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“We’re totally wrong for each other, aren’t we?” I say.
“Wholly and categorically.” He stares at me with those bluer-than-blue eyes, with his sexy half-smirk. “We want opposite things.”
“Do we? Because it sounds like we actually want the same thing, we’re simply going about it in different ways. I run from commitment to avoid getting hurt and you set the bar of commitment so high that nobody will ever meet your standards.” I cock my head. “End result is the same, though—we’re both alone.”
And miserable.
I won’t admit that aloud, but it’s true. I’m sick of living a meaningless life without real relationships—romantic or platonic. It’s so bloody lonely. But I’m afraid to let another person change me, to convince me to want more.
I won’t let myself be vulnerable to that kind of rejection. Because what if I change, what if I become someone new, and I’mstillnot enough?
CHAPTER TWENTY
Flynn
EVERYBRAINCELLI have is firmly telling me to walk away from Drew—she’s the highest kind of flight risk. A nomadic wild child who lives by her own rules and doesn’t let obligation ground her. If anyone is going to walk away when things get tough, it’ll be her.
You’re underestimating her.
That niggling voice is getting louder—telling me that I’m holding myself back from something important. I keep reasoning that it’s chemistry. Sexual tension. Good old-fashioned sheet-burning compatibility. Our bodies are well suited...but our minds?
You want more with her.
I do. I want to explore this unexpected thing and see where it goes. And I am not a man who explores. I decide. I act. And other people fall into line.
But not her.
“You think I have high standards?” I watch her expression—it’s guarded. But I’m slowly learning her tells.
“Impossible standards,” she corrects. “I picked that up about you the moment we met.”
It feels like years ago the night I went into her apartment, accepting a drink and declining her invitation for more. Then she wore me down and I loved every second of it. “You said my employees hated me.”
“I said they left.” She narrows her eyes. “But I didn’t guess that you’d expect them to leave.”
Francis accused me once of putting people through their paces too hard when I first hire them. It’s true, I guess. I expect a lot and I want to see if people are going to fold easily, because I refuse to waste my time on people who don’t have tenacity and drive.
Drew hasn’t folded.
She’s incredibly strong—and I don’t mean the tough chick attitude and provocative outfits. She’s strong where it counts. Inside.
“When was the last time you dated someone?” she asks.
I opt for the comfortable territory of smartassery. “Does this count?”
“No.” She rolls her eyes.
“Why not? We’re having sex and arguing—sounds like a relationship to me.”
“You’re dodging the question.” Drew folds her arms over the front of her obscenely tight top, pushing her breasts up higher. It’s all I can do not to weep for how perfect they are.
“I’m distracted.”
She shoots me a look. Dammit, I’m not getting out of this one.
“Two years ago, around the time Zoe was diagnosed.”
I’d decided in my spiral of guilt and pain that I would do things “perfectly,” as if it might bring some karmic redemption. I’d quit my job not a month after making partner, dumped the woman I’d been seeing, started my company and poured everything into my work, hoping—praying—that I might be able to salvage things.
