Page 106 of A Matter of Time

“Do what someday?”

“Tell your family you’re bi.”

“Why would I do that?”

The warning light went off in my head, but I ignored it and plowed on. “Because when I’m still around in, like, two, three years, they’re gonna start to get suspicious.”

He chuckled. “Who says you will be?”

I went to move my hand, but he covered it with his, holding it in place, his fingers sliding between mine.

“Don’t get all defensive, just hear me out. I’m a cop, for starters. If I’m bi, I might as well quit right now. It’s not even possible for any of the guys I know to ever get past it. And my folks, my family—are you kidding? There’s no way. Did you see how excited my mom got when Nora came over? She wants me married with kids, not screwing around with you.”

“So that’s it. Just like I said before.” I yanked free of his grip and plastered myself against my door. “Once the case is over, I’m outta your house and your life.”

“Well, yeah…what’d you think?”

I had thought all kinds of ridiculous things. I had been thinking forever because I had fallen for him so hard, so fast. I was ready to wrap my life around his.

“J?”

I could stick around and try to win him over, try to make him love me so much that he could never let me go. He would get a new and better job, his parents would completely change their perspective and want me for their son, and all his friends would be crazy about me. We would live happily ever after. As soon as I thought it, I realized how insane it was. I was the idiot, not him. He couldn’t change; I was the only one who could.

“Hey,” he said softly, and I looked at him. “You weren’t thinking I was gonna⁠—”

“No.” I cleared my throat, looking at the dashboard through swimming eyes. “I was just being stupid.”

“’Cause I never told you this was gonna be a forever thing, J.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I want to have kids. I want exactly what my folks have. I just gotta find the right girl.”

A girl with a dick, I thought, but I didn’t say it. “Sure.”

He laughed at me. “But you don’t care. You’re not serious here either. I’ve seen your phone—there are more guys calling than my sisters ever had all put together.”

“Right.”

“You just wanna have fun.”

“Sure.”

“Like I said, though—while you’re in my house, I’m the only one, you understand?”

I heard him loud and clear.

When the experiment was over, I would go on my way and he would go back to sleeping with women, auditioning the mother of his children. I was an interlude, an intermission—all the I words applied here. Even if I made myself seemingly indispensable, even if I thought he couldn’t live without me—in the end he would because it wasn’t what he wanted. His heart was not connected to his dick. He could sleep with me from now until he died and still not love me because he wasn’t wired that way. Men loved women, not other men. This was a truth like any other for him. Rain fell, the sun shone, men loved women. Period. I was wasting my time thinking it could ever be anything more…

His phone rang and he was on it all the way to the grocery store, so he let me go in alone. I didn’t even care, I just got what we needed and came out. He told me how sorry he was but he had to go to work. There were some things he had to do, no way out of it. He’d drop me at home and be back as soon as he could.

“I’ll put you up against the wall when I get home, J.” He smiled at me, his hand on my throat.

And I shivered because it was suddenly just sex with nothing attached. I felt hollow inside, and I watched the SUV for as long as I could as he drove away, letting it get smaller and smaller until he turned the corner and disappeared. When I was ready, I took a deep breath and went upstairs to pack. I called my boss on the way.

THIRTEEN

Ayear ago, when my boss had to drop me at my place one night, I had invited him in. He’d walked around my apartment, and in the minute and a half it took him, he had nodded several times. When he was done, he’d faced me and asked when I wanted to move out. I had frowned at him as he explained that he owned a place downtown near Rush Street, very small at five hundred square feet, in an old brick building with all original molding.