I looked up with a different kind of surprise. “Are you mad about that?”
“I’m—I don’t know.” Her voice pitched a bit higher. “You don’t find this kind of unreasonable?”
I followed her gesture to the papers on the table, then looked back at her. “I—no, not really.”
It was like I was speaking Farsi. “How can you say that?”
I shrugged. “It’s what you deserve for dealing with my obnoxious self and the even more obnoxious family members you’ll have to endure for the next six months. Honestly, you could ask for ten times that. Twenty times that. I’d pay it.”
“Ronan, you don’t need to pay me for being married to you!” she fairly shouted. “I’m not a broodmare. I don’t have a freaking purchase price!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. I never said you did. And that’s not what this is.”
She was getting red in the face again, and not from being sweetly embarrassed or turned on. She also looked slightly out of breath, and I didn’t like that at all.
“Laney.” I moved to the couch where she sat and reached out to rub her arms, trying to calm her. “Hey. It’s just a negotiation. Breathe, baby. It’ll be all right.”
She batted my hands away. “I’m—I’m fine. Just give me a second.”
She sat on the couch doing the same breathing exercises she had gone through in Vegas. She still hadn’t told me exactly what her diagnosis was, but clearly she needed to have it cared for. All the more reason to get her to take the fucking money.
A few minutes later, her breathing had regulated, but her expression still burned with questions.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I thought we understood each other. You said you wanted to give us a real shot at marriage. I was okay with accepting some help with the shop and seeing a doctor out here. I was even okay with the idea of going back to school. But this,”—she waved at the pile of papers—“this makes it feel like a formal arrangement. Like, I don’t know, you’re trying to buy me. Like it’s a matter of convenience. What is it you really want?”
I picked up her hand and started toying with it. She didn’t wear polish, but kept her nails neatly filed, and her long fingers were elegant and unadorned except for the simple gold band.
Tell her.
Liam’s voice echoed in my head. He’d lectured me earlier today, just like he lectured me when he was writing the stupid document. My family already thought I was idiotic for getting married without a proper prenuptial agreement. Dad had insisted on a postnuptial agreement, but he hadn’t insisted onwhat was in it. How could I explain that its contents were both a proverbial finger to my father and his control issues, but also a gesture toward the real purpose of this marriage.
Tell her about the company, I could hear Liam saying.Tell her about the board. Tell her that you need this marriage to be real enough to convince a room full of sharks that you’re stable enough to run a multi-billion-dollar empire.
Tell her that when you get their votes, she’ll need to go home. Back to Seattle.
I never considered myself a coward before that specific moment.
So, I offered the only other truth I had—the one I hadn’t even admitted to myself.
“Let’s get real, Laney.” I sounded sharper than I had intended. “I’m a piece of shit.”
“Ronan—”
“No, let me finish,” I went on. “You want to know if I usually drink like this? The answer is no—I usually drink a whole lot more, on top of a bunch of other bad habits that have to do with drugs, women, gambling, fighting, maybe even the occasional mur?—”
I cut myself off as the face of Billy Richard rose in my mind’s eye. What the fuck? Since when did that start happening?
“Ronan,” Laney tried again. “You don’t have to?—”
“I’ve done things you can’t even imagine,” I rattled on. “Dante would have had to create a tenth circle of hell just for me. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
She was starting to look impatient. “No, but?—”
“But then I saw you in the middle of that cesspool of a city, a live flame of perfection in that dank, dark club, and I saw my absolution.” I grabbed her hands and squeezed, urging her to understand. “I look at you, and I see my last fucking chance, Ari. So take the fucking money, all right? Because I’m not going tomake it easy for you. I’ve never made anything easy a day in my life. But the moment I saw you, I knew I wanted to try. I wanted to be a better person. You make me want to be a better person.”
I watched her for a long time, holding onto her hands like they were life preservers in the middle of a storm. She was that for me, I realized. I had started that speech intending to scare her a little, let her know, in one way or another, that we weren’t going to last forever, in part because I was going to fuck it up no matter what. But by the end, I’d sold her my own potential redemption. And maybe sold it to myself, too.
Talk about snake oil.