“I haven’t been with a woman in a long time.”
My mouth hangs open. What does he mean? How long are we talking about, here?
His being rich, in and of itself, is enough for most women to throw themselves at his feet, but he’s also handsome and mysterious. It can’t have been that long.
“Me either.” The words pop out. “I mean, not that I haven’t been involved with a woman in a long time, but you know what I mean. With Ben and me, we didn’t… that is to say, we hadn’t been together for a while. Even before I left him.”
Oliver doesn’t say anything for a full city block. “Will you explain what you mean?” he finally asks, his voice low. “You and Ben hadn’t…?”
I still can’t meet his eyes. The pressure of his gaze is too much. I can’t handle the scrutiny. “We hadn’t slept together in over a year.”
So embarrassing. Why am I telling him this? I haven’t told anyone else about this, not even Taylor.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with him—well, I didn’t really want to by that point, but after we’d been together for a year or so, he struggled to… perform. He told me it was my fault. He told me I was too cold, too unfeeling.”
I risk a glance at him. His face is like stone. Very angry stone. For some reason, it gives me courage to have made Oliver angry at Ben.
“I gave all my passion to my work, and there wasn’t enough left for him,” I say. “That was his theory. At first, I tried, but nothing was ever enough, so after a while, it was easier to just… not. And he really didn’t seem to care. He cared about perception, how things were seen by other people, but that was about it.”
As the words fall out, the weight of them lifts. They are no longer wound into a hard ball in my chest. Even if Oliver says nothing, even if he judges me for all that I’ve shared, I feel a little lighter.
He exhales slowly, the sound winding through me. Has he been holding his breath this whole time?
His voice, when it emerges, is carefully controlled. “You are not unfeeling or cold, Piper. You were never the problem.”
I shrug. If you’re told something enough, you start to believe it. “What about you?” I ask before I can chicken out.
He pauses. “What about me?”
“Why has it been a long time for you?”
He shifts in the seat, more tense than I’ve ever seen him. “It’s difficult to know if someone wants you because of you or only because of what you have to offer.”
My earlier thought trickles back in. Women probably throw themselves at him because of his wealth. But his wealth doesn’t define him as a person.
He meets my eyes, his own dark and intense. “Every woman I’ve dated wanted something from me, and once I provided it, or if I refused to provide it, they disappeared. My last entanglement sold me out to the press. I can’t trust people.”
“Same.”
He sits back slightly. “We are not the same.”
If his face weren’t impassive as a wall, I’d think he was surprised.
“Um, excuse me. I had my entire psyche stomped on by a sociopath. I think I know if I have trust issues.”
“You might have trust issues now, but you have the capacity to trust again. You’re healing. You’ll bounce back, fall in love with an accountant, move to Vermont, and have a litter of children and a border collie named Muffins.”
I laugh. “Muffins, huh? And an accountant?”
He shifts on the seat and shrugs. “Someone nice and normal.”
“Define normal. Have you met my family?”
He doesn’t say anything for ten heartbeats.
“You don’t think you could ever move beyond your trust issues?” I finally ask. “Find your own accountant and aptly named canine?”
The hum of the tires is quiet and soothing. The windows are tinted and dark. It’s like we’re in a bubble of quiet, a cozy cave.