Billionaire Romance12 min read
You Owe Me — Don't You Dare Walk Away
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I woke up gasping, my hand pressed hard to the place my dream had been stabbed.
"You're okay," I told myself out loud, but my voice shook.
The silk nightgown clung to me. The room around me was quiet. The dream had been too real—too sharp. I could still feel a blade, the wet sting, the smell of iron.
My phone chimed. I looked at the screen. A string of symbols I knew by heart blinked bright.
"Eleven, someone found who you asked for," the voice said when I answered.
"Good," I said. "Tell them to wait."
I changed, shoved my hair into a messy knot, and stepped into a house that acted like a stage set for other people's lives.
"Where are you going?" Jacob demanded before I reached the door.
"Out," I said.
"You broke my tire!" he shouted after me.
"Yeah," I said. "You shouldn't have left it in my path."
He glared. Megan, his little fake sister, watched with her perfect mouth. Bristol smiled from her armchair like she owned every room.
"At tonight's banquet," Dad said when he found me in the driveway. "If you ruin it, don't come back."
"I won't ruin it," I lied. "I won't be there."
Dad's face tightened. "You will stay and take part in the family business. If you don't—"
"If I don't what?" I asked. "You kick me out?"
I revved the beat-up car Mom had left me. It looked old. I had rebuilt the engine myself. To them it was trash. To me it was a small arrow.
The road narrowed. My heart beat ready in my chest. Another car slid toward me, very fast, very sharp.
"Stop!" the other driver yelled.
"Not today," I said, and I hit the drift.
Tires screamed. We missed each other by a breath.
He stared at me through his windshield—black, calm, a face I didn't know and couldn't stop remembering.
He lifted his hand from the wheel and waved once. Then he followed.
"Follow them," wey said on my earpiece.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because Late is driving," he said. "You don't drop a god like that."
I laughed and put the pedal down.
I had been Late for years online and on the mountain roads. My car was called Midnight — black and mean. I did not race to show off. I raced to move, to cut ties, to feel the engine bite.
I led a pack up the mountain where other men came to throw their metal hearts into the wind.
"Late?" a kid in a leather jacket whispered behind me.
"Do not call me," I said, and drifted around a hairpin while they braked.
When I stopped on the ridge, I let them close.
"Who are you?" one asked.
"Late," I said.
They tried to shove past. I pressed my palm flat and pushed them back to the gravel. I had been training for more than engines. I had hands for other work.
"Jacob Lin is my man," I told them, meaning it in the way that sometimes a name could be a shield.
They left with bruised temper. I stayed until the sky turned a thin, pale gray.
My phone buzzed in my pocket again. Greyson's voice: "Eleven, come to the banquet. I'll be there."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I want to see you," he said. "And because my grandfather asked."
He hung up.
The banquet was loud. Dad glowed with pride at Megan's scholarship paper and the guests clucked like hens over a fresh chick.
"Go on," Bristol said. "Make us proud."
I took the invitation Jacob had handed me and slipped into a dark corner. I watched Megan, all satin and smile, and I felt the room turn small.
"Indigo?" someone said, and a professor I admired—Professor En—gripped my hands like he'd found treasure.
"Professor En," I said. "You came?"
"You are louder than I thought," he said. "You are smaller and bigger in all the best ways."
People around us moved. Megan's handlers smiled sharp. They compared me like a loose coin.
"You are the old girl from the country," Mrs. Sun said aloud. "You are not fit for this hall."
"Mind your mouth," Professor En snapped. "She is a scientist. She is our pride."
They changed. Their eyes moved slow over me and then away. For reasons I had made sure of, my life had two faces: the frightened farmgirl they expected, and the rank of someone who had climbed the ladder too fast.
"You're not a guest," Megan called. "You're a joke."
"Go sit with your roses," I said, and I pushed past them.
They screamed that a lady did not raise a hand. They made a show. The crowd loved a show.
Greyson watched it all. He had dark hair, a square jaw that the papers called cold, and eyes that sharpened.
"What's wrong here?" he asked when he stepped into my space.
"They provoked me," I snapped.
He smiled like he had the exact key to my face. "I suppose I owe you something."
"You?" I said. "You don't even know me."
"Then I will learn," he said. "Over dinner."
He walked me to a small table without asking. He put a plate of simple food in front of me. He gave me his attention like a blanket.
"This isn't what you said at coffee," I muttered.
"I promised marriage," he said. "You promised marriage."
"What?" I said.
"You told me at the cafe: 'I might as well marry the other guy.' You said it so plainly." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. A recording played my own voice, small, tired, promising something to a stranger who had no right to hold it over me.
"That's cheating," I said.
"Maybe," he said. "But promises are important to me."
He was ridiculous. He was calm. He was the kind of storm you walk into by choice.
"I won't be your plaything," I said.
"Then be my partner," he said. "Today. Now. The civil office is open."
I laughed. The sound surprised me. "You're insane."
"Good," he said. "I like insane."
He didn't argue. He drove me and his lawyer to the civil office. We signed and rustled papers. The woman behind the counter gave us identical books with red covers.
"We are married," I said, touching the small card.
"Now we are," he said, and he smiled at me like a man who had folded the world to fit.
At home later my father exploded. He banged his hands on the table and called me every name under the sky.
"You cannot just take the money and disappear!" he roared.
"I didn't take your money," I said. "I took what was mine."
"You are married?" he said. "To who?"
"Greyson Buckley," I said.
The house went quiet like water pulled back. Bristol's smile froze.
"Greyson Buckley," Jacob repeated. "Who is that?"
"A man who can take care of me," I said.
"Then give me the little box that was left," Dad said. "The gem. The paper. Give it now."
"You kept an IOU," I said quietly. "You kept something that belonged to my family."
He had it in a drawer. He had expected me to obey. He did not expect me to have a man standing by me now, to put his gloved hand on my shoulder as he opened a drawer with a single word: respect.
"Those things are hers," Greyson said. "I will not let you hold them for more games."
He handed the drawer's contents to me. The paper said what old men have always said to each other: you watch my name and be on my side. It said nothing about abuse or power. It said debts. It said honor.
"You will not force my wife to marry for business," Greyson told him.
I felt small and very tall. The room hummed.
"Take it and go," I told Dad. "We are done."
They could not stop me. I walked out with my own box and the new small book that declared our names.
We moved into his house.
"Don't call me Mrs. until you want to," I told the butler, because the idea of 'Mrs.' felt unreal.
"Madam," the butler said, and bowed. He used the word that had the weight of a promise and nothing lighter.
The house felt like an instrument. He had moved my life into boxes labeled 'safety' and 'fancy.' He had a man named Quinn to show me where to put my teeth. He had a driver who removed my car and left another set of keys on the table.
"Stay," Greyson said softly in our first night together. "I want you here."
"No," I said. "We said one year. We said a deal. We will sign, take my things, and leave."
He did things that made it hard to leave. He left small presents. He let the house smell like honey and lemon.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked one night, after he came to my door where I had been working late.
"Because I like you," he said simply.
"You barely know me," I said.
"That doesn't mean I can't like you," he said.
He pushed me to the edge like a hand on my spine, gentle and not gentle. We kissed, once, slowly, like winter thawing.
I made a rule: no bed to bed, no feelings. He made a rule: I could not run.
"You owe me one," he said one night with that tone that meant he meant it in a different way than the loan he was referencing.
"I owe you nothing," I said, and then I did not say anything more because the air between us thickened.
I kept my other life secret. At odd hours, I answered numbers from the group that had been my real family for years.
"Eleven here," I typed. "What did you dig up?"
"Seven sent everything," the message came back. "Your husband? Cold name, hot file. He's married. To you."
I mouthed the words and laughed.
"Yeah," I wrote. "I did that."
They were ridiculous. My friends were ridiculous. They made a plan to visit. They wanted to meet the man who had my name on his tongue.
One evening, Megan came to the company lobby looking like a flower pot and a threat. She meant to pass herself as an old friend of Greyson, but the secretary stopped her.
"Who are you?" the girl said politely.
"I'm Megan Blackburn," she said. "Tell Greyson I'm here."
The girl smiled too small. "He doesn't see people without appointments."
Megan marched off in a storm of perfume. She did not get in.
I walked in with Greyson's valet and the same girl opened the door and directed us up.
"Excuse me," Megan called when she saw me on the elevator.
"We already met, remember?" I said. "At the banquet."
She flushed. "You're in his house."
"Yes," I said. "I'm also in my own life."
She tried to play at it, to charm the man in the suit as if she had a right to a future. He did not smile. He treated her politely and then left.
"You are impossible," Megan said to me as we later crossed paths at a family event.
"No," I said. "I am not yours to bargain with."
She had planned to be the wife, to buy a house and a title. She had to learn there were faster hands than hers.
Days fell into a rhythm. We were married on paper. We ate together sometimes. We fought once, hard, when Greyson accused me of lying about a man at lunch.
"This is childish," I told him and he laughed, the laugh of someone who could not stop being tender.
"Maybe," he said. "But I am childish for you."
He planted his feet. I felt it, sometimes. I also felt the click of something in me relax. Someone had my back. Someone else was in my corner.
Then Jacob disappeared.
"Jacob didn't come home," I said when I answered a midnight call from my old man.
"Where?" Greyson asked.
"Some thugs took him," I said.
He stood up like a man split from sleep.
"Where are they?" he asked.
"In a warehouse near the docks," I said. "They wanted to make a show. They wanted to scare."
Greyson's face turned to iron. "Don't move."
We went. The night hurt. They had Jacob bound like a puppet. The men smiled trying to sell terror.
"We'll go together," he told me.
I hit them first. I had been trained to move quick. He covered the back.
"Go," he said. "Get Jacob. I'll take the others."
I pulled Jacob up. He looked at me with the stunned face of a man who had thought someone would show up.
"Who are you?" he asked, only for a second. "Where did you learn that?"
"Enough," I said. "He's going home."
Greyson took the men in a way that made them stop trying. He did not break them. He left them alive with a memory.
"Leave them with no business," he told me. "They will not bother your family again."
I knew he could make that true because his reach was farther than threats and had the teeth of men who worked for him.
We came back different. I saw him in a new light: as a man who would fight for what he thought would be mine.
"Thank you," I said quietly as we drove.
"You are welcome," he said. "Stay."
A week later, Professor En invited me to lecture. He hugged me in front of a thousand eyes. The room cheered. Dad sat in the second row, surprised and small.
"You were supposed to marry the other boy," he whispered after the speech.
"I married Greyson," I said. "He gave me something that I didn't have: the right to stand."
That night, as the house slept, Greyson came to my door. He didn't knock.
"You are not sleeping alone," he said, not as an order but as news.
He sat on the bed and told me stories of his grandfather and the war medals he kept like a child hoards coins.
"I don't know what to give you," he said. "But I will give you something honest."
"You already gave me a place," I said.
"You gave me a place too," he answered.
We grew. He taught me to open a safe. I taught him to read a scientific paper. He made my life easier with quiet touches. I showed him a side of the world that had nothing to do with money. He showed me a side that had to do with duty.
When my external life—the group life—needed a favor, he gave it without asking too many questions.
"You're not a private person," I told him once, which was half a lie.
"I like what I know," he said. "And I want to know more."
People around us began to change. Dad had to sign some papers to back a new bid, and Greyson quietly put an end to a long pressure. He did not rub it in. He simply took a phone, called one man, and the problem evaporated.
"Why do you do that?" I asked.
"Because you need less trouble," he said.
Months passed. I dug into my research with the force of someone finally able to breathe. Greyson came to campus under an alias just to sit one row behind me and listen.
"You came to hear me lecture?" I asked after class.
"I came to hear you," he said.
We danced in small ways. He held my hand at dinner as if it were the most natural thing. I pretended it wasn't.
"You said you would divorce me in a year," I said one night.
"I said I'd let you go if you wanted to," he said. "But I want you."
"Words change," I said.
"He keeps showing up," I said one day to my friends in the group chat. "He keeps being in my corner. It's annoying."
"Annoying is good," Seven wrote back. "Protect your ally."
The real crisis came when the board of a rival firm tried to bribe my father into a deal that would have cost me the right to the old family IOU. They needed to clean the paper and the only way was to marry Megan into their circle.
"You're family," I told Dad. "I'm taking it back."
He refused. He had sold us a long time ago.
Greyson leaned into the fight. He called people and set a table. He took the meeting where I would have taken a beating and turned it into a place where the men who thought they could whisper my life into ruin left with nothing.
"You will undercut them," he said.
"It will cost you," I said.
"It is not your cost," he told me.
He did it like a man who had been a soldier first and inherited soft armor second.
The day of the hearing, I stood in a room of suits and waited. Megan sat in the front row like a doll.
"Do you withdraw?" the lawyer asked.
"I do," I said. "I withdraw my consent to any deal that trades my rights."
The room sighed. The papers were out. But Greyson had already moved the men who had favored them. They were quiet. They wanted no trouble with him.
After it was over, I sat down and let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.
"You should have asked me to the fight," he said.
"I didn't want to bother you," I said.
"You're wrong," he said. "I wanted to be asked."
It was the smallest thing, but it bent me. I began to look for him and find him without needing an excuse.
We had moments of softness that were our own. He once left a single wildflower on my desk with a note: "Don't forget to eat."
I made him a pot of bad coffee and left it by his chair. He drank it anyway and kissed me.
People around us whispered that the deal had turned into something else. I pretended not to hear.
"Do you love me?" he asked one afternoon on the balcony, the city a blanket beneath us.
"Do you want me to?" I asked.
"Yes," he said simply.
"Then yes," I said, because sometimes the truth is less a lightning strike and more a steady light.
"Good," he said. "Then stay."
Later, when my old life called—some old enemies tried to pull Jacob back into danger—I realized the difference. Where before I had to go alone, now I had someone who stood in front of me and took the hits.
"Promise me," he said once when we sat on a rain-dark night.
"What?" I asked.
"Promise you will not walk away the next time they ask you to give something up."
"I won't," I said.
He reached out and folded my hand like a promise.
Years went on and nothing grand happened and everything did. We grew habits. We made a home. He learned to cook one kind of soup I liked. I learned when to knock before entering his office.
They called us a story—some whispered we used each other. They were wrong. We had used fear to build a future and had, over time, used tenderness to make it true.
One night, back at the little house by the water where we had gone on the second summer, he kissed me and said, "You're mine."
"No," I said, laughing, "You are mine."
He didn't argue.
We had both owed things to the world. Debt had been a theme in both our lives. We repaid them in different ways. I repaid with truth and work. He repaid with protection and presence.
"Don't walk away," he'd said once in a voice rough with promise.
"I won't," I answered.
He kept the answer like a coin. I kept it like a key.
When the last paper was signed and the last man who thought me small either left or learned to be kind, I stood on the balcony and watched a city full of lights.
"You promised you'd always be here," Greyson said behind me.
"I promised I'd always be honest," I said. "Honest when I wanted out. Honest when I wanted in."
He slid his hand into mine. "Then stay."
I did. I stayed. I took the life that came to me.
I still wake sometimes in the night from the old dream—the knife, the blood—but the dream has changed. The man I feared is not the one who stands at my shoulder. Now I have a man who says, "You are mine," in a way that means "I will guard you, and I will let you go if you ask."
Sometimes love is a chain. Sometimes love is a door. We made ours into both.
"Don't you dare walk away," he murmured one night as rain ran down the glass.
"I never will," I said, because I meant it, because I had learned how to own my life and my choices, because I had found someone who kept his word and gave me the courage to keep mine.
The End
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