“I don’t feel guilty,” he said. The realization had toyed with him, but saying it out loud did funny things to his heart. “I feel guilty about that, but I don’t feel guilty about the, um…”
“The sex?”
“Yeah.” Admitting that had happened shifted something inside of him. The strange feeling wasn’t so much that the confession made the sex real. It was that the sex made the relationship real. Not necessarily big, and certainly not forever, but definitely more than he’d bargained for when he’d asked her to the gala.
None of the horror Ethan felt was reflected in Liam. “She’s great, Ethan. Really great. Probably the last person I would have ever expected for you, but she’s right.”
“Right about what?” Ethan asked. Liam sounded suspiciously like he knew something, but Ethan had been with Rue until the last thirty minutes. There was no way he could know anything.
“She’s right for you,” Liam said.
Ethan sank into a chair. “No, she’s not. I don’t know what I want at this point, but I do know what she wants, and that’s to leave.”
“Estelle wanted to leave, too, and look what happened there.”
Ethan could only wish it was as easy for him as it was for Crosby and Estelle. “Estelle wanted to go home, and home just happened to be on the wrong coast. Rue wants to free dive off Antarctica, for heaven’s sake. I can’t sit here flipping through invoices knowing she’s out there like that.”
“Then go with her.”
“You’re hilarious. And not very helpful.”
Liam glared. “I called you and got you out of there, didn’t I? Besides, you don’t want help. You want to be told you’re right, that you should absolutely give up on her because that’s easier than figuring out how to love someone again.”
The words stung, even though Liam was wrong. “I am right, though. She doesn’t want ties, and I’m just so damned tired of saying good-bye.”
Liam leveled a hard look. “Then don’t.”
Something terribly close to defeat clawed through him. He really couldn’t win. “What do I do, then? Just turn my back and pretend she’s not leaving?”
Liam snorted. “Yeah, if that’s your way of getting around a good-bye, you go for it. Let me know how it works out for you.”
Ethan seriously needed a release valve or a punching bag. He needed an out. “You don’t get it. I’m going to have to let her go no matter what.”
“That’s my point. Go think about that, Ethan, for a good long time. Try to figure it out before her flight leaves.”
Chapter Twelve
When Ethan walked into his apartment that evening, he was stunned to find Rue on his sofa. And instead of that vivacious smile she always wore, she fronted a proverbial look that could kill, and it settled on him with razor-sharp accuracy.
“Everything go okay this afternoon?” he asked.
“Oh, it was great. Shaggy had a blast. We took a nice long walk, during which she mostly wallowed in the grass while I tried to figure out why a guy who gave me the most amazing sex of my life couldn’t look me in the eye after we got out of bed.”
He sank onto the sofa next to her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do this.”
“I beg to differ.”
A smile found his lips. “Well, that’s good to know.”
She spun on the sofa so she sat backwards, almost facing him, forcing him to look at her.
“You said you didn’t feel guilty,” she said, sounding less as if she wanted to kill him, “so what’s the problem?”
He looked at her, taking her in. Unsure of how he felt, or at least how to define it. He only knew that things would be a lot less complicated if she thought that house in Flatbush felt like home, but even that wouldn’t solve anything. The woman who was content on that parcel of land wouldn’t be the one who’d taken him in a hot air balloon. She wouldn’t be the one with whom he’d shared his bed. That woman wouldn’t be the one he couldn’t get out of his head. But instead of trying to explain all that, he simply said, “I’m not a fling kind of guy.”