“No. It was sex.” He trails his fingers down the curve of my waist and over my hip.

“Did you enjoy fucking them?” Why am I doing this? I hate myself for asking these questions.

He shrugs. “Sometimes. Sure. Not gonna lie. Sometimes I felt guilty. I didn’t love them, though. I only had sex to satisfy a physical need.”

“Oh, come on.” I roll onto my belly and turn my head toward the fire. He’s smashed against my body and the back of the sofa, and his hand rests on my lower back.

“I don’t understand why you think I’m so promiscuous. I was a virgin when I met you. I was faithful to you. I’m not the kind of man to screw lots of women, no matter what the tabloids say. I’ve been photographed with plenty of women, but I rarely took them to bed.”

I turn my head toward him. “Why? Why didn’t you enjoy yourself?”

“Don’t you get it?” He sounds almost annoyed, like I’m not understanding an important point. “Because they weren’t you. I only fucked them because I got tired of this.” He holds up his right hand.

“I guess I assumed that, being so rich, you indulged in a certain lifestyle.”

“It’s definitely available to me. But think about it—how could I make so much money if I spent all my time on women? I’ve been working my ass off. Traveling. Buying and selling real estate. And I need to sleep sometime.”

I giggle, and he shakes his head.

“Justine, I haven’t really had the time or energy to become involved with someone else. Not when I know how intense I can be in a relationship. I guess in some ways, it was good you weren’t around. I would’ve never achieved what I did. You would’ve been too much of a distraction.”

I roll over to face him. My hand skims his face, and my thumb traces his eyebrow.

“I’m proud of you, Rafa. I never told you that. Even though I’m still upset about how we ended, I’m proud that you fulfilled your ambitions. You got the life of your dreams.”

He clenches his jaw. “It’s been a trade-off. I have the life of my dreams without the woman of my dreams.”

I emit a little snort. “If I’m the woman of your dreams, why didn’t you call me all these years?”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

And now we’re bickering. I sigh. “Four years after I left, when I returned to the States, I came to your office. Well, your office building. I didn’t go inside.”

“Why?”

I chew on the fingernail of my thumb. “I took a cab from the Miami airport. I was still pretty weak and sick because I was getting over dengue fever I got in Guatemala—”

“Christ, Justine. You could have died out there.” He clasps my hand and draws it away from my mouth, kissing my fingers one by one.

“Listen to me, Rafa. Stop kissing me. I had read about you in an article, about how you’d made several million on the real estate bust in Florida. The story was in the Daily Business Journal, and it listed your office address. So I went there.”

“And why didn’t you come in?” he asks, impatient.

“The taxi pulled up, and I saw you with another woman. She was gorgeous, really well dressed, and you kissed her on the cheek. She seemed familiar, and I think she might have been a Spanish TV star. She climbed into a limousine, and you stood on the sidewalk, watching the limo pull away. You were so handsome in your suit.”

“I don’t…I don’t remember. I’m sorry. I handled a lot of luxury condos in those years for telenovela actresses.”

“It doesn’t matter who she was. That day, I felt like hell, I looked like hell, and that’s when it really hit me that you might not want me in your life. Why would a man like you, dressed in Armani and working in a glass-and-steel high-rise, want a poor, grubby journalist? You had stopped responding to my emails, letters, and calls at that point.”

“It had nothing to do with your job. It was you. I had to stop responding to your emails after you left, Justine. For my own sanity. I was hurt. My pride was wounded. It’s taken me years to admit that to you. I can be a little stubborn.”

I grin. “Um, that’s an understatement.”

“When I found out that you’d called Florida Capital for your paper, I decided it was time to forgive you and see if you needed my help.”

I snuggle closer. “So you didn’t come here to punish me.”

“Maybe a little. But I’ve moved past that.” He kisses my nose. “Truce?”

“I guess. But I need to tell you one more thing. That day that I saw you, that day I returned from Central America and went to your office building, I caught you in another life. It was worse than finding you with another woman. I didn’t have a place in your life then or now. I’m a small-town Southern girl, and you’re a wealthy man who lives with glamorous, plastic people in Miami.”

He snorts. “Don’t say that. My life isn’t that exciting.”

I open my eyes. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter because you no longer love me. You all but said so the other day.”

“I said a lot of things the other day, but they were in anger. I apologize. I’m sometimes still angry with you, but I also am angry with myself. Maybe because I’ve been too lonely all these years and the bitterness has built up.”

“What do you mean? And why have you been lonely, with all that you’ve achieved?”

His mouth twitches. “I’ve crafted a life around real estate deals and high-end hotels and stale luxury. I know everyone, but I don’t. You know?”

I shake my head.

“You haven’t been lonely in the past eleven years since we broke up?”

I stare at him blankly. “At first, I was.”

“Obviously not as much as I have. You dated a guy long-term. Or maybe more than one guy,” he says bitterly.

“No, actually, dating Jared was the time I was most lonely. Before that, I was pretty happy, looking back, for a lot of years. After I left you, I learned to like myself. Learned to rely on myself. It took some time.”

Rafa’s expression loses all emotion. I trace his cheekbone, and my stomach goes back into a knot. “I understand why you’re angry with me for leaving, but why are you angry with yourself? I don’t get it.”

He licks his lips. “Maybe I’m angry for what I didn’t do. But I don’t want to get into this now. I have to pack. Maybe when I get back we can talk. I don’t know.”

“You must dislike me a little.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because of this arrangement. It’s humiliating. When we were younger, you never liked the concept of fuck-buddies or friends-with-benefits.”

“I know. But how else would I have gotten you to live with me for a month?”

“By telling me that you’re still in love with me.” I sigh, and he plays with my hair.

“I guess I could have done that, but that would have forced me to admit weakness. When have you ever known me to do that?”

I shake my head. “Never. But you shouldn’t approach love like a business deal. This isn’t about who is weaker and who is stronger.”

He sits up, grabbing for his clothes. “I know. We really fucked each other up. We loved each other and maybe hurt each other so much that neither of us moved on.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know, Rafa.”

* * *

I watched Rafa scowl as he read the newspaper.

“This is what you were doing last night until midnight? Covering a mass shooting in North Miami Beach? Two people died and six people were hurt? Why didn’t you tell me you were there? I would have gone with you.”

I rolled my eyes and kissed him on the cheek, putting a mug of coffee in front of him on the kitchen table. I loved the feeling of making breakfast for him every day. It was like we were married.

“I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d freak out. I was fine. I had a photographer with me. Plus, there were cops everywhere.”

“Is this what you’ve been covering? I don’t like this. It’s dangerous. Why can’t they assign you to feature stories? You’re such a good features writer. I loved that story you did about the domino players in the park in Little Havana.”

I stifled a smile. He was always so worried about me.

“Rafa, baby, this is what interns do. We get shit assignments. So yes, this is what I do and what I want to do. I’ve worked up to this, covering big crime stories. Stop worrying.”

He tossed the paper on the table and ate his eggs in sullen silence. With each passing moment, my mood went from amused to annoyed to really pissed off.

I yanked the paper off the table. “You know, I don’t say anything about how much time you spend chasing your dream. I have this internship and one more semester of school. You’ve graduated. You’re working fifty, sixty hours a week. You seem to have less time for me every week. I try to keep it all in perspective and I don’t bitch about it, because I know you have goals so we can have a good life.”

“My dream isn’t putting me in danger. My dream isn’t taking me all over Miami’s worst neighborhoods. My dream is for you and me.”

“You know I love crime reporting. You know I want to impress the editors at the paper so I can get a job there when I graduate. I need to start somewhere, and covering crime at night is the best way to begin a career. That’s what all my professors say.”

Rafa sighed. “I don’t like it.”

“Get used to it.”

He reached his hand across the table, threading his fingers in mine. His gorgeous eyes blazed, but not with anger. Something else. A promise? A declaration?

“There’s going to be a day when I make enough that you don’t have to work.”

I swallowed. Is that what I wanted? Now probably wasn’t the time to tell him of my latest dreams of being a foreign correspondent.

I’d never given much thought to being a wife, much less a wife who didn’t work.

I wanted him, and I wanted a career in a crazy, demanding business. A tiny voice inside me wondered whether I’d be able to accommodate both.