Chapter 26 Confession. Rejection. #2
He knew what he was doing. He knew those exact words would hurt her. She played them over in her mind. “I’m too much,” she
said, mirroring him. Wasn’t this why men couldn’t handle being close to Julia? But Tae had never made it seem like he couldn’t
handle being with her.
His eyes flared. “Julia, can’t you see? I don’t have anything to offer you. I don’t even know how I’m going to pay you back.
I don’t have the money. I don’t have the time. I don’t have the space to give to you.”
Julia hadn’t asked him for anything. She hadn’t given him anything either. So why would he need to pay her back? “I don’t
need anything. I don’t care about money—”
“Well, I do! God, don’t you get it? That’s the exact issue. I don’t ever have the liberty to not care about money. But that
doesn’t mean I wanted yours.”
Julia shook her head. She was missing something. There had clearly been a misunderstanding. If Tae needed money and asked
her for it, she would discuss it with him. But she’d never just throw her money around and flippantly give it away. Especially
if she knew it wasn’t something someone wanted from her. She was not about some kind of power trip, and God, not ever with
Tae.
She opened her mouth to talk it out, to get clarification, to clear up the misunderstanding. But Tae beat her to the punch.
“God, Julia, I’m even considering taking your grandmother’s money. But at least I had to work for that. I hate myself for
ever getting caught up in this mess.”
“My grandmother’s money?” Julia’s heart pounded. What was he talking about? Julia felt like the two of them were in two different conversations. She remembered something Tae had told her the night of their date about her grandmother’s best intentions but questionable methods. What was she missing?
Tae dropped his head to his chest and shook it.
Please don’t go on. Please don’t go on. Julia was too afraid to hear the truth. Because if Tae was this agonized over it, it was definitely going to be bad.
“Julia, your grandmother offered me a job. She hired me to date you.”
No.
Please, no.
“Date me? Like, an escort?” she asked. Her heart pounded in her chest so hard she felt it in her teeth.
“No, not like that. Just to, you know, prepare you for the dates. Like the deal between you and me, but she had asked me before
you did,” he answered.
“No. I asked you, remember? At the herbalist. I told you I needed a dating coach, and you offered.” She replayed the memories
in her head. No way had he mentioned his grandmother hiring him to help her. Why would the two of them collude behind her
back? Her heart raced with her mind, one trying to outpace the other.
“She pulled me aside at her birthday party . . .”
The night before they went to the herbalist.
Tears welled in Julia’s eyes. She couldn’t see Tae’s face anymore. It was all a wet blur.
“So, what? You agreed to be my dating coach, get close to me, make me fall for you . . . because my grandmother hired you
to? Was it all just a job for you?” She knew the answer. He already said the answer.
“No, Julia, no.” He was backpedaling, and it made Julia’s stomach turn. “I wasn’t ever going to take her money. I told her
so in the beginning, and I was gonna tell her at the end too.”
God, she was such an idiot. Tae never promised her anything.
He never even shared any of how he was feeling with her.
He was just kind to her like he was to everyone else.
Kindness out of service. Kindness with a price tag.
No, it was her pouring herself out to him.
Looking like a fool because she couldn’t get it right—she couldn’t get any relationships right. And here he was confirming it.
He reached out for her arm, but she swatted his hand away. She tried to remember everything that had happened since that first
day. Any and every place she’d got it wrong, where she’d misread the signs. Damn it, Julia, you are smarter than this. How had she missed it?
She swallowed down the pain and the embarrassment, straightened her back, and put on her CEO mask. She waited one second to
calm herself. “Whatever money you think I gave you, you’re wrong. I have not entered into any financial transaction with you
or anyone in your family. So you’ll need to find the correct target for your vitriol and victim-blaming. And whatever money
my grandmother is paying you for your services, that’s between the two of you. Hopefully she’ll still pay you, even though
it turned out to be a lost cause after all.”
“Julia, it wasn’t just a job, I swear. I care about you. You mean a lot to me. And maybe I thought we could see where this
would go.” He let out a breath as if this was the hardest chore for him to do. Get rid of the pest now that the job is over.
“Don’t worry, Tae.” Julia hid every bit of emotion behind a mask of steel and a steady voice she’d honed after years of demanding
to be heard in an industry that didn’t want to take her seriously. “It’s good. We’re good. It was a misunderstanding. It happens.
No harm, no foul. I get it now.”
“It’s just that—God, Julia—what you did with the bills was so uncool. This is my family. You can’t just step in and fix shit, fix me, with money. It was a reminder to me that we’re in two different leagues,
two very different tax brackets. And it brought it home clear as day what I’d almost forgotten . . . I just work for you,
for your grandma.”
Julia couldn’t hear anymore. She turned around and walked to her car.
She expected Tae’s hand to grab her, but yet again she’d overestimated him.
“Next time, you might want to fact-check and get your accusations right. If you had asked me, I would have given whatever money you needed. But I also knew you’d never ask, so I didn’t bring it up.
And I have never crossed the line paying for something without your knowledge and consent. ”
She looked at him, one last time, still standing exactly where he had been, head down to his chest. There were no winners
in this fight.
Julia got in her car, holding on as she drove away. And when she’d reached the corner, out of sight, she let herself go.
She let herself cry.