A jolt of adrenaline shot through his body, though he kept still, his eyes steady. He had always been careful with the women he saw, as if keeping them relegated to his side of the yard shielded her somehow. He had told himself it was because she was young, she wouldn’t understand, but now, with her green eyes locked with his, it felt so much heavier than that.
“What have you seen?” he asked.
She shrugged a little, her eyes falling to the ice cream to avoid his stare. “In the summer you open the doors out to the garden. And you bring them out there with a bottle of wine. It’s usually late, so I always assume it’s where you’re ending your night. There’s conversation, maybe some laughter…” She let her voice trail off as her cheeks flushed. “I can’t ever see much through the trees, but sometimes I hear things. Laughing. Whispers. That’s about the time you go inside and turn the lights off.”
Jesus. He had no idea.
Her eyes were on him again then. “In the winter you still open the wine, but you both sit here.” She ran her hand along the cushion of the sofa, as if she somehow knew about the women he had bent over its arm. “I can’t see or hear as well, but the script seems to be the same. Wine, laughter. And then… lights out.”
“Is that all?” he asked. His voice was so deep, barely above a whisper.
“Yeah.” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips. He ignored his reaction to it, the warmth that spread deep in his chest.
He didn’t move. He’d never felt guilty about his love life before, the various women he saw once or twice and never again. It was what suited him. It kept him from getting too attached, and he comforted himself with the fact that he was clear about what he wanted before anyone set foot in his home. The perfect arrangement.
But now guilt crashed into him like a wave, dragging him down even as he stared at her.
“Do you sleep with them?” she asked. From anyone else the question would have been intrusive, but the matter-of-fact way she asked it felt strangely intimate, sending a jolt through his veins.
“Sometimes.”
“And are they still here in the morning?”
He shook his head. “No.”
Her head cocked to the side. “And do they all know that ahead of time?”
A nod.
“See,” she murmured, a lazy smile returning to her mouth. “Not complicated.”
His eyebrows knitted together. He didn’t like how that sounded like an accusation. “It’s not complicated if you’re open about what you want.”
She sat up a bit straighter, leaning over her ice cream with genuine interest. “So tonight, then, after Zane told me he didn’t want anything serious and he just wanted to fuck me—that was fine because he was open about what he wanted?”
“No… Jesus.” Knightley ran a hand through his hair. “Beingopen about what you want also means you listen to what the other person wants too.”
“And what if you don’t want the same things?”
“Then you both know that before anybody gets hurt.”
She scoffed, digging her spoon into the ice cream. “That’s impossible.”
“How so?”
“Because that’s not a relationship.”
“That’s why it works for me.”
“Okay, that works for you, and maybe the women you sleep with, but I don’t know if that would work for me.”
“Did you change your mind about being single? Do you want a relationship now?”
A lock of hair had come loose from her ponytail and fallen across her face, dancing along her cheek as she considered. He had to stop himself from walking to her and brushing it away.
She finally sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Then what do you want?”
