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“Great. Thanks. I’ll be sure to tell her that I fucking hate roses.”

He laughed. “Don’t worry. If she’s met you, she knows, but my point is that you’ve done a little more than just get a new roommate. Have you talked to her yet, at all, about how you guys are going to do this?”

“That’s not necessary. We’re already doing it and it’s working.”

“It’s been less than twenty-four hours,” he said, deadpan. “I may not be an expert on marriage, but I doubt anyone gets to declare that it’s working less than a full day in.”

“I do, because like I said, it’s not a real marriage. It doesn’t matter if I like her, or if she likes me, or if she decides to change her last name or not. None of that shit matters. Alex came to me with a deal that made sense and I took it.”

“So you don’t like her?”

I shrugged. “She’s fine.”

To be fair, I didn’t have a problem with Alicia, per se. She was sharp, she read Homer, and she didn’t look at me like I was a felon in the making, but I was jaded. Years of watching the elite tear my family apart had changed the way I looked at the world, and the undeniable reality that she’d agreed to this charade purely to get a massive payout rubbed me the wrong way.

Wyatt had been too young to truly understand what had happened to our family when the scandal had hit. He’d been just an innocent kid back then and Jane had done everything in her power to shield him from the blowback, ensuring he had a normal, well-adjusted childhood regardless of the fact that we were losing almost everything we owned.

Because of that, Wyatt didn’t carry the same visceral repulsion to wealthy people—or the desperate pursuit of wealth—that I did. As he looked at me, I saw the gears turning in his head, little splashes of Jane’s undying determination, Colin’s analytical way of thinking, and Isaac’s optimism shining through one by one by one.

“Don’t say it, bud,” I warned, arching an eyebrow at him as I set the weights down. “This woman is in it for the money. She’s exactly like all those people we used to know who flocked around us when they thought they could get something out of it and went up in a puff of smoke when we lost it.”

He leaned back against the bench. “You know, you’re being incredibly hard on her. Didn’t you get married for money, too?”

“That’s different,” I snapped gruffly, picking the weights back up and descending into a deep squat, the heavy iron burning my shoulders. I pushed back up, my jaw clenched. “This was my inheritance, Wyatt. It was ours. I just did what I had to do to get it back. I didn’t steal it.”

“Is that what you think she did?” he asked, both eyebrows shooting up. “You think that by marrying you, she stole it?”

I re-racked the bar with a loud, echoing clang and turned toward him, my grumpy side taking full control. “She signed her entire life away to a stranger so she could move up in the world without actually having to work for it. She took the ultimate shortcut and I guess I have to respect the hustle, but let’s not pretend she’s a saint. This was a gold-plated elevator ride to financial freedom.”

Wyatt just shook his head, clearly realizing there was no arguing with my current mood. “Okay, then, but Holden?”

“Yeah?”

“Once you calm down a little and the dust has settled, do try to remember that she’s an actual human being who did, in fact, sign her entire life away to you. Not a stranger. You.”

I sighed, knowing he had a point, but I wasn’t in a place where I was willing to consider what that meant right now. Instead, I headed over to the treadmills and ran a couple miles to cool down. Wyatt jogged at a much more leisurely pace beside me, not really talking about anything in particular and simply catching me up on meaningless office gossip both of us knew I didn’t care about, but it worked.

Sort of. He left the gym with his balls still attached to his body, anyway.

After grabbing a shower, I left too and headed straight back to campus. To my absolute chagrin, my afternoon schedule placed me in the last place I wanted to be—my ethics lecture with Tasha, who I apparently lived with now.

To make matters even worse, she was already there when I arrived, leaning against the doorway and staring down the hall like a gargoyle waiting for its prey. I gave her a curt nod, purposely pretending I didn’t know she wanted to talk even as her eyes locked on mine.

Figuring I might as well give it a shot, I strode right past her, keeping my head down, and began climbing the steep stairs of the lecture hall to find a seat high in the back rows. This was my sweet spot, where I could brood in peace while my more enthusiastic classmates clamored around the front, asking questions and bouncing ridiculous scenarios off each other while we waited for the actual class to start.

Unfortunately, I underestimated Tasha’s determination to get the information she was after. Or maybe she was about to lay into me for making her friend cry. Which I still wasn’t sure how I’d managed that. I’d barely even said a word to the girl and yet the waterworks had come on.

Soft footsteps padded up the stairs behind me and I twisted. Tasha was following me. Her fist was angrily wrapped around the strap of her backpack and hers eyes drilled holes into my back. Usually, she liked the prime seats right up front, which meant I was definitely about to get yelled at.

“We need to talk,” she whispered loudly, her eyes wild as she dropped into the seat directly beside the one I’d just lowered myself into. “Right now, Thayer.”

“We’re in a lecture, Tasha,” I muttered, opening my laptop and staring forward at the professor, who was currently setting up a PowerPoint presentation on utilitarianism.

“I don’t care about the class right now,” she snapped, leaning in closer. “You married my roommate. How? Why? You two didn’t even speak the night you came over.”

For the first fifteen minutes of the lecture, she poked and prodded relentlessly, whispering questions under her breath and slowly breaking me down. My patience eroded until finally, I snapped.

“It means nothing, alright?” I whispered back, staring straight ahead so the professor wouldn’t catch us. “It’s just a legal arrangement. It’s money for her and a closed loop for me. It was a business transaction, Tasha. We signed the papers, we share an address, and that’s it.”