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“More than I have.” I sighed. “I can’t even afford to fix the HVAC system.”

She leaned her hip against the counter, looking around the store.

“What if you didn’t have to do it alone?”

I knew before she’d finished talking, heard it coming the way you hear thunder when the windows are open.

“Lorrie.”

“I’m not saying tomorrow. I don’t even know exactly how everything works yet. But if the trust is mine, if it’s actually mine to control, I could invest in Side A.”

“No.” The word came out too fast and way too sharp.

Her face changed. Lorrie Hale had been raised by people who could lose an argument over polo ponies and still look composed. But I caught the look.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not offering charity.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You said no like I’d offered to buy you a leash.”

I shoved a hand through my hair and looked toward the front window. Outside, a woman in a pink visor pushed a stroller past the store while two college boys argued over whether to see Ghostbusters again. Normal people enjoying a normal afternoon.

“I won’t expand my store with your family money,” I said.

Her chin went up. “Family money,” she repeated.

“That came out wrong.”

She looked at me, and the awful part was that she didn’t look angry, she looked hurt.

“It’s my money.” Her voice stayed quiet, which made it worse. “Lately I feel like nobody knows what to do with me having money unless they’re trying to use it or refusing it on principle.”

I looked down at my hands. They had ink on them from the inventory sheets and a thin cut across one knuckle from a cardboard box. My father’s hands had looked like that most of his life, nicked and rough and useful, and men with better shoes had still talked to him like he was lucky to be allowed in the room.

“I don’t want to owe your family anything,” I said.

“You wouldn’t owe my family. You’d owe me, and only if we wrote it that way.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

Because Alan Ellsworth had probably smiled over drinks while calculating what Lorrie was worth. Because men like him always knew how to turn other people’s futures into columns on a page. Because I’d spent my whole life watching people from houses like hers decide which parts of men like me were charming and which parts were unsuitable.

Because I loved her, and I still didn’t know how to stand beside her without feeling like I had to prove I belonged there.

“I don’t want people thinking I took your money or that I’m dating you for your money.”

Her mouth tightened. “People can think whatever the hell they want.”

Despite everything, I almost smiled, knowing she rarely swore.

She narrowed her eyes at me and pointed.

“You can’t love me and pretend I don’t come from a well-off family,” she said. “I can’t spend my life apologizing for being born in Maple Bluff.”

“I’m not asking you to.”