Page 39 of Just Not That Into Billionaires

“I can’t believe you live here!” I say. “This is literally one of the coolest buildings in the city. I mean, you know, for a weird blackmailing kidnapper to live in.”

Benny shrugs, expression carefully neutral. Spencer the dog nuzzles his hand.

“And I thought you were allergic to dogs,” I say.

“People grow out of things,” he says.

“You grew out of your allergy?” I ask.

“People grow out of things,” he says again, more tersely this time. If his words had hands, they’d be shoving me away. Why force me to be his wife just to shove me away?

“Okay, fine. However...” I gesture at the bookcase, grinning. “Where is it?” I ask. “Because I know it’s here somewhere. Because yeah, you can say that people change, but some things don’t change.”

“What’shere somewhere?” Benny asks.

“I’m looking for it on the bookcase and I did not see it...but maybe you have a different bookcase where you keep your most hallowed books.”

He furrows his brow.

I cross my arms.Spock Must Die?

“Are you talking about the Star Trek book?” he asks.

I give him a look. “I don’t literally think Spock must die.”

“You think I still keep those books around?” he asks.

“Don’t tell me you got rid of them! Even your precious taped-up paperback? With all your little margin notes and stars and things?”

“Why would I have that?” he says.

“Because you read it every freaking year because you love it so much!” I say. “You told me you read it every year and you planned to continue doing so for the rest of your life.”

“Sticking to every decision you made as a kid isn’t exactly a recipe for a successful life,” he says.

This makes me so sad. Stupidly sad. I loved that he did the whole yearly reread. I loved that he told me about it. It meant so much to me. I felt like he was showing me another side of himself, letting me into a place he shut other people out of. “S-so you didn’t even keepSpock Must Die?”

He shrugs. “It’s just a ratty paperback.”

“Oh,” I say.

Is it stupid and childish to expect Benny to still read “Spock Must Die?

And why do I care?

“I’m running a massive corporation and inventing things that ten-X the efficiency of machines,” he says. “I hardly have the time to sit around reading a book I already read.”

I can feel my face heating with emotion. “I don’t know what’s worse,” I say with a casualness I don’t feel, “the fact that you no longer have the book that you used to so love or the fact that you just used the term ten-X unironically.”

“We can’t live in the past,” he says.

“Are you suggesting that I’m living in the past?” I demand.

He gazes into the distance, as though carefully composing his answer. He seems to have a slight case of the sniffles, and his eyes look irritated, like he’s been rubbing them. “I’m suggesting thatI’m not,” he says.

“Okay, well, good for you,” I bite out. “So do I get my tour? When am I to see my servant wife quarters?”

He leads me down a hall I hadn’t explored, past one interesting-looking room after another. The place really is as magnificent from the inside as the outside. And Benny lives here! God, he’s objectively handsome, and he lives in this building, and he’s all angry and closed off. No wonder women go after him, I think with an unpleasant twist in my gut.

---