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She studies me and doesn't let it go. "Why did you leave after you got there?"

I tighten my hold on her.

"I saw the painting."

Something flickers across her face. Not guilt. Just the raw awareness of being caught in something she hadn't meant to show me.

"What about it?"

As I reach the edge of the pool, I lift her and sit her on the cement edge, her legs still around my waist, her hands resting on my shoulders with the space now between us.

"That's how you see me," I tell her.

She looks away for one beat, then back. "I didn't mean to paint you."

"But you did."

"Yes." Her voice drops. "I did."

"Why?"

She wets her lips. "I don't know."

"Don't lie to me. Not right now."

"I'm not lying." Her fingers tighten on my shoulders. "I was painting and it just... happened."

"You titled it as The Lonely Billionaire. You think I’m lonely."

Her expression softens, but only slightly. "Because you are."

I laugh once, low and humorless. "You know enough about me to decide that?"

"Yes." Her answer comes faster now, stronger. "I do."

She keeps going. Maybe because now that we’re eye to eye and I no longer have the height difference, she’s become brave.

"You stand behind those glass doors and think that because I can see you, you're there. You're not. You watch me. You leave food. You make coffee. You do all these small, careful things and then pull away the second they might mean something."

My hand spreads wider over her back.

Her breath catches.

"You don't get to be jealous and absent at the same time," she says.

That line goes straight through me.

Because it's true.

Because I have wanted her and withheld myself as if that counted as discipline instead of fear.

Because she sees that too.

I back her into the pool wall.

Her spine meets stone. Her hands slide higher on my shoulders.

"He touched you," I say again, because apparently I'm not done being petty.