Hillbilly Girlie Marries a Billionaire – Episode 02
The city outside had vanished behind a curtain of rain by the time Kevin and Rose reached the lobby doors. Emily remained rooted beside her suitcase, staring at their linked arms. Kevin had once held her hand that way while promising that distance would never change them. Now he looked at her as though she were a debt collector who had slipped past security.
Emily forced herself forward. “Kevin, I’ve been calling you.” Her voice sounded too small in the vast lobby, so she steadied it and asked Rose to give them a moment. Rose’s brows rose with amused disbelief. Kevin did not release her arm; instead, he drew her closer, making his answer clear before he spoke.
He demanded to know why Emily had come to his workplace dressed like that. The contempt in his gaze traveled from her damp hem to her battered suitcase. Emily had imagined tears, apologies, even an explanation she might struggle to forgive. Shame on his behalf had never entered the picture, and it cut more deeply than anger.
“I’m your girlfriend,” she said, clinging to the one fact she believed could not be rewritten. Kevin laughed under his breath. Rose joined him, not because anything was funny, but because laughter made humiliation look effortless. Around them, workers slowed beneath umbrellas, sensing the spectacle forming near the entrance.
Kevin said Emily had misunderstood whatever childish promises they once made. The city had changed him, he claimed, by showing him the sort of woman suited to his future. His gaze moved to Rose with practiced admiration. Beautiful, educated, connected—Rose possessed everything Emily’s quiet hometown could never offer him.
Emily felt each word strike, yet hurt slowly hardened into clarity. Five years earlier, Kevin had possessed little more than ambition. She had taken extra shifts, sold family livestock, and postponed her own plans so he could attend college. Apparently, the future she purchased for him had taught him to despise the person who paid for it.
She asked him directly whether he had been seeing Rose while still writing love messages to her. Kevin dismissed the question with a shrug, as though fidelity were another rural custom he had outgrown. Rose smiled and informed Emily that a man could hardly be blamed for improving his circumstances when a better opportunity appeared.
The rain hammered the awning above them. Emily’s throat burned, but she refused to cry in front of either of them. “Then repay me,” she said. “Every tuition payment, every month of rent, every bill I covered while you promised we were building a life. If our relationship meant nothing, the debt still does.”
Kevin’s expression tightened. For the first time, the crowd’s attention bothered him. He claimed the money had been gifts and that Emily had no proof he owed her anything. She reminded him of his messages promising repayment once he found work. His eyes flickered, confirming that he remembered every word.
Rose opened her designer handbag before Kevin could answer. She withdrew a thick bundle of cash and tapped it against her palm. “Is this what you came for?” she asked. Emily recognized the trap in her smile, but desperation made walking away impossible. Her mother’s hospital had called twice during the bus ride.
“I came for what he owes,” Emily replied. “Not charity from you.” Rose stepped beneath the edge of the awning and peeled several bills from the stack. The wind snatched at them. She could have handed the money over, but cruelty was the performance she had chosen, and the gathering onlookers were her audience.
Rose tossed the entire bundle into the storm. Bills scattered across the sidewalk, plastering themselves to gutters and spinning through muddy runoff. “There’s your money,” she said. “Pick it up before it washes away.” Kevin’s mouth curved in a reluctant smirk, and that tiny expression destroyed the last excuse Emily had made for him.
She stared at the cash soaking in the street. It could purchase medicine, another night in the hospital, perhaps enough time for her mother to recover. Rose knew nothing about that. To her, the money was merely a weapon, and Emily’s need made the blade sharper.
Emily stepped into the rain. Water drenched her within seconds, turning her dress heavy against her skin. Behind her, Rose advised her to hurry, while several bystanders lifted phones. Emily bent toward a bill, then stopped with her fingers inches from the filthy pavement.
If she collected it, Rose would believe she had purchased the right to degrade her. If she left it, her pride would be of little use beside her mother’s hospital bed. The choice tore at Emily until she remembered her mother teaching her that honest work carried no shame. The shame belonged to those who enjoyed another person’s suffering.
She gathered the first bill and rose to face them. “You can throw money on the ground,” she said, “but that doesn’t put you above me.” Rose’s smile thinned. Emily collected another note, not bowing to Rose, but reclaiming something Kevin had taken from her through years of deceit.
Kevin told her to stop causing a scene. The absurdity almost made Emily laugh. He had betrayed her, denied his debt, and watched his lover scatter money through a gutter, yet he feared her voice might embarrass him. Emily called him exactly what he had become—a coward who mistook dependence on Rose for success.
Rose’s face sharpened. She hooked her arm through Kevin’s and warned Emily that people like her did not survive long in the city. Kevin said nothing in Emily’s defense. That silence, more than any insult, confirmed that the boy she loved no longer existed—or perhaps had never existed at all.
They turned toward the waiting car. Emily looked down at the money left dissolving around her shoes, then at the homemade corn crushed near the lobby doors. The gift suddenly seemed like evidence from another life, one in which devotion was rewarded and promises mattered.
As Kevin opened the car door for Rose, Emily called after him one final time. He glanced back, irritated, and she told him her mother was dying and the hospital bills were due. For a heartbeat she waited for humanity to return to his face. Instead, Kevin’s eyes went flat—and the answer forming on his lips was crueler than anything Rose had done.