“Gill, please don't go there. I don't want to talk about it.”
“But I do. I want to explain things. I know you'll never be able to forgive me, but I feel like you should know what I was thinking and why.”
“That our life was too boring? That I wasn't enough? That you were bored, maybe? I mean, we were each other's first loves, first times. I always just assumed you needed more. The challenge of a new life, the thrill of a new girl, the excitement of sex with a stranger.”
“It was none of those things,” he snaps, running a hand through his raven dark hair. “I love you with a fierceness that scares me sometimes.” Love. Present tense. I suck in a deep breath. “It was never about the job or the sex or anything like that.”
“You're telling me you haven't had your fair share of girls over the years?” I ask, raising a brow and knowing the fourteen lovers I've had since he left—most of them one-night stands when I was trying to forget—have to be nothing compared to his count.
Gill's mouth twitches and I know that he finds my interest amusing. The bastard.
“Hate to disappoint you, Regina, but I've had less one-night stands than I have fingers on my right hand.”
“Fuck off,” I tell him, completely disbelieving that statement. What's the rule with guys? I thought when they told you about the number of people they've slept with, you're supposed to divide by two and subtract one. With women, it's multiply two and add one, right? Shit, I don't know. Screw gender stereotypes anyway. “You're telling me in ten years that you've slept with four people?”
“That's what I'm saying.”
I catch on to his word play and try to trick him into telling the truth.
“One-night stands. Okay. How many people have you dated?”
“Zero.”
“Bullshit,” I snap, my heart pounding and my hands getting all sweaty. Why is this conversation so exciting to me? I'm not a jealous person, and even if I was, I don't care what Gill's been doing. It's his body, his choice. “Four people. You're saying you've slept with five people your entire life?”
“That is exactly what I'm saying, Regina,” Gill tells me, his voice bubbling with amusement. “Why so shocked? Even if I had been looking, this job doesn't exactly allow for a lot of movement or mingling. I've spent weeks on the run, one step ahead of the authorities. I didn't have time for sex.” He pauses and his breath hitches a little, some of the amusement leaking away. “Besides, I've never given up the idea of you. Those one-night stands, I didn't even mean for those to happen. It was only when I was feeling hopeless, when I was certain I'd never get what I really wanted, that it happened at all.”
What I really wanted.
I swallow hard and tuck some hair back behind an ear, just so my shaking hands have something to do.
“Fourteen,” I tell him, watching as his face twists, heats with some of that raw anger and jealousy that I keep catching glimpses of. “I've had fourteen lovers. Four of them actual boyfriends. The rest were … they were nothing …” I say, wondering why Gill's pulling over on the side of the road, slipping into an empty parking lot and guiding the SUV into a space beneath a cluster of red alders. “What are you doing?”
He turns the ignition off and then leans over until his forehead is touching the steering wheel, hands resting on either side. At first, I think he's having a fit of some sort, like maybe I've set him off and that jealousy of his has morphed into something raging and terrible. And then I realize that he's laughing.
“What's so damn funny?” I ask, feeling suddenly warm in the closed in space of the SUV. The windows are already starting to fog up as I turn to Gill and cock my head to the side, studying him with no small amount of confusion. “Seriously, talk to me.”
“I have the strangest urge to track down and break the necks of each and every guy you've ever slept with.”
“That's funny to you?” I ask as Gill leans back and wrinkles his brow at me, those perfect lips twisted to the side in a bemused smile. He looks just like the Gill I always knew and loved right now, like we're sharing a private joke that nobody else is in on. “I think that qualifies more as dangerous stalking behavior than a joke.”
“Oh, like you wouldn't want to get your hands on the women I've slept with.”
“That's assuming I give a shit about who you sleep with. Gill, we were lovers once. We aren't anymore.”
“I think anyone presented with a recap of today's events might argue otherwise,” he purrs, low and deep, the sound making my chest tight with desire. Thank God I'm wearing the jumpsuit. Right here, right now, it'd be an incredible feat to get me out of it. Not that I want to. Because I don't. I don't.