a half-million dollars vanishes. Instead, you just do stuff.”
He sets his hand at the small of my back. Lombard Street is famous—or notorious—for its hairpin turns. It looks like a dancing snake and it’s all uphill from here. Ugh.
Liam looks at me. “We can have a joint checking account if you want. You can yell at me when I spend too much at Whole Foods.”
“I don’t think that’s the answer.”
“I want to fix this.”
I believe he does, too. I don’t have any magic answers, though. We’ve kind of been living in a bubble these last few weeks. The sex is amazing and I’m not going to say I don’t love his house on Lombard Street. I do—because hanging out there with Liam is fun. It’s his space and it’s where we do couple things. But it can’t be all fun and games. It can’t just be sex and him buying me expensive surprise gifts like an entire freaking farm. He’s gorgeous and he’s amazing in bed. We have off-the-charts good sex and the kind of chemistry I’ve never felt before. It’s unicorn sex, something most people never find. It’s just that I thought our connection existed outside of our naked times, too.
Liam’s so much more than my brother’s hot friend. He’s funny and thoughtful, even if he pretends he’s not. He’s generous and scary smart and, up until now, he’s made me feel safe. I’ve never thought he’d lie to me—but he has. I could have cut him some slack for buying my mortgage at the start of our relationship, but he should have told me so we could discuss how we were going to move forward.
He punches in the gate code. “We’ll talk about it, okay?”
“It’s too late for that.”
He holds the gate open for me so I can go first. “I’ll fix this.”
My chest tightens as if someone’s squeezing my ribs into my heart. “No.”
“Hana?”
“I don’t think there’s any fixing this.” I wave a hand between us. “This is something you shouldn’t have done, but having done it, you should have figured out really fast that you’d trampled on a pretty big boundary and you should have laid it out for me. You should have apologized, except you never apologize, right? I don’t see how we work because there’s not a we here—there’s you and then there’s me, who apparently you don’t think can handle her own business.”
His jaw tightens. “I’m sorry if you find financial freedom offensive.”
“It’s not the money, Liam.”
“Then what is the fucking problem, Hana?”
He really doesn’t get it. I’m not sure I did, either, not until tonight. He has all that money, and I don’t. Honestly, I’d probably have been okay with his helping me out eventually, but it would have had to be mutual. I have to be able to give back to him, too. He has to take my help. Otherwise, I’m still just his best friend’s baby sister and he’s just the guy I hero-worshipped. When we woke up married, I thought that was my chance to get to know him and to do all the things with him. Sex things, yes, but also date things, daily things, me-and-him things. I thought we were starting a relationship.
“I’m tired of being a problem you have to fix.”
“You’re not.” He rests his hand at the small of my back, urging me forward. “I like spending time with you. I thought we were having fun and that this was what you wanted.”
“Yes. That’s true. But—” I fish in my clutch for my truck keys. “But I’d like to be more, Liam. No. Scratch that. I’d like to be enough. Just me, just as I am. I need to be an equal partner, not the lesser share of some seventy-thirty deal.”
“Am I supposed to sell your mortgage to some shark of a lender so you can feel like a martyr? Is that what you want?”
“No.” I start walking toward my truck. I don’t know if I’ll have the strength to leave if I go inside. Whatever stuff I’ve left in his house, it’s just stuff. It doesn’t matter.
“Are you leaving me?” He sounds incredulous and that’s the problem, isn’t it? Whether he’s willing to admit it or not, he thinks he’s the boss, that he holds the upper hand in this relationship. It may be a benevolent dictatorship, but I can’t live like that.
I won’t.
So I give him the only answer I can. “Yes. I can’t do this anymore. You wanted a temporary marriage while