"I didn't ask you because you're rich." The words come out quiet but firm, and I need him to hear them, need him to understand what he's really doing here. "I asked because you're my husband. Because I thought we were building something together. Because when something matters to me, I wanted to share it with you."
I watch the words land, watch him process them. For a second—just a second—I think I see something soften in his expression. Some recognition that he's handling this wrong, that the walls he's building are keeping out the wrong person.
But then his face closes off entirely, and what comes out of his mouth destroys everything.
"Are you sure there's a difference?"
The question hangs in the air between us, poisonous and revelatory. He thinks I'm using him.
After everything—after the quiet breakfasts and late-night conversations, after the way I've let him into my creative process and my daily life, after I've been falling in love with him—he still thinks I'm just another person trying to extract resources from Seamus O'Malley, billionaire.
The hurt is so immediate and overwhelming that I can't breathe for a second.
I just stare at him, at this man I thought I was beginning to know, and realize he doesn't know me at all.
Worse—he doesn't want to know me.
He wants to keep me at a safe distance where I can't hurt him, where every interaction can be managed and controlled and wrapped in legal protections.
"Forget it." My voice sounds strange, distant. "It obviously doesn't matter to you."
"Rosanna, wait—" He reaches for me, but I'm already moving, already putting distance between us before the tears I'm holding back can escape.
"Don't." I hold up a hand, stopping him mid-step. "Just... don't."
I make it to my studio before the tears come. I close the door carefully—not slamming it, because that would require an energy I don't have—and sink into the chair by my drafting table. My illustration of Mira stares back at me, her hopeful face and cupped hands protecting that fragile green shoot.
What a naive image. A girl who believes things can grow in impossible places.
In the real world, you get NDAs and oversight clauses instead of partnership.
I’ve been so careful. And none of it mattered.
My phone is in my hand before I make a conscious decision to reach for it.
I text Luna:
You were right. About all of it.
Her response comes within seconds:
Wait! What?
But I can't type it out. Can't reduce the last hour to a text conversation, can't explain how completely I misjudged what Seamus and I were building. Instead, I call her.
"He thinks I'm using him," I say when she answers, and my voice cracks on the words. "I asked him to help fund a legal advocacy group for the storefront case, and he turned it into this whole corporate project with lawyers and NDAs and oversight clauses. Like I'm a business risk he needs to protect himself from."
Luna is quiet for a moment, and when she speaks, her voice is gentle but firm. "I hate to say I told you so—"
"Then don't."
"Rosie… that’s what I was afraid of. If he thinks everyone’s out to use him, how are you ever supposed to win?”
I want to defend him.
But he didn’t defend me.
After I hang up with Luna, I open my laptop. There's an email from Shay waiting, and I click it open like a lifeline. He's asking about my illustration project, sharing something funny that happened in his day, being the uncomplicated friend I desperately need right now.
