Page 111 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

“I needed to put them out of their misery.”

“Did it work?” she asks. “Did they go their separate ways once you bailed them out?”

“Yeah. My mom went down to Florida and opened a flower shop. My dad’s in a place in Jersey. Playing the ponies.”

“You think they’re happy now?”

“I found out last year that they still call each other and fight. Dad let it slip. There is no worldly reason they need to ever talk to each other again.”

“That is kind of cute,” she says.

“I don’t like it,” I say. “I wanted them to be free.”

She watches me with that thoughtful fox-brown gaze. “Did it putyouout of your misery? Getting that place behind you?”

I slide my thumb over her engagement ring. “No. I think that place got into my bones,” I say, surprised, really, at my own admission. Have I ever admitted it, even to myself? “Maybe you never really escape the misery of the past. Maybe you just carry it as part of your load, like stones in a sack.”

“Is that really how you see it, Rex? You collect stones in a sack, and then you die?”

Is that how I see it? I try to think of some proof that I have a nice life. All I can come up with is those Fridays with Tabitha. Giving Tabitha shit about her hair streaks and her Hello Kitty tattoo. Tabitha chattering on after I send people away. And then there’s the fun of our Marvin caper. Kissing her on the plane. A day in a cabana.

“Maybe I need to start ordering Hot Pink Barbies,” I say. “You think that’ll do it? Or will people think I’m losing my edge?”

“Not to worry,” she says. “You’re a grouch and a tyrant. Triple threat on Wall Street. Hater of the pathetically impoverished and people who change the lyrics of love songs to be about their pets.”

“I don’t hate you,” I gust out.

“I’m afraid I have it in writing.”

“Tabitha—”

“Black and white, my friend.”

“The list was never about hate,” I say, pulling her closer.

“I don’t know…H-A-T-E is a funny way of spellingtop ten awesomesauce features of the best women.” She’s using her joking tone. The tone she uses to manage people, to disguise what’s real.

I say, “Ten awesome features wouldn’t scratch the surface of you.”

“Well, there’s one thing we can agree on,” she says lightly.

I don’t want her lightness—not while I’m telling her things I don’t tell other people. “You have to stop talking about that list. You have to stop acting like this is nothing.”

She presses a hand to my cheek. “Rex. Look, did you ever notice how, when Hollywood actors get cast to play a couple in a film, they sometimes end up together in real life? That is the power of pretending to be a couple when you’re not. It’s one of the biggest dangers of the fake fiancée thing. When you actas if,sometimes you buy your own illusion.”

“It’s not an illusion,” I say.

Voices and laughter stream up from the deck below, signaling that the show is over. She leans in and whispers, “That’s what the magician said.”

“I’m not good at emotions,” I say. “But then you came around, cracking through my haze of work like a kind of kryptonite…”

“Hold on, isn’t kryptonite the thing that destroys all that’s good for Superman?” She makes a playful face. “Dude.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

She makes little devil horns with her fingers. “Kryptonite, bitches!”

“Stop it.” I grab her hand. “I didn’t mean it like that. More like, kryptonite for my tunnel vision of work…” But that’s not right. She’s under my skin. Something…

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