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“You were asleep on my shoulder for forty minutes and I didn’t move because I didn’t want to wake you.”

My heart gave a traitorous thump as my throat closed up.

“I remember looking down at you and thinking I didn’t want the night to end,” he said. “Not because our families fit, or because my mother liked you, or because our backgrounds made sense. I wanted to sit there with you while you slept through a movie you insisted on arguing about afterward.”

My vision swam, which made me angrier.

“That’s when?”

“That’s when I knew everything had changed and I’d fallen in love with you.”

I hated how familiar that was too. My future husband feeling something and setting it carefully aside until the proper moment, which never came because life was very good at filling proper moments with laundry, children, tax returns, and people needing rides.

“I should have told you about the trust as soon as I found out. I should have told you about my father as soon as I suspected there was more happening at the firm than he admitted.”

He took our empty bottles to the kitchen and put them in the trash.

“I wanted to tell you the truth, but I kept thinking I could fix things and you wouldn’t have to know.”

“That’s not how truth works.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Because from here it looks like you waited until every room in my life was already wallpapered with expectations, then decided honesty might be useful once the ceiling caught fire.”

He closed his eyes again. “I was afraid.”

That stopped me more effectively than any excuse.

Paul opened his eyes. “I was afraid you’d leave me, and that if I told you my father had talked about your money, you’d think I only wanted you for your money. I worried if I told you the firm was in trouble, you’d think everything between us was about money. And then the dinner at the club got bigger, and my mother was talking about flowers, and your mother was talking about an orchestra, and I kept telling myself I’d handle my father before you found out.”

The honesty hurt so much that for a moment I couldn’t breathe.

“I thought if I could get the firm through the end of the year, if I could make Dad step back, let me run things and make them right, then none of it would matter.”

I looked at the tulips on the counter, their pink petals catching the light from the small lamp beside them. He’d remembered so many little things to make me feel known and cherished, all while failing to tell me the one thing that might have changed everything.

That was Paul, always convinced that if he could delay a conflict long enough, it might become unnecessary. I’d spent twenty-seven years married to that flaw.

“There won’t be a proposal at the club on Friday,” I said.

For a second, I saw the impact of my words before he controlled it, the quick flash of pain under the manners.

“All right.”

“No private or public proposal. Not at the club, with our parents waiting and champagne chilling with all their friends watching.”

I took a deep breath.

“And my money doesn’t save your father or your family firm.”

“I understand.” He said it quietly, and that was almost worse than if he’d argued or shouted, but then again Paul never shouted, not even when Ben jumped from a tree and broke his arm.

“I mean it, Paul.”

“So do I. I’ve already told my father.”

I searched his face for calculation, but all I saw was exhaustion.