“No. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She folded her arms tight across her chest. She rubbed her lips together nervously and finally whispered, “Because my credit’s destroyed. From before. From debt I didn’t know existed until it was too late. My bankruptcy and foreclosure. The landlord wanted triple the deposit, more on top. I couldn’t swing it. So I let it go.”
“How much?”
She hesitated.
“Howmuch, Alyssa.”
“Twenty-two thousand.”
I stared at her, then laughed, disbelieving. “That’s what you thought was too much to ask me for? I spent twice that on studio equipment last week without a second thought.”
She started rubbing her lips together again, then took a deep breath. “That’s for your business. It’s not your responsibility to?—”
“Stop that.” My voice rose. “Do you hear yourself? You’re talking about your career, your professional independence, the ability to helppeople who need you. And you’re willing to let it slip away over money that meansnothingto me?”
She flinched. “I don’t want you to think that I’m using you.” Her words came out strangled. “For what you can do for me. You already dosomuch, Julian. I couldn’t ask you for more.”
“Jesus Christ, Alyssa,ask me for more! USE ME!” The words exploded out of me. “I’m here. I’m literally standing here,wantingto be used by you.Wantingto be needed by you. That’s what people they— what people do in a relationship. They need things. They ask. They receive.”
When they love each otherwas halfway out of me before I caught it. Not like this. Not by accident, in the middle of an argument, because she’d backed me into feeling it out loud. I shut it down and watched her face. She was too deep in her own spiral to have caught it.
Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know how to do that. How to ask. To accept it without feeling guilty.”
“Because youstillthink that needing help means being weak. That asking means owing. Or you’re just too used to being let down? But that’s not what this is.”
I moved closer, cupping her face. “This is me wanting to see you win. It’s me having resources that mean nothing if I can’t use them to support the woman I care about. It’spartnership, Alyssa. Not transaction or debt. Just... us.”
“It’s not on purpose,” she said, and the tears came. “Half the time it isn’t even a decision. It’s muscle memory.” She pressed a hand flat to her chest. “There’s a voice in here that says if I need too much, one day you’ll do the math and decide I’m too much trouble. That I should be grateful for what I’ve got and not push.”
“You’re worth all the trouble, Lyss. You’re worth everything. That voice is lying to you.” I pulled her against me, feeling her relax into me.
“I’m trying,” she said into my chest. “I hear you. I don’t want to lose you over this.”
“Then let me in. I need you to let me be a man.Yourman. That’s all I’m asking.”
She was quiet a long time. Then she pushed the words up over years of never letting herself ask them.
“Will you help me? With the office.” A breath. “I’d pay you back, every —”
“Youdon’tpay me back. That’s the whole point of anus.I will take care of it. Iwantto.”
I tipped her head up. “And, Lyss? You have no idea what it just did to me that you asked.”
“What did it do?”
I had to go find them. “Most days I feel like I’m standing here with everything in my hands and nowhere to put it down, because you won’t take a thing off me. You just asked me for something that matters to you. That’s not a weight, baby. That’s the best thing you could’ve done.”
Her head rested into my neck, and I wrapped her all the way up and felt the long breath go out of her like she’d set down something she’d been hauling for miles.
“Don’t worry about any of it,” I said into her hair. “Tomorrow we sit down together, and we work on a plan to get you your office.”
She tipped her face up. “And tonight?”
I looked at her a long moment and licked my lips at her.
“Tonight? Go get ready for bed.”
