Page 80 of Dial F for Finance
His mouth tightens. “Reality.”
“Your family loves like breathing. Mine loves like a bill that always comes due. You grew up with noise that meant dinner. I grew up with noise that meant someone was about to throw something or leave or apologize badly enough that I had to forgive them before they fell apart.”
“Jen—”
“This weekend made it worse.”
His brow pulls together. “How?”
“Your house swallowed me whole and somehow I liked it. Your father kissed my face. Your mother held me tight. Dustin pranked me like I was—” I shake my head. “You all belong to each other like it’s easy.”
“It isn’t always easy.”
“But it survives.” My voice drops. “That’s the difference. You believe love survives. I believe it takes hostages.”
His face changes.
“We are compatible,” I say, because this is the part I need him to understand. “Ridiculously. Professionally, sexually, conversationally. You make me laugh when I don’t want to. You make me feel things I have spent my whole life avoiding. But compatibility is not the same as sustainability.”
“That sounds like something you’d say in a meeting to avoid admitting the product works.”
I grip the sleeves of his jacket. “We’re too different.”
“No.”
“Dominic.”
“No.” He sits back, but his voice stays calm. “Different is exactly why we work, Jen.”
I laugh once. No humor. “That is a very billionaire answer.”
“It is a very husband answer.”
The word hits the cabin floor between us.
Husband.
Neither of us moves.
“You are a brilliant negotiator, Jenna. So let’s negotiate.”
“Negotiate what?” I say. “Whether Tokyo counts? Whether this weekend magically erased all that’s fundamentally wrong with us?”
“I want sixty days.”
“What?”
“We have eighty days before the annulment window closes,” he says. “Give me sixty of them.”
My pulse kicks.
“Sixty days for what?”
“Real life.”
I stare at him.
“Not Tokyo,” he says. “Not a hotel suite. Not sex and rules and nobody knows. Real life. Chicago. Work. Friends. Movie nights. Bad coffee. My family. Your family, if you want. Dinner when we’re tired. Mornings when we have somewhere to be. You seeing me when I’m in a shitty mood and not working a room. Me seeing you when you’re not hiding behind all those rules you’ve built up in your head.”
