Hitching her heel onto the truck seat, she hugged her knee. “What do you want to know?”
“How about we start with your defensive posture the moment I want to know more about you?”
“So, bearsandpsychoanalysis?”
“My skills are varied and wide.”
“What do you want to know?” She let her foot fall back to the floor. “I already told you the important stuff—my adoptive parents, foster care before that.”
“What about a boyfriend?”
Her cheeks heated. “What about a boyfriend?” she mirrored back to him.
“Have you ever had one?”
Her nails dug into her palms. “Yes.”
“Was it serious?”
“We went out for two years. He asked me to marry him.”
He held up a hand. “Wait, he asked you tomarry him?”
“Yes.”
“And when was this?”
“A couple of months before I met you.”
“Huh.”
“Huh, what?”
“Nothing.”
“What, Gavin?”
He didn’t answer her for several seconds. “‘When we were together… You were a virgin.”
“Yes.”
“I’m just wondering why you didn’t sleep with your boyfriend of two years, but you slept with the total stranger who stopped to change your tire.”
She looked out her window into the darkness beyond and fought the urge to bring her knee back up to her chest. She wished again she were more sophisticated, older than she was.
A wide, rushing river of experience separated her from this man, and the more they discussed the realities of their lives, the faster the current seemed to flow. Working to affect an air of nonchalance, she asked, “What difference does it make?”
“It makes a big difference to me.” He slowed down, pulling over to the side of the road. “Look at me,” he said softly.
Begrudgingly, she turned to face him.
“You were dating a guy who wanted to marry you,” he said. “And you didn’t sleep with him. Instead, you climbed into bed with me on a wink and a prayer.”
The shape of him was hulking in the cab of the truck, his torso silhouetted in the moonlight behind him while the chiseled planes of his face were just barely visible to her straining eyes. It struck her that she never expected to be this close to him again, never really believed it would happen no matter how many times she’d wished that it would. Was she dreaming now? Was all of this just a figment of her desperate, sleep-deprived imagination?
“Why, Evie?”
She shrugged, guarding her heart like the fragile thing it was. “I don’t know.”
