably shouldn't be there. The host greeted Matthew by name, which seemed to please him enormously, right up until he checked the reservation book.

"I'm so sorry, sir. All of our standard private rooms are booked through the evening. We do have our premier room available, if you'd like that instead."

Matthew's smile held for a second too long before it started to crack. He'd planned this whole night around spending a few thousand dollars, enough to look generous without actually hurting, the kind of number Benjamin's loan could comfortably cover with room to spare. The premier room, he already knew from rumors around campus, came with a minimum spend that started somewhere in the tens of thousands and climbed fast from there, the kind of number that would burn through every cent Benjamin had given him and then some.

"Maybe somewhere downstairs instead," Matthew said quickly, already looking for an exit from the corner he'd backed himself into. "Or we could try a different night, when the regular rooms open back up—"

"It's fine," Jensen said from behind him, voice perfectly calm. "We're already here. Let's just take the premier room."

The whole group turned to look at Jensen, then back at Matthew, waiting, a few of them already murmuring approval at the idea of an even fancier room than originally promised.

Matthew's jaw tightened. He could feel Charlotte's eyes on him now, along with everyone else's, and backing out in front of her after all that talk on the walk over would have been worse than just about anything else that could happen tonight. He'd spent the entire walk building himself up as the kind of man who didn't think twice about money, and there was no version of tonight where he could suddenly claim otherwise without losing exactly the thing he'd come here to win. Charlotte made a small sound beside him, not quite a laugh, but close enough that Matthew's ears went red.

"Of course we're taking the premier room," he said, forcing his voice back into its usual confident register, even as his stomach turned over at the math running through his head. "It's nothing special. I was just being considerate of everyone else's budget, that's all."

A few classmates cheered, clapping Matthew on the back as the host led them toward the elevator, completely unaware of the panic sitting just beneath his smile. Only Jensen seemed to notice the way Matthew's hand had gone slightly stiff around his own phone, probably already doing math on exactly how much of Benjamin's money this favor was about to cost him before the night even really started. Jensen found the whole thing quietly, privately funny. After four years of being mocked for every dollar he didn't have, watching Matthew sweat over dollars he didn't actually want to spend felt like a small, satisfying kind of justice, the first one he'd gotten to enjoy in broad daylight instead of in the dark behind some club.

The premier room turned out to be everything the name promised, a private space wrapped in floor-to-ceiling windows, its own bar, a long table already set with more glassware than their entire dorm floor probably owned combined. The group spread out, chattering, snapping photos of the view, completely caught up in the moment, nobody thinking twice about the bill that was already quietly climbing in the background.

It was only once everyone had settled in, jackets draped over chairs, drink orders already being taken, that Jensen noticed Charlotte wasn't among them.

He glanced around the room once, twice, expecting to spot her by the window or near the bar, and came up empty both times. The last time he'd actually seen her had been near the entrance, just before the host led them inside. Something about the way she'd looked in that moment came back to him now, sharper than it had registered at the time. She'd had her phone out, reading something, and whatever was on that screen had drained the color right out of her face, her hand tightening around the phone like she was bracing for something.

He stepped back out toward the hallway, half expecting to find her checking her makeup in a mirror somewhere, and instead caught a glimpse of her near the elevator, moving fast, almost running, her arms wrapped tight around herself like she was holding something in. She didn't look back. She didn't say a word to anyone. She just disappeared into the elevator the second the doors opened, and was gone, leaving nothing behind but the faint sound of the doors sliding shut.

Jensen stood there for a moment, the noise of the party drifting out behind him through the open door, laughter and clinking glasses and Matthew's voice rising over all of it, and felt something settle low in his chest, a kind of instinct he'd learned never to ignore during four years of having to read every room he walked into just to survive it. That instinct had kept him alive through worse nights than this one, and it was telling him now, clearly, that something here didn't add up.

Something was wrong. Something had happened to her, and whatever it was, it had happened fast, in the span of a single phone call or message, somewhere between the lobby and this hallway. People didn't run from a graduation dinner over nothing. Whatever she'd seen on that screen, it had mattered enough to make her forget the room full of people waiting just a few steps behind her.

He just didn't have the first idea what it could be.