The Arrangement (unenhanced Edition) by AnnaRCase (books to read now .txt) 📖

 Amberleigh was feeling the buzz of the vodka as she made her way to her room clutching the bottle like it was a lifeline. And she surely needed it to get through tonight. She was going to drink until she couldn’t think about a fucking thing. Until she was nothing but numb and happy. God knew she needed it tonight to forget all this heavy shit.

                She took another drink from the bottle as she eyed her half-packed suitcases adorning the bed. Thoughts of the billionaire and his unfortunate situation were still barging into her pounding skull. The remedy she held in her hands. She sucked down more of the bottled salvation as she staggered towards her bed.

                She suddenly felt fucking exhausted. She allowed herself to collapse upon her bed making sure not to lose the bottle she hugged to her chest next to her heart. She remembered the sound of Grayson’s steady heartbeat, but for how much longer would it beat? She took another drink.

                Amberleigh fell into a pattern thereafter, for every dark thought which intruded, she chased it away with a drink.  Fifty percent, drink.  Tremors in both hands, drink. Falls until I end up in a wheelchair, drink. Lose my ability to reason, judgement, drink. 17-20 years, drink. Anxiety, aggression, drink. I’ll lose my ability to speak, swallow, breathe, drink. He won’t live to be an old man, drink. Doesn’t want to tie anyone to a dying man, drink. Won’t let him be alone in this, drink.

                Fuck! It was a good thing her fancy ass sweater was so fucking absorbent, because it caught the tears and snot pouring down her face. She threw the bottle of Vodka and watched the liquid form a pool around the busted glass. Like a fucking damn burst inside her, Amberleigh found herself curled into a ball on the silk sheets and ugly crying.  People cried on silk sheets just as well as cotton ones after all. And not all the booze in the world could fix this. Could take away the ache inside her.

                The pillowcase was like a fluffy, soft cloud as she placed it over her face to muffle her sobs. She would have to give it a nice fuckin review for sure. Why the fuck did it hurt like this? She’d only known the billionaire for barely over a month and most of that time he’d been an Grade A asshole. But now knowing why, only made her hurt more. Why Grayson pushed everyone away and built his walls too high for most people to climb. He didn’t need any more reasons not to want to die and he seemed to be making less reasons to want to live. He pushed away his family and friends, perhaps even women he loved.

                Amberleigh noticed her laptop was on the bed near her case, so she reached for it. She had to know more about what she was dealing with here. She used her sweater sleeve to clean her face and tried to get her shit together. It wasn’t like she was the one starring down the barrel of a fucked up gun after all. She tried to imagine what the billionaire must be feeling, like every fucking day of his life. It had to be fucking terrifying. Just how bad would things get for him?

                Over the next couple hours, she searched the internet for information on Huntington’s disease. And it wasn’t a pretty picture. It was a neurodegenerative brain disease first described in 1872 and the gene which caused it was discovered in 1993. When the mutated gene was passed from the father, it often caused symptoms earlier in life in the child. It was known as anticipation, which seemed to be happening to Grayson as he was developing symptoms at an earlier age than his father did.

                In most cases, those who inherited the defective gene didn’t develop symptoms until later in life. But it unfortunately didn’t seem to be the case with the billionaire. On the surface, it seemed that Grayson Godwin had all the luck, he was beautiful, born into an affluent family, but underneath he was one unlucky son of a bitch. What was in store for him was dementia, movement disorders, personality changes, and psychiatric disorders all caused by the progressive damage to his central nervous system.

                Everything he’d told her was heartbreakingly true along with so much more. For instance, people with the disease were twelve times more likely to commit suicide and thirty percent made at least one attempt to end their lives. They were often depressed and most had to be cared for in an institution towards the end of their lives, as they became totally dependent on others for their care.  Grayson was lucky in that aspect, because he had the money to get the proper care he would need. He would be able to pay for the speech therapies, the physical therapies, the in home care and equipment to keep him out of a nursing home. And he had Leo of course.

                After watching clips of those with the disease, Amberleigh now fully understood now why Grayson would threaten suicide or ask Leo to put him out of his misery when his disease was in its late stages. And it wouldn’t be the first time it had happened either. About fifty years before, a mother could no longer watch her two middle aged sons suffer after twenty years from the same disease she lost her husband to. Her children could no longer talk or walk, when she walked into the nursing home and shot both of them in the head. Afterwards, she went to the police station and turned herself in. She wound up serving twenty-one months of her five year prison sentence.

                It was said to be the cruelest disease which strips away all that makes you human. It wasn’t all that unlike the disease which ripped through the world starting thirty years ago and killed billions. The reason for the walls which now protected the city from the infected who roamed out in the wastelands. But Huntington’s was slower which in ways made it worse, more time to suffer. The infection which nearly ended the world claimed most lives within a year.  So naturally, most of the research over the last thirty years had been focused on finding its cure, as it was the biggest threat to ending all life itself . A slowing serum could slow the progression, patented by LEDA pharmaceuticals, and a vaccination was supposedly undergoing clinical trials. But that had been the rumor as long as Amberleigh could remember.