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“Last night was good, great—this was better.”
He scoffed. “You do remember.”
“So do you.”
He closed his eyes as though he didn’t like being caught out. “I remember something else. Someone hit you.”
She groaned. That had slipped out, alcohol and the danger of the man, the fear of what she might do when she no longer cared to hold back. Her instinct was to roll away, but she wanted him to know she wasn’t a victim looking for sympathy or a white knight to chase the dragons away. “I was hoping you’d forget that, or think it was...”
“A game. You really thought I’d think that?”
“You didn’t think that? Last night, that’s all we were, a game.” But now, now what were they, what could they be? What did she have time for them to be?
“For maybe two seconds I thought that. Until I looked in your eyes. Someone has hurt you.”
“It was a long time ago.”
He came up on one elbow, hand to the side of his head. “Distance doesn’t heal everything. Last night I tried to be easy with you.”
“But not then.”
He shook his head, looked away. “I forgot myself.”
“I’m glad.”
“Not if I scared you.”
“You didn’t.”
He turned his head and looked down at her. “But someone did.”
He wasn’t going to let it go. She rolled to mirror his pose. “Last night I was pissed off and drunk, a little scared, and being deliberately reckless, hitting on you like I did. I didn’t think you’d care what I said. And I did trust you. Not in a he won’t take naked pictures of me and post them all over the internet way.”
“What? You thought—”
She put her hand over his mouth. “But in a this guy isn’t going to hurt me physically way.”
He shook free of her hand. “You couldn’t have known that.”
“You told me you weren’t dangerous.”
“Cinta.”
He was chastising her. No one called her that. Her mother
and Malcolm had insisted on her full name. She was Jacinta at work. At school she’d been Jac, and she was Jac to Bryan, and Jay called her Cin, but Cinta was a new one. She liked it and felt vaguely silly for it. “You weren’t lying. You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“But some other guy did. For all you knew, I was that guy.”
Before her one night stand turned himself inside out over a comment she’d never meant to make, she had to put him out of his misery. “You think I randomly hit on you, that you were just there—right place, right time?”
“I think.” He frowned and resolved whatever he’d been about to say with, “Yeah.”
“I was reckless, but not dumb. I knew who you were. I’ve been watching you.”
He sat up, hauled the sheet over his lap and crossed his legs. “Watching me.”
Was he creeped out? She’d made it sound stalkerish. She sat too, but didn’t bother covering herself. There was nothing about her body he hadn’t seen, touched, excited. She needed to explain that she’d chosen him in a calculated way from watching him work, seeing him interact with others.
