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He sighed. “Halley.”
My face flamed under the fluorescent lights. “Reed.” I inched closer and folded my arms, realizing my bikini-clad cleavage was on full display for the shoppers. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to say whatever you’re thinking,” he said. “You ran out on me before we could discuss anything. I was worried about you walking back to the house alone.”
“I couldn’t stay.” I scratched behind my ear, one arm still draped across my breasts. “And there was nothing to discuss. I was mortified.”
He fell silent for a breath. “There’s plenty to discuss.”
“It was just sex.” My words were flippant, but my pulse was doing backflips. “It’s not like I haven’t had sex before.”
“Just sex,” he parroted flatly, hands curling around the bar of the shopping cart as he perused the shelves. “Felt like more to me.”
It was more.
It was everything and more.
Hope shimmied up my chest and sprinkled its magic over my heart like pixie dust. “Emotions were high. Life and death situations can muddle sound reason.” I glanced around, hoping no one of relevance was in earshot. “Nothing changes, remember?”
Shaking his head, he pressed forward on the cart. “I never said that.”
“Heavily implied.”
“You didn’t give me a chance to talk, Halley. I was still fucking inside you when you checked out and then bolted from the apartment.”
Molten heat doused me from toes to top as I glanced at him, my eyes wide.
He swallowed, pausing the cart with a sigh of frustration. “Are you, uh…” Clearing his throat, he stared blankly at a bag of potato chips. “Protected?”
I wanted the squeaky linoleum floors to morph into quicksand and swallow me whole. “Yes. You don’t have to worry about having two children, eighteen years apart.”
Reed blinked over at me and ran his tongue along his upper lip before sending me a tight nod, then continuing forward. “You don’t have to worry about anything either. I haven’t been with anyone in a long time.”
My breath caught. I was trudging through that blizzard again, his words icing over my heart.
“Any lady friends lately?”
“A few.”
I gawked at him. “But you told me?—”
“I lied.”
Silence followed, and I tightened my arms around myself as we circled the aisles. I had convinced myself that Reed was out there sleeping around, meeting attractive women in bars and clubs, and scrubbing me from his mind like I was week-old dirt. After all, he was a gorgeous, mid-thirties bachelor who had a stable career, his own place, and the prettiest green eyes that could reel any woman in. Even the random shoppers that strolled by were unable to keep their eyes off of him.
It didn’t make sense that he’d be celibate.
My curiosity got the better of me, and I asked timidly, “How long?”
Hoisting a twelve-pack of Coke off a bottom shelf, he slid it onto the bottom of the cart and straightened, looking right at me. “How long have I been caught up on you and unable to even look at another woman?” His tone was void of emotion, but his words were passion-doused daggers. “A year and a half.”
I paled, rendered speechless once again.
Reed swallowed and dipped his gaze, returning to the front of the cart and rolling it forward. The next ten minutes slugged by in itchy silence as I processed his revelation and spun it every which way inside my mind.
When we found a line and started filling the belt with items, I was still dumbstruck.
“Halley,” he said softly.