if it did mean something. “It’s a pretty name. I’m sorry, Rhiannon Claire Hunter. Truly.”
She bit her lip. “I understand being out of it because a loved one dies. You had no obligation toward me, we’d only slept together once.” She thought he was about to speak, so she lifted her hand. “That’s the truth of what happened.” Even if they had been silly about it, making plans for a second date. “So, um. Maybe you’re not evil. Thanks for explaining. I am sorry to hear about your uncle. I don’t follow sports, so I don’t know anything about him, but it sounds like you loved him an awful lot.”
His eyes flickered. “He was like a second father to me. I still can’t believe he’s gone.”
Something tightly knotted within her unraveled and she frowned, confused at the feeling. What . . . what was that? Her anger at him dampening? Her anger at herself, for feeling fooled, unknotting? Was this what . . . closure felt like? This light buoyancy?
She didn’t know. The last time she’d gotten burned by a man, it had been on a much more enormous scale than this, and she’d walked away in too many pieces to even risk getting near him again for anything as silly as closure. “I don’t want to get together with you again,” she added, for both their sakes. “But I . . . I believe that you had something tragic and unexpected happen to you, and it may have affected your state of mind and prevented you from seeing me again.”
He nodded slowly. “Thank you for hearing me out.”
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the birds chirping in the spring air. Rhiannon let the curve of her back touch the bench, though she didn’t relax into it. Now what? What did one do when someone behaved badly and gave you a reasonable explanation for what motivated their bad behavior and apologized?
It was so much easier to write people off. Much harder to navigate the gray areas of interpersonal relationships.
A gentle brush came against her pinkie. She looked down to find his hand not far from hers. The giant Super Bowl ring decorating his finger winked up at her. “I didn’t know you were a famous football player.”
“I didn’t know you were a famous entrepreneur.” His big shoulders moved. “You could have found information about me, if you wanted to. You own the app. You have my data.”
“I have everyone’s data.”
He eyed her. “How much data?”
She almost patted his hand but thought better of it. “Best you not know.” Best no one knew. She wasn’t evil. That data was safe in her hands. Ignorance was bliss. “And yeah, I could have easily found you, but I thought you were a dick.” Even then, she’d wanted to track him down, but had resisted.
His smile was faint. He tilted his head up to the sun. “I hope you don’t think I’m a dick now.”
She didn’t think he was. So hard not to write people off. “I don’t want to think I slept with some bad boy football jock. My instincts about this sort of thing are usually good. I don’t do assholes.”
“You must have felt like you couldn’t trust your instincts when I ghosted you. I’m sorry for that too.”
She jerked one shoulder up, another knot in her belly dissolving. Her confidence in herself had been rattled. For other women, agreeing to a second date was probably nothing. For her, it had been a huge concession.
Instincts were all a person had in this world where anybody could be out to hurt you. Her gut was her only defense. She had to have confidence in it.
“You won’t find any stories about that kind of bad behavior from me. No string of pissed ex-lovers, no arrests, no complaints. You can google me, if you want.” His head dipped. “You might find other stories, but not those.”
“Then I won’t google you.”
“Should I google you?”
“No,” she said flatly, though she wasn’t sure why. She shouldn’t care if he found some dude screaming about her on YouTube and repeating rumors from four years ago, but she did.
“Fine. A mutual no-googling pact.” He shifted and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He grimaced. “It’s Tina. They need to start getting me micced soon.”
Ah, shit. Rhiannon straightened. All this time, and they hadn’t even gotten to business yet. “Look, the apology is nice and all, but I didn’t actually come here only for that. I want