When I glanced at Simon to check his reaction, his brows were predictably drawn in confusion.
“Uh,” I said, pacing up and down the space at the end of the bed. “Must be?—”
“In want of a wife,” Simon finished for me. “Please. How many ice cream and wet Colin Firth sessions have we had?”
My lips twitched again. Whenever someone broke up with me, Simon sat with me and watched the 1995Pride and Prejudiceminiseries and provided ice cream and sympathy. Besides, he’d read the book when I first mentioned it was one of my favorites. He knew the line.
“Where you lost me isfortune,”he continued.
Right. Because I’d never told him about the trust fund.
“I mean, we’re in the Hamptons, I’m not stupid, I know your family has money. But Audrey’s does too, right? She’s one of your crowd.”
“I’ve always assumed so, but… uh.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “The thing is, umm, when my dad died, my inheritance from him went into a trust. Which is set to mature when I turn thirty.”
“You’re twenty-eight,” Simon pointed out.
I nodded. “Right, so if she married mebeforeI turned thirty, any pre-nup might not apply to the contents of the fund, because I don’t technically have it before the marriage. Or… I dunno, maybe she’s genuinely interested. Seems unlikely.”
Audrey had been hanging around with Delilah since high school and she’d never indicated before now that she knew myname, let alone harbored any secret fantasies about dating me.
“Wait, really? Does it work like that?”
I shrugged. “I’m not a lawyer. It might? If she had a good one. Dad said once that I shouldn’t marry before thirty and I had noidea why at the time. It might’ve been a joke. He also wasn’t a lawyer.”
Dad had been proud of being, he said, a salesman. He’d come from money, too, but he’d worked to make alotmore during his lifetime—Mom’s side of the family was where theoldmoney came from, but a lot less of it.
He’d been a miserable asshole who hated women and The Gays—which I’d always been able to hear the capitalization of when he got on that particular subject—and had said some things to me about Simon that I’d never forgive him for. I didn’t particularly want his money.
So I hadn’t told Simon about it. Because I hadn’t wanted to talk abouthim, either. Hadn’t wanted to think about it.
“How much are we—no,” Simon interrupted himself. “No, you know what? I don’t want to know figures. I feel out of my depth enough around your family. You’re going to give me a number that has six zeroes after it and my brain might actually shut down trying to imagine that kind of money.”
“Eight,” I said, feeling like—despite what he’d just said—Simon ought to know, now that it was directly relevant to the mess I’d gotten us into.
“Eight million?” he squeaked.
I looked over to him, tugging on my earlobe as heat rushed to my cheeks. “Zeroes. Eight… zeroes.”
Simon’s mouth fell open.
It stayed that way while he stared at me in silence for five heartbeats, ten, twenty.
Then he flopped back on the bed with a thump, staring up at the ceiling instead. Mouth still hanging open.
“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” he said as I sat down beside him.
“Sorry.”
“I knew, y’know?” he continued as though I hadn’t said anything. “I knew your family had money beyond my feeble human comprehension. I’m not stupid. It just…”
He finally looked at me, eyes soft and searching. “You were always just Theo to me.”
I swallowed around a lump in my throat. “Does this change that?”
It might. If not because Simon had a figure now, then maybe because he hadn’t had onebefore. Because I’d been hiding this from him.
Not on purpose. If he’d ever asked, I would’ve told him.
