Water from My Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

is not a poker game and that we aren’t chips that you just toss about the table ’cause you feel like it?” A steeliness returned to her eyes and face. “There’s an evil in you. And…” She waved her hand across the splattered blood. “It stains everyone but you.” It was over. She stepped closer. “Don’t ever contact me again.” She turned, glancing out across the water. “Ever.”
    Arms crossed, wind tugging at her scrubs and hair, she stepped into the helicopter; it lifted off the beach and disappeared west with the night. I cannot say I was brokenhearted at her leaving. I’m not sure I wanted to marry Shelly as much as I didn’t want to lose her. Marrying her said something about her. Losing her said something about me, and I was afraid to hear that indictment.
    The truth of me had broken us.

Chapter Four
    G iven the size of Harvard’s endowment and the immense block of recently freed-up time in my schedule, and having worn out my welcome in and around Boston, I began looking into study abroad scholarships and found one custom-made for guys like me—finance-minded juniors with off-the-charts test scores, all A’s in math, no parents, no siblings, and no extended family. What the scholarship board called a “child of prodigy and hardship.” Funny how there’s so little difference between “prodigy” and “prodigal.” The summer after my junior year, the Pickering-Kuscht Scholarship sent me to London, where I studied derivatives, leverage, and the emerald-green eyes of a goddess named Amanda Pickering.
    Amanda was beautiful, self-confident, loved to run, and—​f ortunatel y for me—directionally challenged. After I quit track, I rediscovered my love of running—much of which I did at night, so while most of my classmates made the rounds of the British pubs sampling gallons of Guinness, I ran the streets of London. Incidentally, so did Amanda. Only difference was that I could find my way back to my hotel once I turned around. We’d been in a couple of classes together but given that she was a bit guarded, it was no wonder that we’d never said two words to each other. Amanda also had one other trait much talked about among the fathers and sons of the New England elite: She was the sole heir to the Pickering fortune. Her college experience was her father’s personal talent search among the East’s best and brightest to find someone to manage his precious money. One night, about 1:00 a.m., I found her—several miles from our hotel—standing next to an Underground sign attempting to read a map. She glanced at me but was too proud to admit she needed help.
    It was pretty common knowledge that her father had put her up in one of those top-floor penthouses at the Ritz. I put my finger on the map. “The Ritz is here.”
    She glanced at me out of the corners of her eyes, nodded, and acted as though she were studying the map for an alternate route home. “Yep.”
    Her eyes still had yet to land on any one point on the map. I pointed again. “And…you’re over here.”
    This only served to push the skin between her eyes closer and deepen the wrinkle, so I pointed behind her. “Which means you should run that way.”
    She tilted her head, still trying to make sense of the map and not admit defeat. Finally, she turned to me. “I’ll bet you’re good with a Rubik’s Cube.”
    “Fifty-two seconds.”
    She shook her head and spoke, still trying to make sense of the map. “Been coming here my whole life but”—she wiped the sweat off her face—“looks so different in the daytime, and we always had a driver.”
    I pushed against the lamppost like I was stretching my calves. “Yeah…me, too. ’Cept mine would never shut up. Talked the entire time. Couldn’t help but learn something. Knew this town like the back of my hand by the time I was eight.”
    “I’m lost, and you’re making fun of me.”
    I shook my head and continued to poke fun at her. “Good help is just tough to find