“I don’t think so.” When he still didn’t answer, she asked, “Is it me?”
“No!” Aleks replied quickly. “It’s not you.”
“Then?” She tried to coax him into answering her question.
“We’ve never talked about this kind of stuff before.”
“There’s a first for everything.”
He rubbed his hands over his face and let out a grunt. “It’s too close. The only time I sleep
with a woman face to face is if there’s...” Aleks turned his head, and Carrie looked at him with compassion. She needed him to know she wouldn’t judge him. “If your brother or someone else is there with me.”
“Oh. I wasn’t expecting that answer.”
“There’s a buffer. Usually women who partake in that sort of thing aren’t really looking for a connection, so I don’t have to worry. But alone, face to face is too close.”
“But you did it with me,” she pointed out. He nodded. “Are you upset that you did it with me?” This time his head moved in the opposite direction. “Then why did you do it?”
Aleks looked up at the ceiling again. “Because you asked.”
“Why won’t you look at me?”
“I look at you.”
“No, you don’t. Not really. When you were on top of me that was the first time in a long time that you really looked at me.”
“You can tell a lot about a person just by looking in their eyes.”
Carrie loved the direction of their conversation. She just never expected Aleks to be so sincere. “I know. Your eyes always say so much.”
“That’s exactly why I don’t look at you.” He pushed the comforter off and sat up, resting his upper body against the headboard. “You know what my mom used to say?”
His mom? Aleks hadn’t spoken about his mom in fifteen years. Never. Even if she’d tried to bring it up.
“She used to say that my eyes gave away what I was feeling. That all you had to do was look at me and you could tell exactly what I was thinking.” “It’s true.”
“That’s why I don’t look in your eyes. That’s why I don’t want to look at any woman. Do you think they would like to see the blank look on my face? The disinterest.”
Disinterest. She should have known. Carrie knew it the first time they were together. He’d stared off into space even though his body covered hers. Yet she came back for more.
“So you don’t look at women because they don’t interest you. Yet you sleep with them.”
“I’m interested. Maybe the right word is invested. It’s just sex. There’s no need to have any intimacy. There’s no need for me to see what they’re thinking or what they’re feeling.”
“No strings attached. That’s exactly what we’re doing, right?”
Carrie needed to stick to the plan. She couldn’t let her heart get any more involved. Especially since he’d confirmed that sex for him was just a means to release.
“Yeah, just having a good time.” Aleks let his head fall back against the headboard. She watched him stare up at the ceiling.
The last five minutes had been a huge leap for Aleks in terms of talking about his feelings. Carrie had to wonder why, after all these years of friendship, he picked this moment to lay his feelings on the table.
He continued to surprise her. “Are we going to talk about the pink elephant in the room?” “You mean the fact that we’re lying in this bed?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“I say we quit while we’re ahead.” That was the most logical option. Whether her heart