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“I would have said everyone does.”
“No, not everyone.”
“Okay, tell me this,” she proposed, pulling away from him a little, so she could see him better – and think better as well. “The night I told you about Thom you said you were even less likely to want a relationship than me. Why?”
She felt him still. Nothing in his expression changed, it was a more subtle difference than that, but she was aware of it nonetheless. “It’s just the way I am.”
“No, that’s not a good enough answer.”
“I’m sorry, it’s the only answer I have.”
She mulled that over. “You know what I see in my line of work?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Connection. The importance of connection, and the innate need we have to reach out and connect. I understand my reasons for avoiding relationships, but not yours. You think you don’t make mistakes? Or won’t have regrets? Well, I think that’s a big one.”
“I love my life. I like being single. It’s not so much as a choice not to be in a relationship as it is to enjoy being carefree. I travel, all the time. As you pointed out today, I indulge a penchant for adrenalin sports. Present circumstances excluded – Yaya’s stroke has changed things – I work incredibly long days. I’m talking eighteen hours at my desk much of the time. How does a relationship fit into that?”
“So you do want a relationship, you just don’t know how to juggle it?”
“If I wanted to be with someone, I’d make it work. But I don’t. I’m happy with the way things are.” He laced his fingers through hers, pulling her closer to him, staring down into her eyes. “I like meeting beautiful women and getting to know them. I like having the freedom to sleep with someone I’m interested in for as long as that interest lasts, then move on with no hurt feelings when it burns out – which, in my experience – it always does. I like knowing that I’m not making commitments to anyone. I can’t see anything in my choices that I could ever regret.”
It was all so reasoned. Her stomach felt strangely unsteady. She nodded jerkily and turned to study the waves once more.
“You’re frowning.”
“It just seems like kind of a waste.”
“Oh?”
“I think you have a lot to give. I think you’d be an incredible partner.”
Where had that come from? But she didn’t stop.
“Being single is lonely,” she whispered, her heart heavy suddenly as the reality of that doused her like a bucket of water.
“The way you’re single is lonely,” he corrected gently. “Until me, you’d lived utterly alone. You travel for work, meaning you don’t forge any lasting connections. And I’ll bet that you represent a time in most people’s lives they’d want to forget so that even if you did grow close to someone while you were working with them, they’d probably choose not to have you in their life afterwards.” Again, his perceptiveness surprised her. “I’m not alone, and I’m not l
onely. I have my family, friends, and I date as much as I want.”
She knew why her stomach lurched this time. His use of the word ‘date’ was so obviously a euphemism for ‘sleep with’. She had no doubt he had sex with total abandon. A wave of nausea flooded her. She didn’t want to contemplate that, and felt even more reticent to analyse her strong emotional response.
“What I avoid doing is making promises I have no interest in keeping. I like to move on when it suits me. That’s why I can safely say to you, Lauren Monroe, that I have no interest in relationships.”
She was quiet, wondering at the sense that she’d swallowed a tonne of rubble.
“It’s why I could promise you earlier tonight that this will all be okay. You need this, Lauren. You need me.”
It wasn’t arrogance. He was right.
“You need to remember what it’s like to feel the strength of intimate, human connection. You need to remember what it’s like to have someone you can talk to who’s not grieving and depending on you to make everything okay. You need to remember what it’s like to be kissed beneath the moonlight and to swim naked in the waves,” he prompted, looking towards the ocean so her pulse became thready and her heart stammered.
His words were wrapping around her, binding her in a way she didn’t understand.
“And when it’s time for me to leave, you won’t try to see me again,” she murmured, wondering why her chest was hollowed out with the delivery of the words. Wondering even more so why she held her breath waiting for his response.
“Promise,” his grin showed he didn’t have any of the emotional ambivalence that was forming like a localised tornado in the pit of her stomach.
“Swim with me now,” he said, his hands finding the hem of the t-shirt she wore – her clothes had been too wet from the sprinklers so she’d thrown on shorts and a shirt of his when they’d arrived – both were far too big. He removed them easily and she allowed that, lifting her arms when needed, standing still as his hands gently eased the shorts down her legs then stepping out of them.
“I’ve never done this before.”
