There is a version of this conversation where I tell her. Where I sit at this island on a Sunday morning and say,you want to know what it is, Rose? I'll tell you what it is.
But I can’t. I have never said the words out loud. Not to anyone. Not even to her.
"I'm content," I say again, and this time I mean it to land like a door closing gently but firmly. "I have the company. I have you. I don't need anything else right now."
She looks at me for a long moment.
Then she picks up her fork.
"Okay," she says quietly.
NotI believe you.NotI'll drop it.Justokay.Which with Rosalie means she loves me enough to not make me say the thing I'm not ready to say. I love her for it. I love her so much that it's almost difficult to look at her directly sometimes.
"Thank you."
She walks over and takes my head in her hands, settling it against her shoulder, and presses a kiss to my forehead.
"Anytime,Bennet."
CHAPTER THREE
BENNET
The conversation yesterday has been plaguing me all damn night.
I tossed. I turned. I stared at the ceiling of my very expensive penthouse and thought about my sister looking at me across a kitchen island and asking, with genuine sincerity and zero malice, if I was attracted to men.
Does everyone think that?
That's what kept me up. Not the board meeting. Not Meridian. Not the fountain, which has now been viewed four point two million times, according to my very stressed publicist.
No — what kept me staring at the ceiling until four in the morning was the possibility that I have accidentally constructed a persona so devoid of authentic human desire that the people who love me most have started questioning my sexuality.
That's going to be a problem. Eventually. When I get to a point where I actually want to...
I'll cross that bridge later.
Admittedly, I have no real game. None. The women the press have photographed me with have all been hired to play a part and gone home with significantly fatter bank accounts for it. Every single one of them. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement, and nobody gets hurt. It’s also not something Ihave examined too closely at two in the morning because it doesnothold up too well under scrutiny.
Actually, hitting on a woman. Actually, picking one up in real life with my real face and my real voice and no agreed-upon arrangement in place beforehand.
I am ashamed to admit that I have never done it.
And then there's the other thing. The thing I don't say out loud. Ever.
I am a virgin.
Twenty-eight years old, nearly twenty-nine, self-made billionaire, six-foot-five, and I have never slept with anyone.
There it is.
Written in the stars.
Carved into the foundation of every bad decision I've ever made about intimacy and proximity and letting anyone get close enough to find out.
I can't really blame Rosalie for her assessment. When she lays it out like that; no dating, no real interest, a carefully maintained public image that is entirely performance...the conclusion she reached is not unreasonable. It's wrong as fuck, but it's not unreasonable.
Once four AM came around and sleep was still a distant and mocking mistress, I gave up. Pulled on shorts and came down to the building gym to work off some tension before heading to what I lovingly refer to as the den of wolves I call a board of directors.
