Before He Became My Obsessed Billionaire

Summer's POV

I'd been lying on Dr. Martinez's gray velvet therapy chair for three years, and I still couldn't tell her the truth about Walden Pond.

The white noise machine hummed in the corner of her office, a soft static that was supposed to calm me. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Boston's Back Bay blazed with autumn color—maples turning gold and crimson, their leaves catching the late afternoon sun. It was beautiful in that sharp, painful way that made my chest ache. Everything beautiful hurt now. Had hurt for three years, ever since that summer day when I'd watched my husband sink beneath the surface of a lake and never come back up.

"Summer." Dr. Rebecca Martinez's voice was gentle but firm, the way it always was when she knew I was about to bolt. "We've been doing this dance for three years now. Every week you come here, you sit in that chair, and you tell me about everything except what happened at Walden Pond."

I twisted the tissue in my hands until it started to shred. My knuckles had gone white. I could feel my face getting hot—God, I hated how easily I blushed, how my emotions always painted themselves across my skin for everyone to see. Even now, at twenty-seven, I couldn't control it.

"I know what happened," I said, my voice coming out smaller than I intended. "I was there. I remember."

"Do you?" She leaned forward slightly, her dark eyes searching my face. "Because your medical records say you experienced significant memory gaps following the incident. Trauma-induced dissociation. Your brain protected you from the worst of it."

The worst of it. I almost laughed, except nothing about this was funny. The worst of it was that I'd survived and Kieran hadn't. The worst of it was that I'd spent two years of marriage thinking he hated me, that our wedding had been some elaborate revenge plot, that every cold glance and controlled touch had been calculated to remind me of how cruel I'd been to him in high school. The worst of it was that I'd been so, so wrong.

"I can't sleep," I heard myself say. The words spilled out before I could stop them. "I've tried everything. I moved out of our penthouse—too many memories. Stayed at my mother's old brownstone—that was worse. I even spent a month at the Four Seasons, thinking maybe a hotel would feel neutral enough. But it doesn't matter where I am. Two hours a night, maybe three if I'm lucky. And when I do sleep, I dream about him."

"Tell me about the dreams."

I closed my eyes. Behind my lids, I could see Kieran's face as clearly as if he were standing in front of me. Those deep gray eyes that had always looked at me like I was something precious and terrible all at once, like he was torn between worship and judgment. In my dreams, he never spoke. He just looked at me with that same intense, unreadable expression he'd worn throughout our marriage, and I woke up gasping, my pillow soaked with tears I didn't remember crying.

"He looks at me," I whispered. "Just... looks. And I can never tell if he's still in love with me or if he hates me for surviving."

"Summer." Dr. Martinez's voice was soft now, almost tender. "I think it's time we talked about your relationship with Kieran. Not the accident. Not yet. Let's start with how you two met."

"We didn't meet." The words came out bitter. "We went to the same high school. St. Jude's Prep. But I never really saw him until... until it was too late."

The memories came flooding back, sharp and painful as broken glass.

High school. God, I'd been such a brat. I could admit that now, sitting in this therapy office with three years of grief as a teacher. Back then, I'd been Summer Hayes, princess of St. Jude's Preparatory Academy, daughter of Victoria Hayes, CEO of Hayes & Co., one of Boston's most successful independent fashion brands. I'd driven a white convertible my mother had given me for my sixteenth birthday, worn Lululemon and MiuMiu like a uniform, and spent my lunch periods holding court in the dining hall with girls who laughed at all my jokes and boys who tripped over themselves to carry my books.

Kieran had been... nobody. At least, that's what I'd thought. He'd transferred in our junior year, some scholarship kid from South Boston who wore the same faded navy hoodie every day and sat in the back corner of every classroom, silent as a ghost. I'd never even learned his name. Why would I? St. Jude's was full of kids like him—the ones who got in on financial aid, who worked in the library or the dining hall to pay for their books, who didn't belong to our world and knew it.

I'd been too busy chasing Evan Whitmore to notice anyone else. Evan with his golden curls and his easy smile, who played piano in the music society and rowed crew on the Charles River. Evan whose family had a summer house in the Hamptons and whose mother wore pearls to parent-teacher conferences. I'd been so sure he was going to be my future.

I'd been so stupid.

"What happened after high school?" Dr. Martinez asked, pulling me back to the present.

"I didn't see him again for years." I opened my eyes, staring at the ceiling. "My mother's company collapsed when I was in college. Financial fraud. My aunt Maya—my mother's younger sister—had been using offshore accounts to launder money. Federal investigation, media circus, the whole thing. My mother took the fall. She went to prison."

My voice cracked on that last word. Even now, three years after I'd lost Kieran, the memory of losing my mother felt like a fresh wound. She'd died in prison—heart attack in the middle of the night, alone in a cell, while I'd been at some charity gala trying to pretend my world wasn't burning down around me.

"And Kieran?"

"He showed up at one of those galas. Three years after my mother died. He was... different." I laughed, a harsh sound that didn't sound like me at all. "Not the scholarship kid anymore. He was wearing a Tom Ford suit that probably cost more than my college tuition. Forbes had just named him one of the top tech entrepreneurs under thirty. Cross Capital—that was his hedge fund. Billions, Dr. Martinez. He'd made billions."

"And he asked you to marry him."

"He told me to marry him," I corrected. "It wasn't a question. We were standing in the lobby of the MFA, surrounded by Boston's elite, and he looked at me with those cold gray eyes and said, 'Marry me. I'll give you everything you've lost.'"

Dr. Martinez was quiet for a moment. "Why did you say yes?"

Because I'd had nothing left. Because my mother was dead and my trust fund was gone and the media still called me "the disgraced heiress" whenever they bothered to mention me at all. Because Kieran had looked at me like he knew every shameful, desperate thought in my head, and he'd offered me a way out.

Because some small, stupid part of me had thought maybe he'd loved me all along, that maybe this was his way of saving me.

"I thought..." I swallowed hard. "I thought maybe he remembered me from high school. Maybe he'd had a crush on me back then, and this was his chance to finally have me. I thought it would be like a fairy tale. Poor boy makes good, comes back for the girl who never noticed him."

"But it wasn't like that."

"No." The word came out flat. "It wasn't like that at all."