I’ll tell you if you want to hear. And I’ll explain why I know that, if you want to move on and have any sort of life, trusting someone else is not only fucking hard but vital.”
Masey doesn’t answer me, just lifts one shoulder in a half shrug.
“I’m not going to push it on you. Tell you what? You decide if you want to hear it, and I’ll go take a shower. When I come out—”
“Fine. Tell me.”
“Will you really listen?”
“Yeah.”
With a nod, I release her. Time to gather my balls. If I tell her and she doesn’t care, it will fucking hurt.
But then you’ll know you’re way more into her than she’s into you.
I can’t argue with that.
I draw in a deep breath and prepare to slice open my soul.
Chapter Ten
“About four years ago, a woman hired me to do a private, two-week sailing for her and her boyfriend. She wanted to go from Maui, around all the islands, with stops at a different island each day, then a stay at a new resort town each night. On the morning the couple was scheduled to arrive, only she—I refuse to say her name—showed up.”
“You won’t say her name? What is she, Voldemort?”
I try not to crack a smile. “Close. It’s a good comparison. Anyway, when she appeared that morning, she was all runny nose and tears. She said her boyfriend had walked out on her without warning. They’d been drifting apart, and she’d hoped this getaway would bring them back together. But since he was gone, she intended to use the trip—which she’d already paid for—to ‘soul search’ and figure out where to take her life next.”
“That’s not what happened?”
“Not even close. Her first night on the boat, she told me her poor-little-rich-girl story. She claimed the man she loved left her because he was intimidated by the money she’d been born to and the ills of their relationship were all because he was intent on keeping up and couldn’t. By the end of the first night, she cried in my arms until she fell asleep. I felt sorry for her.”
“That wasn’t all you felt. Don’t tell me; let me guess. Hot blonde?”
“Yep. I won’t deny it. And I’ll spare you the gory details, but over the next couple of days, we fell into bed.” And we hardly got back out, but no reason to rub that in Masey’s face. “Toward the end of our two weeks, she said her head was so much clearer, her heart had direction, and she knew exactly where she belonged. Since she was nuzzling my face and smiling at me as she said it, I assumed I fit somewhere in that future. I thought I was in love with her. On our last stop, in Honolulu, I told her I had to run an errand. I spent every fucking dime I’d saved—for a down payment on a new boat so I could expand my business—on an engagement ring. I proposed that night.”
Masey’s blue eyes go wide. “Oh, my god. And she turned you down?”
“Not right away. She said she wanted to think about it overnight, because we’d never been together in the real world and all that. But when we docked in Maui, her pissed-off boyfriend was waiting. She was wearing my ring, and he was furious. They started screaming at each other, and it became really clear that she’d used me in an elaborate scheme to make her billionaire boyfriend—yeah, she lied about him being poor—jealous so he would finally propose to her. Lo and behold, he did. And she accepted—with me standing right there. Then she tossed me a few dismissive words about the fact I’m a ‘nobody,’ so of course she couldn’t marry me, but thanks for the orgasms because I was great in bed. Then she took off with her billionaire fiancé and left me standing with a fortune in engagement ring all by myself. So you’re not the only one who’s suffered, honey.”
She presses a hand over her shocked mouth and stares. I’m not sure what reaction I expected, platitudes? Questions? The brush-off?
In a million years, I never dared to hope that she would throw her arms around me and press herself against my sweat-laden body with such visceral understanding in her touch. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how horrible that must have been…”
I should have guessed Masey would respond with compassion.
I slide my arms around her and melt against her small frame. Funny, after only a