Page 67 of Billionaire Hunt

“Because it’s not fair! This is not fair to me. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t decide that one day you want to treat me like your girlfriend and the next just your friend with benefits, and then the next day just your bestie. Do you know how screwed up that is? Do you know how much you hurt me?”

“That’s not what I was trying to do. Like I said, I just wanted to say thank you---” He turned and looked at everything. “But I can see how you might get confused--”

I stood up then. “I’m not the confused one. You are. I know what I want. But apparently, you’re still trying to figure it all out.”

“I told you already...I was just trying to be nice.”

“By creating a romantic getaway on the beach, by getting my adrenaline going by taking me on a motorcycle ride where I spent at least 30 minutes pressed up against you? You need to make up your mind, Erik.”

He shook his head and stood up. “You already know how I feel...”

“Really? Care to tell me?”

“We’re friends...I thought once you got out of the hospital, we had agreed---”

“Friends don’t take each other on romantic private getaways.”

“Okay, maybe I do...maybe I do want to be more than friends,” he finally confessed. “I do want things to go back to the way they were before. But what’s so bad about that?”

“When we were screwing around with each other with no strings attached? That’s what you want to see happen again?”

“You make it sound dirty...you know it was more than that.”

“Was there really more than that? Honestly, was there, Erik?”

He looked frustrated as he said, “I cared for you then...I still do now.” He reached up to touch my face and I pulled away. He sighed. “Just because I refuse to give our relationship a label doesn’t mean it isn’t important to me. You’re important to me.”

“I’m important to you? You care about me? And yet you can’t tell me that you love me?”

He turned away from me then and stared at the water. He didn’t say a word. He was deep in thought. And as I stood there with him, I realized that he was tuning me out...lost in his own thoughts. I might as well have been alone, I thought sadly.

And with that revelation, there was only one thing left to say. “Take me home.”