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“No, I’ll talk about it.” He blinks a few times as if recalling the details. “Bottom line was I didn’t know how to love her.” Exhaling after he says the words, Colin looks unburdened from a secret he's been carrying.
I want to know more, but I feel so grateful for this nugget and I don’t want to take it for granted. “You were young.”
“You don’t have to defend me.”
“I’m not. I’m stating the obvious. Most of us are bad at relationships until we figure out what we want. Maybe you weren’t ready for love. Maybe you just wanted a girlfriend. And then a wife.”
He gives me a closed-lipped smile that feels hard-earned. “You didn’t even know me then, and you basically just hit it on the nose. You’re probably eighty percent correct.”
“So what happened?”
He shrugs and presses his lips together again. If I didn’t see evidence of that dimple trying to peek through, I’d worry that he really hates discussing this. Then again, he’s the one who brought it up.
“I thought I wanted a girlfriend. All through high school, when I was this tall, skinny nerd waiting for puberty to hit, all I wanted was for a girl to notice me. I know that’s kind of pathetic, but that’s how I felt.”
“It’s not pathetic. It’s what most of us want, especially in high school. First love and all that.”
“Yeah, except high school passed me by. No girlfriend. Not even a date. I was the lanky kid with acne and braces on my teeth until senior year. I told myself it was fine because I’d won a ten-thousand-dollar science fair grant and spent my prom night building a robot that could shoot baskets into my trash can.”
“That’s actually kind of adorable.” I reach for his hand and brush a finger across his knuckles.
He rolls his eyes. “Not the kind of adorable I wanted to be.”
“Understood.” I want to tell him he’s kind of adorable now recounting this story, but I’m afraid he might not finish if I keep interrupting him.
“By the time puberty really hit me my senior year, I’d given up on dating in high school, but I was ready to give it a go again in college. Your brother can tell you. I was kind of out of control as a freshman. Slept with anyone who’d have me, and surprisingly, there were many. Turned out that being a brainy kid who’d finally grown into his body appealed to the women of Stanford.”
Pressing my lips together to suppress a smile, I nod. I can imagine the women of Stanford lining up for Colin, who makes it sound like he was so wide-eyed and dumbfounded by his new hot face and body that he couldn’t understand his own appeal. I grip his hand a little tighter. I feel possessive, not wanting him to suddenly realize that any woman in the room would probably die if he asked her out. I want him for myself.
“Anyway, by the end of college, I’d met someone I liked, and not knowing any better, I proposed to her at the end of senior year. We got married at twenty-two, and it was pretty much a disaster from the get-go. I was getting my PhD and working all the time, trying to build my company, and I had venture capitalists who’d funded me to answer to. I owed them every waking hour, and I gave it to them. Big surprise, the marriage fell apart after five years. Frankly, I’m surprised we lasted as long as we did.”
I nod. I’ve read what little information exists about Colin Hathaway’s personal life, and he’s just told me twice as much as any Wikipedia article.
“Like I said, you were young.”
“Young and dumb. And then I learned my lesson. The demands of my company were too great. Two thousand people depend on me to write their paychecks every month, and billions of dollars in shareholder equity are on the line all the time. I have to satisfy them too. So I work my tail off.” He gets a faraway look on his face before inhaling a deep breath and shaking his head. “I do still love my job. I have to remind myself why I started this company and what we have the capacity to do.”
I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. “Well, hopefully, you can get back to that mindset. Everyone feels burnout sometimes.”
He nods. “Being here is helping. Just doing a lot of nothing. Normal things. I really appreciate your offer to show me around,” he says, and—oh shit—I promised to spend a day with him doing all the lowbrow, normal things he wants. How will I do that now when I can’t even look at him without breaking out in a sweat?
“You still want to do that?” I ask, half hoping he’ll change his mind and say he’s happy with his daily hikes.
“Even more than I did when we first talked about it. The past few days here showed me how much I need to chill the fuck out.”
Yeah, okay. That makes two of us.
Chapter
Ten
PJ
In the week since Colin arrived at Buttercup Hill, he’s chilled the fuck out.
It probably wouldn’t be obvious to the casual observer because he gets up each day at the crack of dawn and goes out for a grueling three-hour hike, followed by an egg white omelet at the café. Not exactly decadent living.
For the past couple of days, his breakfast has coincided with my latte, and we’ve gotten in a game of chess before I head to my office. I don’t want to admit how much I look forward to seeing him sitting at the table by the window each morning.
