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“Probably terrible.” I wince.

“Too impatient?”

“No experience. Becca didn’t like to be touched after sex.” Honestly, she didn’t like to be touched much at all.

“Oh, I’m the opposite. This will be new. Shall we go to bed and give it a try?”

Where she’s been with other men. “No. Let’s do it here.”

“You’re serious about avoiding my mattress?” She scans my face and rolls her eyes. “Of course you are. Okay…”

Nia wraps her arms around me and urges me down to the floor. We lie face-to-face, and she slings her thigh over me, caressing my face and kissing me softly. “I’m not going to stop telling you I love you.”

Her words don’t shock me as much as they did the first time. I don’t hate them; I simply don’t comprehend what I feel.

“I don’t think I want you to,” I admit softly, kissing the tip of her nose.

Being so close to her, so intimate, without the burning heat of passion, is novel. It’s…nice.

I pull her closer. “I’m not going to stop asking you to marry me.”

She smiles back at me. “I don’t think I want you to.”

“Then what do we do?” About our futures? About our impasse?

“Evan, let it lie for now. We don’t need the answers tonight. We just need to be with one another. We’ll figure it out.”

Despite the fact I hate leaving tasks unfinished, I don’t know what else to do. My usual silent calm is a humming swing-sway of energy. It’s as if someone barged into my brain, took the orderly boxes I’ve stacked all my thoughts and notions into, then upended them, forcing the lids open and spilling the contents everywhere. In the resulting chaos, I don’t know what to think. Feelings are unavoidable. I can’t seem to process them. They pelt me with pinpricks from every direction.

Is this love? Is what I’m feeling for Nia that I didn’t feel for Becca finally, truly the real thing? I don’t know. But as I pull her closer and she lays her head against my chest, I’m happy. No, I’m ecstatic. So instead of trying to apply different forms of logic to my thoughts to reach a reasonable conclusion, I’m going to take Bas’s advice and just go with it. Why not? So far, it feels really damn good.

Monday, November 27

Monday comes, and I find myself falling into familiar routines. I’m not used to vacation. In the years since I started Stratus, I can’t think of any real time off I’ve taken. Hell, I barely left the office for seven hours when Becca died—the afternoon of the wreck and the morning of the funeral. Despite everyone encouraging me to take more time to grieve, I didn’t see how hanging around my empty house would help me cope with losing my wife. Now that I’m with Nia, I’m determined to enjoy this time we have together…but she has to wake up first.

Damn, I’m envious of her ability to sleep.

After kissing her forehead, I rise up from our pallet on the floor with a groan. That’s a backache I could have done without. Tonight we’ll spend in a comfortable bed, damn it. I’m getting us a new mattress today.

After quickly brushing my teeth, I fish out last week’s gym clothes from my suitcase, vowing to swing by my apartment and pick up more after my workout. Then I down half a cup of coffee and pick up a bottle of water. I make it to the gym by five thirty a.m.

I slacked off on workouts when I was in Maui, and I feel lethargic this morning. All the lazy satisfaction humming in my veins could be contributing, too. I push myself through a grueling hour and a half, then remove my earbuds and head out.

When I exit and make my way toward my car in the relatively empty lot, I spot a blonde dressed in an impeccable gray suit and a crisp white blouse standing beside it. She’s looking at me expectantly, as if she’s been waiting.

“Mr. Cook?”

“Yeah.” I approach cautiously. “Who are you? Is there a problem?”

“I’d like to talk to you. My name is Bethany Banks…but I’m also a Reed.”

Her words have the impact of a gut-punch. “You’re Barclay’s other daughter?”

“Yes.”

So she’s my missing half sister. Holy shit.

I know from talking to Maxon that our old man likes to boff his assistants. A lot. He seemed to take a particular perverse pleasure in impregnating them. My mother wasn’t the first or the last. In fact, Bethany is a few years older than me, and up until now, none of the Reed children have ever spoken to her. No one knew where to find her. I can’t help but wonder why she picked me and why she chose now to make contact.