‘I’m not your ex,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s natural that you would conflate us in your mind, but I am not him. I was not intending to do the wrong thing by you. I was not intending to use you. I certainly didn’t intend to lie to you.’
She bit into her lip. All that was true, but he’d still hurt her in the same way Christopher had. She’d still felt betrayed by his request. Offended, angry, hurt, hollowed out. Devalued and cheap.
‘I thought that by laying my cards on the table, there would be no room for problems. I wanted to keep seeing you, but not to risk leading you on. Our chemistry is something that would be easy to mistake for…more. I didn’t want to risk that in spending time together you might mistake our physical relationship for something like love. It happens, you know?’
She tilted her face away from him, staring out to sea, suddenly wishing she were far, far away from him and here, that she were out on the ocean, floating on her back in the shape of a star, limbs spread wide. Even there though, she suspected this feeling would follow her. She wasn’t sure where she could go that would leave her safe.
‘Has it happened to you?’ She wasn’t really interested, but she felt she needed to say something to buy some time. To enable herself to recover some equilibrium and seem something like normal.
‘I’m always careful.’
Always. She turned to face him then, scanning his features. ‘It can’t have been easy for you to date.’
‘No,’ he agreed.
‘You have lived your whole life in the spotlight.’
He dipped his head in agreement.
‘So how did you do it?’
‘The same way I did with you.’
Something panged in her chest. None of this was new for him. It was all the same.
‘By being honest, ensuring discretion.’
‘How did you know you could trust me?’ she asked, pressing her chin into her palm, elbow resting on the tabletop.
His lips tugged downwards. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I mean, I was working as a cleaner and selling sordid details of our night together could have earned me a lot of money…’
‘I know.’
‘So, wasn’t that a risk for you to take?’
‘I wasn’t myself that night.’
‘So ordinarily, you wouldn’t have approached me?’
The silence stretched between them. She didn’t know why it mattered so much. She was trying to get to grips with her own feelings but delving into his wasn’t helping.
‘I’d like to say no, but in all sincerity, there was something about you. I’d noticed you, even before I spoke to you.’
Phoebe’s heart trembled dangerously. ‘What had you noticed about me?’
‘Your grace.’ For some reason, she loved that he’d said something beyond the mere physical. It wasn’t her hair or her eyes, but an expression of who she was. ‘You walk as though you are listening to classical music. You walk as though you are dancing in your mind. I find it mesmerising.’
Her stomach swooped.
‘I didn’t realise.’
‘I cannot be the first person to point that out to you?’
A memory hovered on the periphery of her mind. A warm memory, that made her smile. ‘My mother actually used to say that, too.’
‘Did she?’
