Brett counted the three dollars and forty-seven cents on his kitchen table like it was a fortune.

It wasn't. It was gas money or it was ramen, not both. The radiator in his studio above the laundromat in Kalispell hissed and clanked, and the February light fell thin across his short blonde hair. He was twenty-one, five foot eight, a hundred and seventy-five pounds of gym-built muscle he couldn't afford to feed anymore. People had always told him he had his mother's face. Big blue eyes that looked too soft for the rest of him, full lips, a nose a little smaller than average. It made him pretty when he smiled, which he hadn't done in a while.

His phone buzzed. Lance.

Lance didn't text like normal people. He called, he showed up, he filled a room. Six foot two, two hundred and twenty pounds, shoulders built from rowing crew at the private school his father bought a building for. He could have been a model if he hadn't been born a billionaire's son.

Brett answered with his shoulder while he folded the same flannel he'd worn to three interviews that week.

"You alive?" Lance's voice was too bright.

"Define alive."

"I'm picking you up. The usual. Ten minutes."

The usual was O'Malley's, the dive with the sticky floors where Lance could drink a beer without someone asking for an investment.

Lance was already in the booth when Brett slid in, smelling like cheap laundry detergent and defeat. Lance had loosened his tie. He worked for his father's company because he had to, not because he wanted to. He was trying so hard to prove he could make it without the name on the building, and failing quietly in a corner office with a view.

He stared at Brett for a long time, not drinking.

"My dad gave me the ultimatum today," he said finally.

Brett knew the speech by heart. Mr. Caldwell wanted an heir, not a playboy. He wanted grandchildren, legacy, photos for the annual report. Marry in one year or you are cut off. No trust, no shares, no safety net.

"You'll be fine," Brett said. "You get girls by breathing."

Lance laughed, but it was hollow. "Yeah. I get girls. I get the ones who ask what kind of car I drive before they ask my middle name. I get the ones who google my net worth in the bathroom. I get everything except someone who looks at me and doesn't see a wallet."

He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, and his eyes went strange and soft.

"Do you know what I said to my dad? I told him I wish you were a girl."

Brett choked on his beer.

"I'm serious," Lance said. "You're the only person I've ever had who didn't want something. You let me crash on your couch when my dad cut my card that summer. You punched that guy at the lake for me in tenth grade and you didn't even ask why. You are literally the only friend I've ever had who didn't use me for money. And I sat there thinking, God, I need to find a girl like you. A girl version of you."

Brett stared at him, his big blue eyes wide. His heart was doing something stupid and fast in his chest, because Lance never talked like that. Lance talked in jokes and bets and dares.

"You're drunk," Brett said.

"I'm not. Not yet."

They didn't talk about it again that night.…