Page 218 of Money Reigns
He’s quiet for a beat too long. Then, with a breath that sounds more like a growl:
“You didn’t want to tell me about Ronnie?”
I nod. “Because I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to explain that I came from something messy. That someone hadpower over my family. That I wasn’t the polished, collected girl you make me feel like I am when I’m with you.”
Finally, I turn to look at him.
And he’s already staring at me. Those sharp, wild blue eyes I’ve memorized and missed and mourned all at once.
“I ran,” I whisper. “Because I was scared.”
His hand finds mine. Warm. Familiar. His thumb brushes over my knuckles like muscle memory.
“Olivia,” he says softly, “I come from something messy too. In my life money reigns. You’ve seen it. It’s just… a far cry from whatyouhave.”
I blink, confused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He exhales through his nose. Not sharp. Just tired. Tired in a way I feel all the way down to my bones.
“It means I had silver spoons and silk cribs and boarding schools.” His lips curl into something bitter. “You had dinners that didn’t require backlash and defenses. You hadrealpictures. Not oil paintings in marble hallways.”
His eyes sweep the room,my room.The slightly crooked bookshelf. The old quilt. The taped-up edges of posters from high school that I never bothered to take down.
“Your family… your home…” he trails off, shaking his head like he can’t find the words. “It’s lived in. It’sloved.”
I nod, throat tightening. Because it’s true. Even under the crushing weight of debt, of desperation, we stick together.
“That’s what I saw the first time I looked at you,” he says.
“My family?” I ask, surprised.
He shakes his head. “No.You.A woman who deserved more.”
His voice dips lower. Honest. Bare. “And now I understand why I saw that. It wasn’t that you were lacking ithere.You were lacking it in the city.”
I swallow, a lump forming that I can’t push down.
“I thought giving you everything I believed you deserved was enough,” he says quietly. “The job. The apartment. The wardrobe. The stupid fucking hair products I kept stocking the bathroom with.”
His tone wavers. The kind of tone you only use when you’re about to ask for forgiveness. I brace for it.
But instead…
“But you had everything you needed here, didn’t you?”
I frown. This doesn’t sound like a makeup speech.
“War—”
“I don’t want you to feel trapped, Olivia.” His voice cracks just a little, and I hear it—the edge of goodbye. “You’re a diamond in the middle of this small town. And I was trying to rip you out of it. To put you on display in the city. The galas. The commissions. The wardrobe. I kept trying to dress you in glass when you were already carved from stone.”
He laughs bitterly, self-directed. “I used money to fill the space between what I felt for you and what I didn’t know how to say.”
And my heart drops.
No. No. It’s breaking. I feel it. Splintering from the inside out.
He doesn’t see it. Or maybe he does, and that’s why he looks like he’s falling apart, too.
