He Posted He Hated Me, So I Married A Billionaire

The post had 847,000 likes.

I read it three times, each time hoping the words would rearrange themselves into something that made sense. Something that wasn't what I thought it was.

They didn't.

*"Real talk, married men: anyone else physically repulsed by their own wife? I gag every time I have to kiss mine. Drop a 👍 if you feel seen."*

The username was LiamTalksReal. His podcast handle. The one with 200,000 subscribers. The one I had helped him build, sitting beside him on weekends editing audio files while he called it *our* project.

My phone slipped.

I didn't try to catch it. It hit the hardwood floor and the screen cracked straight across the middle, a jagged fault line splitting the post in two. But the glow remained. The words remained. 847,000 likes and counting, and the top comment read: *bro same, mine looks like she hasn't slept since 2019 💀*

Liam was asleep beside me.

He was actually asleep. On his back, one arm thrown over his face, breathing slow and even like a man with absolutely nothing wrong in his life. The bedroom smelled like his cologne and the takeout containers we hadn't thrown away yet, and outside the window, thunder rolled in low and heavy over the city.

I sat there in the dark for a long moment.

Then I kicked him.

Not a nudge. Not a gentle tap. I pulled my knee back and drove my foot into his thigh, hard enough that he lurched sideways with a grunt and grabbed the mattress like he was falling.

"What the—" He surfaced from sleep angry, the way he always did, blinking at me with red-rimmed eyes and a face creased from the pillow. "Ivy, what the hell—"

"Read it." I held the cracked phone up in front of his face. My hand was steady. I was surprised by that. Inside I felt like something was curdling, some slow chemical reaction turning everything sour. But my hand was perfectly, terribly steady.

He squinted at the screen. Pushed it away. Ran a hand through his hair with that particular irritated roughness that I had once found endearing and now made my stomach turn.

"Oh for God's sake, Ivy." His voice was thick with sleep and contempt in equal measure. He reached for the blanket, dragging it back up toward his shoulder. "It's just content. Stop being so dramatic and let me sleep."

*Just content.*

I stared at the side of his face. The jaw I had kissed. The ear I had whispered into. The man I had co-signed a mortgage with eighteen months ago because he said we were building something together.

"Eight hundred thousand people read that you gag when you kiss me." My voice came out quieter than I intended. Almost calm. "Eight hundred thousand people, Liam."

"It's a bit. It's engagement bait." He turned onto his side, away from me. "The algorithm rewards authenticity. You know how this works."

"Authenticity." The word tasted like something