“I’m pretending that’s a compliment.” I wasn’t sure what it was, to tell the truth.
“It actually might be.”
He’d said it easily, with no complaint in his tone, but the more I thought about it the more the comment unsettled me, made me question if he wanted me to be something different than I was with him.
I thought of Amber. She was practically the definition of entertaining. She was the one who could never sit still, who wanted to go out to the bars and sing karaoke at the top of her lungs. She was loud and boisterous and colorful, and while I’d always felt like I was too when I was with her, they were not attributes that had remained in my years without her.
Did Reeve wish I was more like her? I’d been focused on the sex, but did I need to be that for him to get him to open up to me?
It wasn’t something I knew how to blatantly ask.
I crossed my arms and leaned my torso on the counter. “Did you not want your other girlfriends to be entertaining?”
His brow knitted slightly in the middle of his broad forehead. “Usually I’m quite drawn to entertaining. But sometimes it can be exhausting.”
“What about your last girlfriend? Was she entertaining?”
“She was both entertaining and exhausting.”
“Is that why you’re not with her anymore?” I hadn’t even realized I was going to ask it before I did. And after I had, while I recognized that it had come purely from a place of insecurity, I hoped his answer would tell me things I needed to know.
He glanced up at me before turning to plate the toast. “It’s complicated.” When he turned back, he said, “And yes.”
I could relate to the exhausting as well. Amber had been so much of both and, in the end, it was a lot of the reason it had become impossible for us to stay friends. Though she’d been the one to suggest it, I was the one who had actually walked away. I was the one who’d abandoned her. I was the one who was always looking back.
For all the reasons I’d always told myself I’d left, maybe that was why I’d actually been able to do it. Because by that point, I’d been tired.
It was entirely possible that Reeve had a similar story. “Then did you break up with her? Or was it the other way around?”
Again, his answer came after a pause for thought. “Not sure anymore.”
I studied him, trying to interpret his answer. For the most part, what I’d seen of him had been stoicism and detachment. If he’d been the same with Amber, then maybe he could have cast her off without hesitation. He may have taken up with her for the fun, for the sex. She was certainly good at both. Then, maybe Joe was right. When it got to be more, when it got to be too much – an easy thing to imagine if Amber was still strung out and wild like she’d been the last time I’d seen her – did Reeve hand her over to his business partner? A man who sold such women to people who would pay a lot of money to break unbridled passion?
That was possible too.
But sometimes with Reeve, I’d seen sparks of something else that hinted at true emotion underneath his aloof exterior. It may have been in my head, a desperate need of my own to find humanity in the depraved way I allowed myself to be treated. Enjoyed being treated. But I sensed it now in his tone as well. In the way he’d said, “It’s complicated.” In the way he’d said, “Not sure anymore.” The words were laced with sadness. Regret.
Maybe that just meant he felt bad for what he’d done to her, but it echoed so much of my own remorse that I had the urge to say something consoling. “Maybe it was a mutual decision then. Best for both of you. Though, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to leave you.”
Once said, the words sounded honeyed and hollow rather than earnest, and I couldn’t blame Reeve when he treated them as such, cocking his head with incredulity. “What flattery, Ms. Wayborn. Are you trying for another present already? I’m surprised you’re not still worn out from earning the last one.”
No, I mean it. I can’t imagine ever wanting to leave you.
I also couldn’t imagine ever saying that to him outright. Because what if I found out that he really did hurt Amber? Wouldn’t I want to leave him then?
I would. Of course I would.
None of that thinking was relevant now, anyway. And until I found her, until I knew the truth, I couldn’t know what I really meant at all.
So I said, “I’m very happy with both the gifts I’ve been given and the methods you’ve chosen for repayment. That said, I’m quite a greedy woman. You’re feeding me – I’m sure that’s all I need to refuel.”
“Greedy woman, indeed. And yes, refuel.”
His grin, the subtle command, the promise in his subtext – they did things to me, made me want to move from investigation to flirtation. From flirtation to conjugation.
Amber, though.
I ran my thumb across an imperfection in the slate countertop and turned the conversation back to her. “Are you still friendly with her?”
Really, this was the question I should have asked a long time ago. Even Do you still see your exes? would have worked. I’d refrained from it because I hadn’t felt like Reeve would talk to me about his past. Not after the way he’d threatened me after digging around at his spa.
I also hadn’t asked because I’d known the answer wouldn’t be conclusive of anything. If he said no, would that mean it was because he couldn’t talk to her anymore? Or that it had ended badly enough that he didn’t want to? On the other hand, if he said yes, I wouldn’t very well be able to ask him to hook us up so I could know for sure. And how would I know it wasn’t a lie?