tend to disappoint prospective partners, and I’m too busy to deal with someone else’s disappointment or the punishment that comes along with it. So I avoid the dynamic altogether.”
Zaf frowned. “But that’s . . .”
She arched an eyebrow.
“That’s not how relationships should be,” he finished, thrown a little off-balance. She’d said those words with such flat, empty hopelessness, as if this was a lesson she’d learned the hard way. As if it was a simple fact that love would ask too much of her, and so she wouldn’t or couldn’t try. He wasn’t sure if the look in her eyes was weariness or an echo of something sharper, harsher. Either way, he didn’t like it.
“I know,” she told him slowly, as if explaining something to a child. “I don’t do things right, and I don’t think I want to. It all seems awfully dull and inconvenient. That’s why I’ve chosen to abstain.”
“No. I meant—priorities that don’t match, punishments for being yourself, that’s not how a relationship should be.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Apparently, he’d surprised her.
“People harp on about compatibility for a reason. If you value family and work, you just need someone who feels the same way, someone who admires that about you. If you can’t do the sappy shit, you just have to find someone who’s okay with that. Someone who understands how awkward you are—”
“I beg your pardon?”
He ignored her. “—and loves it. I know you have a busy life, but you make room for the stuff that matters. If it was worth it, and you wanted to, you could make room for a relationship, too. What you get out of being loved, it’s supposed to be worth the compromise. When it’s good, it makes you want to compromise.”
She eyed him steadily for a moment, her expression unreadable. But something about the line of her mouth, the slow rhythm of her breaths, told him she was thinking. Hard.
In the end, though, it came to nothing. “I have no idea how you aren’t married yet,” she murmured, studying him like he was some kind of exotic insect. Then she sighed and shook her head, as if brushing away fairy tales. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s some lucky individual out there who’s just dying to spend forever with a bookish workaholic who wants to vomit at the prospect of romance, but I don’t care enough to bother searching for them. I’m not interested in the, er, transformative power of love, or what have you. I don’t need it. I know what I want from life, and I know how to get it.”
Each word landed with a thump in Zaf’s chest, like a series of death knells, though he couldn’t say exactly what was dying.
I know what I want from life, and I know how to get it. “So do I,” he said softly.
Dani nodded. “We’re not that different, you know, even if we’re facing opposite directions. I don’t want to waste my time looking for a diamond in a pile of shit. And you don’t want another unhappy ending.”
Another. The way she looked at him, as if she saw his every fear and secret hope, was almost enough to make Zaf sweat. He still wanted to chase away the ghosts in her eyes, but if that meant she got to chase his, too . . . no fucking thank you.
Besides, he hadn’t been lying when he’d said he respected her choices. Didn’t mean he had to like them. But he respected them, because he respected her.
“I accept your conditions,” he said finally. “But I have a couple of my own.” Needed them, he realized, if he was going to come out of this unscathed.
“Hit me,” she murmured. Then she wiggled on his lap, and he narrowly avoided biting off his own tongue. “Quick.”
“First: we can’t do this forever.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Forever isn’t really my thing.”
“I know.” His cheeks heated. “I meant . . . maybe, since we put a deadline on the fake relationship, we can put a deadline on this, too.” That would save him from stumbling over boundaries or breaking rules he’d never learned. Dani was so committed to this no-strings shit, she’d actually prayed about it—and Zaf knew from experience that when you started praying, it meant you were deadly serious or about to die or both. The last thing he wanted to do was embarrass himself by holding on too long.
She eyed him carefully, and if he caught a flash of disappointment