Page 87 of Just Not That Into Billionaires

“Notmaliciously…” He shoves his hand through his hair.

“But you thought I was using you? Like I was toying with you? Did you think I left the next morning because you’d served your purpose? I discarded you like a used paper towel?”

“Well, I don’t think itnow,” he says.

“But you thought it upuntilnow?” I ask.

His hesitation is all I need to confirm the worst.

I feel crushed—I can’t help it. “So all this time, that’s the kind of person you thought I was?”

“I got it wrong. What does it matter? I see I was wrong,” he says.

“Why would you want me to play your wife if that’s what you believed I was capable of? Why would you want me around? Was it…payback? I’ve been completely falling for you all this time, and you’ve been secretly harboring this dark thought about me? And when I tried to apologize about the past, you won’t let me!”

“I had you wrong,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking it through in that way.”

“And you made me stay as punishment. Did you think it while we were having sex, even?”

He sucks in a ragged breath. He’s lost his cool, suave-guy demeanor. I finally have old Benny back—too bad he thinks I’m the moral equivalent of Godzilla. “We need to rewind this whole conversation.”

I fling up my hand. “I don’t want to rewind anything.” There’s a sob trapped in my chest, clogging my lungs.

Monica breezes over just then, smiling, setting candles for the nearby table. “How’s it going? We’re bringing a cake out in five.”

I stand. “I’m so sorry I’ll miss it,” I hear myself say. “I have to get going, but Benny will stay.” I plaster on the best fake smile I can manage. “Later, honey,” I chirp.

Somehow my feet are working. I’m heading toward the door, wearing my serene face—it’s one of my ballet faces, serene and placid, when all I want is for the ground to swallow me up.

I somehow make it to the place where the elevators are and I get in. I have to be away from him.

Back home I’m packing in my servant wife quarters. I don’t know if he’ll give me my papers now. Will I even go on the tour? I don’t know anything that’s going to happen, but I do know that I can’t stay. It’s like I’ve been living in a sandcastle and now it’s all collapsing along with little pieces of my heart.

Fake wife, fake sex.

He thought I was a horrible person. And this charade is my punishment.

I’m so stupid. So naïve. I was wrong to ghost him, yes. But for him to concoct this elaborate punishment?

I hear him come in. “You have it all wrong,” he says.

“I don’t know, you were pretty clear about what you thought about me!” I toss a pair of yoga pants into my bag and spin around. “I always felt like I knew you, and like you knew me, like we were outsider peas in a pod, even before we hooked up, but that isn’t at all the case, is it?” I bunch up some socks and throw them in. “You thought I used you and ghosted you and you were pissed off. I think you never knew me.” I zip up my bag with a loudzrrrrp.

“I wasn’t pissed off, I was devastated,” he says.

I sniff my disbelief and head into the bathroom. He follows behind. I grab my toothbrush, shove it into my travel bag.

“That night in Vegas was the best night of my life,” he says. “You were the most amazing woman I’d ever met, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. When you left without so much as a word, when you seemed to have forgotten all about me, I was devastated.”

I shove my makeup pencils into my makeup case.

“But I figured out that you’d have to be back. Sooner or later, we’d have to deal with this marriage that you clearly didn’t want. This was a few months after Vegas. By that time James and I had started the company, and it was literally money falling from the sky.”

“And that matters why?” I grab my shampoo from the spa tub area and catch sight of him in the mirror. He seems to be groping for words, looking around as if someone’s going to appear and give him his lines.

Such a Benny way to be. My heart cracks a little.

“I told myself that I wanted you to feel sorry for walking out,” he continues. “That you’d come back and regret what you did. That’s what I wanted.”

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