Auctioned for a Dollar, Claimed by the Billionaire Chapter 14

I didn’t sleep that night.

The next morning, snow covered Central Park like a white sheet. Damien’s driver took us to the top floor of Cross Tower. His penthouse. I had never been inside.

It was huge and quiet, all glass and dark wood, with the city spread out beneath us like a jewelry box.

He led me to his study. Behind a painting, there was a steel safe. He spun the dial and opened it.

Inside was a small cardboard box. Faded. Crushed at one corner.

Band-Aids. Cartoon stars. Three left.

“You kept them,” I whispered.

“I kept everything.” His voice was low. “I used one when I got into MIT. One the day I closed my first deal. I was saving

the last three.”

“For what?”

He reached into the safe again and pulled out a black velvet ring box.

My heart stopped.

He didn’t kneel yet. He opened the box first.

Inside, nestled in the velvet, was a ring. A single oval sapphire, deep as midnight, surrounded by tiny diamonds. And

tucked into the lid was an old, creased photograph.

I took it with trembling fingers.

It was me. Ten years old, in pigtails, sitting on the steps outside Greenwood Academy, licking a strawberry ice cream cone. I was chubby, grinning, with a crooked Band-Aid on my eyebrow.

And in the background, half-hidden behind a pillar, was a skinny boy in a worn blazer. Watching me. Like I had hung the

moon.

“Our yearbook photographer took it,” Damien said. “I paid him twenty dollars for it. Every cent I had that month.”

I couldn’t speak.

“I want you to know something.” He looked into my eyes. “When Hale posted that photo in the chat, the one he used to

humiliate you, I recognized you in one second. Not because of the scar. Because of your eyes. It was the same girl.

Hurt and exhausted and still standing.”

His voice dropped.

“Everyone in that room saw a punchline. I saw the girl who saved my life. You didn’t have to lose a single pound for me

to want you, Ava. I wanted you at ten years old with a hockey stick. I wanted you at 190 pounds crying in your car. I’ll

want you at eighty years old when you’ve forgotten my name.”

Tears ran down my face. I didn’t wipe them away.

Then Damien Cross, the man who made senators nervous, went down on one knee on the floor of his study.

“Ava Sterling,” he said. “I bid fifty million dollars on one night with you. I’d like to renegotiate.”

A laugh broke through my tears.

“I want every night. Every morning. Every bad day and every good one. I want to bring you coffee for the rest of your

life.” He held up the ring. “Will you marry me?”

I looked at him. At the boy in the photograph. At the man he had become, still waiting, still careful, still completely

mine.

I thought about the one-dollar starting bid. The livestock scale. The room full of people laughing.

And then I thought about this. A worn box of Band-Aids. A secret kept for fifteen years. A man who looked at the worst photo of my life and saw the best version of me.

“Yes,” I whispered. Then louder, laughing and crying at once. “Yes. Damien, yes.”

He slid the ring onto my finger. It fit perfectly. Of course it did.

He stood, lifted me off my feet, and spun me around until the snowy city blurred outside the windows. When he set me

down, he kissed me like he had all the time in the world.

Because now, he did.

Six months later, I walked down the aisle of St. Patrick’s Cathedral wearing my mother’s sapphire around my neck.

Halfway down, I looked at the man waiting at the altar.

His ears were bright red. His eyes were wet. And in the breast pocket of his tuxedo, just visible above the silk, was a

single Band-Aid with cartoon stars.

The last one.

When I reached him, he took my hand and leaned close.

“Lot 13,” he murmured, smiling. “Sold.”

“No returns,” I whispered back.

“Never,” he said.