“Are you—” She stopped.
Silence stretched between them.
“Okay, you don’t want to tell me. I mean, I think you should, but whatever. Fine.” She laughed breathlessly. “But that really brings full circle something I’ve been hanging on to, and that is that he’s not someone I should be hung up on at all, is he? Right? You’d say that, wouldn’t you? I should move on.”
“Yes.” Evan’s throat was dry. He’d dumped a big thing on her, and she was handling it like a pro. But he still felt wrecked.
She moved closer again. This time, she wasn’t soft and kittenish. She was a cougar on the prowl. No, not a cougar. Fuck, his brain was like Swiss cheese. She was a lioness. That was better.
“What are you thinking?” she purred.
“Trying to figure out what kind of jungle cat you are,” he admitted.
Her eyes narrowed. “Whichever is the biggest, scariest jungle cat around. You can’t hurt me. He hurt me, but then he broke me, and now—well, now I’m pretty unbreakable. So do your worst, Evan. I think I’ll like it.”
“I’m not going to do my worst,” he growled. “Don’t take out your anger at him on me.”
“I don’t need to be coddled, or tucked into bed. What I need is to be fucked, and I don’t think you are the right guy for that, so I’ll walk you out now.”
This was not how Evan wanted the night to end. At all. But it was the price he had to pay for getting it all wrong. He stood. “I’m a phone call away if you need me. Any time, Jess.”
“I’ll be back in Wardham next week for our next meeting on the beach file,” she said, not looking at him. “If I have any questions about that before then, I’ll give you a shout.”
All business.
That’s what this should have always been. It had been a mistake to get personal. He’d made that mistake a hundred times before, so he shouldn’t be surprised at himself, but he was.
One day, he would grow the fuck up. Today was not that day.
He followed her to the front door.
“I wanted to kiss you goodnight,” he said. “When I said I wanted to tuck you in, I meant I wanted to make you feel good and leave you with sweet dreams.”
“I know,” she said softly. “And it was sweet. But I don’t need sweet. I don’t need men who hold back a part of themselves to give me only goodness. I want all or nothing. I want complications, you know? I want it all. And it’s okay that it’s not with Brent, that it’s not with you, but it’s not okay that it’s not on the table for me at all. I’m a big girl, Evan. I’ll be fine. Thank you for being my date tonight, I really appreciate it.”
She was fierce and beautiful, and for a split second, he thought about throwing all caution to the wind and pulling her into him, letting her push him up against the door and giving her everything she wanted.
If he were a different man, he’d bare all, and give her all the complicated mess she was looking for. But he wasn’t that kind of man. He’d tried and failed to be vulnerable in that way. Now he wielded honesty as a shield instead, and once you went down that road, there was no going back.
Evan gave every bit of himself to the world, so there was nothing left to share as a precious secret with a partner.
Instead of kissing her, he stepped out into the cold, crisp night.
He left, and he didn’t look back.
When he got to the hotel, he roamed his suite, drink in hand, and tortured himself with the question of whether or not she’d stood at the door and watched him as he made his way down the block to his car.
7
Her resolve to move on—from Brent, from Evan, from the whole mess—lasted exactly thirty-three hours. Monday morning, Jess woke upangry.
She wasn’t sure she had a right to be this pissed, but the therapist she’d seen briefly after Brent had left last year told her that anger served an important purpose, a warning flag that she’d been wronged somehow.
He had dodged her calls for a month. For a year before that. And now she found out from her date—from her God damned date, even if it was a faux-date-for-real—that maybe Brent had a secret reason for leaving her.
He liked men.
Fuck him for not telling her. There was nothing wrong with that desire.Nothing.But keeping it from her? Why couldn’t he tell her? Had she ever said something to make him think she wouldn’t understand?
