He winced, squeezed the hand she’d laid over his. “Brianna,” he began without a clue how to continue.

“Don’t worry. I don’t need the words back.”

“Listen, a lot of times people get sex confused with love.”

“I imagine you’re right. Grayson, do you think I would be here with you, that I would ever have been with you like this if I didn’t love you.”

He was good with words. Dozens of reasonable excuses and ploys ran through his mind. “No,” he said at length, settling on the truth. “I don’t. Which only makes it worse,” he muttered, and rose to tug on his trousers. “I should never have let things go this far. I knew better. It’s my fault.”

“There’s no fault here.” She reached for his hand so that he would sit on the bed again rather than pace. “It shouldn’t make you sad to know you’re loved, Grayson.”

But it did. It made him sad, and panicked, and for just a moment, wishful. “Brie, I can’t give you back what you want or should have. There’s no future with me, no house in the country and kids in the yard. It’s not in the cards.”

“It’s a pity you think so. But I’m not asking you for that.”

“It’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want, but not what I expect.” She gave him a surprisingly cool smile. “I’ve been rejected before. And I know very well what is it to love and not have the person love you back, at least not so much as you want, or need.” She shook her head before he could speak. “As much as I might want to go on with you, Grayson, I’ll survive without you.”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Brianna. I care about you. I care for you.”

She lifted a brow. “I know that. And I know you’re worried because you care more for me than you’ve cared for anyone before.”

He opened his mouth, shut it, shook his head. “Yes, that’s true. It’s new ground for me. For both of us.” Still uncertain of his moves, he took her hand, kissed it. “I’d give you more if I could. And I am sorry I at least didn’t prepare you a little better for tonight. You’re the first . . . inexperienced woman I’ve been with, so I’ve tried to take it slow.”

Intrigued, she cocked her head. “You must have been as nervous as I was, the first time.”

“More.” He kissed her hand again. “Much more, believe me. I’m used to women who know the ropes, and the rules. Experienced or pro, and you—”

“Pro? Professional?” Her eyes went huge. “You’ve paid women to bed them?”

He stared back at her. He must have been even more befuddled than he’d realized to have come out with something like that. “Not in recent memory. Anyway—”

“Why would you have to do that? A man who looks like you, who has your sensibility?”

“Look, it was a long time ago. Another life. Don’t look at me like that,” he snapped. “When you’re sixteen and alone on the streets, nothing’s free. Not even sex.”

“Why were you alone and on the street at sixteen?”

He stood, retreated, she thought. And there was shame in his eyes as much as anger.

“I’m not going to get into this.”

“Why?”

“Christ.” Shaken, he dragged both hands through his hair. “It’s late. We need to get some sleep.”

“Grayson, is it so hard to talk to me? There’s hardly anything you don’t know of me, the bad things and the good. Do you think I’d think less of you for knowing?”

He wasn’t sure, and told himself he didn’t care. “It’s not important, Brianna. It has nothing to do with me now, with us here.”

Her eyes cooled, and she rose to get the nightgown she’d said she didn’t want. “It’s your business, of course, if you choose to shut me out.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

She tugged the cotton over her head, adjusted the sleeves. “As you say.”

“Goddamn it, you’re good, aren’t you?” Furious with her, he jammed his hands into his pockets.

“I don’t know your meaning.”

“You know my meaning exactly,” he tossed back. “Lay on the guilt, spread on a little frost, and you get your way.”

“We’ve agreed it’s none of my business.” Moving toward the bed, she began to tuck in the sheets they’d ripped out. “If it’s guilt you’re feeling, it’s not my doing.”

“You get to me,” he muttered. “You know just how to get to me.” He hissed out a breath, defeated. “You want it, fine. Sit down, I’ll tell you a story.”

He turned his back on her, rummaging through the drawer for the pack of cigarettes he always carried and smoked only when working.

“The first thing I remember is the smell. Garbage just starting to rot, mold, stale cigarettes,” he added, looking wryly at the smoke that curled toward the ceiling. “Grass. Not the kind you mow, the kind you inhale. You’ve probably never smelled pot in your life, have you?”

“I haven’t, no.” She kept her hands in her lap, and her eyes on him.

“Well, that’s my first real memory. The sense of smell’s the strongest, stays with you—good or bad. I remember the sounds, too. Raised voices, loud music, someone having sex in the next room. I remember being hungry, and not being able to get out of my room because she’d locked me in again. She was stoned most of the time and didn’t always remember she had a kid around who needed to eat.”

He looked around idly for an ashtray, then leaned back against the dresser. It wasn’t so hard to speak of it after all, he discovered. It was almost like making up a scene in his mind. Almost.

“She told me once she’d left home when she was sixteen. Wanted to get away from her parents, all the rules. They were square, she’d say. Went nuts when they found out she smoked dope and had boys up in her room. She was just living her own life, doing her own thing. So she just left one day, hitched a ride and ended up in San Francisco. She could play at being a hippie there, but she ended up on the hard edge of the drug culture, experimented with a lot of shit, paid for a lot of it by begging or selling herself.”