The Cost of Staying: A Reverse Harem Age Gap Romance

$42.85 per button.

That's how much the dress cost, divided by seven buttons, and yes—I did the math in the back of a hired car on my way to dinner with four men whose combined net worth could buy the hospital where my mother is dying.

The arrangement was supposed to be clinical. One contract. Four founding partners of Meridian Capital. Shared dinners, shared time, shared expenses. I'd pay for my mother's surgery. They'd get a companion who could discuss Fed policy over $400-a-plate foam.

I had a spreadsheet. Color-coded columns. Risk ratings for each of them on a scale of one to ten.

Richard Hale scored an 8.7. I changed his number three times in one night.

Then my mother recovered. The debt disappeared. I wrote four termination letters—clean, professional, done—and every single one came back refused.

Not because they were paying for me.

Because somewhere between the gallery after-hours and the too-small bed and the thesis I defended while they sat in the back row, the transaction stopped being a transaction.

And the column I left blank in my spreadsheet—the one I labeled COST (NON-MONETARY) and never filled in—

That's the one that's going to break me.

A why choose age-gap romance. Four older men. One heroine who's smarter than all of them. Scorching heat. HFN with series continuation. All characters 18+.

She counted everything. Until she couldn't.