Billie Bossa Nova

49.

Finneas pulled over at the door outside the lobby of Kai's penthouse. He looked to Billie the moment the car was parked.

"Give me three days," he started, the weight of the deadline putting a strain on Billie. "I'll prepare everything you need for your flight and travel. I'll have to find out what hotel Lexi is staying in and you'll be staying there. Think you can make a believeable story for Labrador by before then?"

Stop calling him that.

Instead of saying this Billie replied, "I've had a tough week. I'm sure he wouldn't be shocked if I wanted to take a vacation in Paris for a couple of days."

"Good, then it's settled. Send him my farewell."

She most definitely wouldn't. Finneas was lovely, however he could be a little pest at times. Without showing her annoyance, Billie waved goodbye and left the car.

There was a foreboding that came with entering the dimly lit penthouse Billie had come to call home. Naturally, Kai liked the lights dimmer, either to add dark effect or because of his sensitive eyes (as Billie has come to figure out). Something about never seeing him again, getting only three days with him, had a certain kind of heartache lingering in her chest.

She had known this for weeks. The whole three months and a few weeks that she'd been here, Billie knew that she would soon have to leave him behind. But it seemed like something so far away. Too much in the distant future. Like marriage, or a better example, death.

In all of her life, Billie had never lost somebody. Her grandparents died before she met them. No true memory came from them. Her only true friend from CRO was Zoey, so she was never really affected that much if one of her peers died on the field. Until now, she never grew an attachment to any subject during an assignment.

Which gave reason to why she felt her heart harden as she walked into Kai's penthouse. There was something unnerving about learning all of those things about somebody. Knowing small and big details in a way that one has ever known anyone else. Sharing laughs and cries and little arguments all just to lose them in the end.

What became of those memories? Would the thought of him fade the more she was away from him? Would she slowly forget everything he ever made her feel? Forget the sound of his voice, the taste of his mouth, the feel of his skin? Would she grow old and gray and eventually come to forget the name, Kai Rivera, which had once been so boldly embroidered on her mind that it bound her through the course of the day? More importantly, would she ever be able to have with somebody else what she had with him?

Billie tried to push such thoughts away, thoughts of when she left this life behind. Otherwise, she would just sob the night to slumber. Usually, it would be refreshing to finally leave behind the life of pretense she had endured during an assignment. Now all Billie wishes is that she really was Billie Eilish instead of Billie O'Connell. The assistant instead of the agent. Kai Rivera's girlfriend instead of his father's worst enemy. To unknow and unsee and unlive her life so that she could live one with him.

With a clenched heart, she walked down the empty hallway with eager plans of sleeping the pain away.

"Billie."

She glanced up in slight shock upon hearing Kai. Usually he would work for as long as ten PM, now it was eight-thirty and he was already home. What she wanted to do was jump into his arms and hold on until the three days were over, but those thoughts were conflicted when she remembered that she was upset with him. Why did he have to do that, to make her mad at him when their time together was so drastically running out?