We sat around drinking and talking for what seemed like hours. I didn’t understand most of their inside jokes, but after a few rounds, I began to loosen up and enjoy being around people who were refreshingly . . . carefree. It felt good to be twenty-seven for a change. To not have the weight of the world on my shoulders. To have no-one to save. To just be me without any hang-ups or responsibilities.

“Okay, so then Oli said—” Will stammered, laughing so hard he could barely continue on with the story. We were all a little tipsy at that stage, except Oliver, who hadn’t been drinking much.

“It’s Oliver,” Oliver interrupted with irritation in his voice. He really disliked that nickname. I thought it was kind of cute.

At that point, I knew that I’d probably had a little too much to drink. Will’s stories about Oliver were becoming more hilarious with every sip.

I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room and freshen up. A splash of water on my face would do me some good. As I stood, Avery also excused herself and linked her arm in mine as we made our way to the restroom.

I had to admit that I had missed female camaraderie in recent years. I remembered my college days: being around girls like Avery, having nights out, talking about boys and our hopes for the future, getting drunk and giggly, without a worry in the world.

Of course, I now had more important priorities in my life. My aid work had become my whole identity. There wasn’t room for girlfriends and drunken nights out.

“So, you and Oliver . . .” Avery said teasingly as we entered the restroom.

“Me and Oliver,” I responded with a goofy grin on my lips. I wasn’t sure why I felt so excited and nervous and giddy tonight, just being there, but it probably had something to do with the way that Oliver and I had left things. I might not have thought that Oliver and I could work out in the long term, but there was definitely a level of passion and excitement that I hadn’t felt with anyone else, not even Javier.

Avery reached out her hand and placed it on my shoulder, a serious expression suddenly coming over her. “You know, I’m so glad Oli has finally found a girl that is his equal,” she said, looking sincerely into my eyes. “Not like all those bimbos he usually goes out with . . .” She trailed off.

“His equal?” I scoffed. “You have to admit, we’re pretty different . . .”

“Yeah, your occupations, for sure. But I mean, from what Oliver has told me, you’re sincere and caring and loyal,” she said. “And so is Oli.”

Her voice started to waver as she continued on. “You know, not many people know this, but Will and Julian weren’t brought up in this lifestyle. Neither was Oliver at a young age.”

“What do you mean?” I asked curiously.

“Well, Oliver and his cousins are related paternally. Their fathers were brothers,” she said, swallowing loudly. “The family was poor. Really poor. Sometimes I think that’s why Oliver is so you know . . . extravegent.” Avery smiled fondly.

I was shocked at this revelation. This hadn’t come up in my research and Oliver had never mentioned much about his family in our time together—not that I’d really taken much of an interest in getting to know his past. Now that I knew there was more to it, I just wanted to know everything.

“Go on,” I said, pulling her into an alcove by the sinks.

“Anyway, Oliver’s father was an entrepeneur. He never stopped trying to make a better life for Oli and his mom. Eventually, he caught some luck and invested in a start-up that ended up becoming huge. He made his family’s fortune and become renowned for predicting profitable investments.”

“That’s why Oliver started an investment firm,” I wondered out loud.

“Exactly. His father taught him everything he knows,” she replied. “But his cousins didn’t get to bask in that fortune. Their dad, Oli’s uncle, was an abusive drunk who used to hit their mom. He moved them out into a country town, looking for work. Eventually, he ended up running away with another woman, leaving them all alone with their battered mom in a town where they had no family or friends. Unfortuantely, after years of abuse, she had turned to prescription drugs and was in no state to bring up three boys,” she said, her eyes beginning to well with tears.

I couldn’t help but feel heartbroken for those poor boys. I knew what it was like to lose your parents, to be an orphan. But I just couldn’t imagine what it was like to have two parents—alive—who couldn’t pull themselves together long enough to take care of their own kids.

“So, how did Will and Julian end up here in the city?” I asked.

“Well, that’s just it—what I was trying to tell you. After high school, Will and Julian ran away to New York. Oliver hadn’t heard from them in years. They showed up on his doorstep, hungry and with nowhere to go. They had been sleeping rough for weeks,” said Avery.

My mouth fell open. “What happened?”

“Oliver took them in, no questions asked.”

“He did?”

“Of course. He clothed and fed them. Not just that, but he took them under his wing. He taught them everything he knew about business. That’s why they’re both successful businessmen in their own right. Will opened a chain of restaurants which people would sell their left kidney to get a reservation at. And Julian became New York’s most successful property broker and started his own company, becoming even more successful than Oliver himself.”

“I had no idea,” I whispered, leaning my head back against the wall behind me. Everything that I had ever known and thought about Oliver was now a twisted mess. I no longer knew what was right or wrong when it came to that confusing man.

After leaving the restroom, I went back to the table to find that Oliver was gone. Will told me that he had gone up to the rooftop terrace to get some fresh air. I climbed the four flights of stairs up to the terrace in hope of finding him.

I spotted Oliver in one corner of the terrace, leaning his arms on the railing. He looked deep in contemplation, running his thumb over his lip.

I walked over and Oliver watched as I carefully set my drink down on the table beside him. He reached over just as carefully and placed his hand in mine, weaving our fingers together.

“I know you said you just want to enjoy the night, but I really do want to apologize to you,” he said quietly. “How we left things after the dinner party . . . My timing was all wrong—it wasn’t fair to you, especially not when you were trying to focus on your work. I know how important that is to you.”

“Are you sorry that we had sex?” I asked bluntly.

Oliver looked shocked. “Of course not,” he smiled crookedly. “To be honest, I really enjoyed that.”

I let out a breath that I wasn’t aware I’d been holding. I had to wonder if maybe part of the reason I was so nervous about the whole idea of a relationship with him was his level of experience in comparison with mine. Maybe I was just worried about being inadequate in comparison to the other girls that he’d been with?

But that was ridiculous.

“So how was Argentina, anyway?” Oliver asked. “I donated a lot of money to the relief fund, but I can only imagine how satisfying it must have been, being down there on the ground, seeing everything firsthand. What did they have you working on?”

“I worked on a few different projects,” I said. “I have a pretty diverse background, so they use me wherever they can. Especially since they know that I won’t complain, regardless of what they ask me to do.”

Oliver smiled at me. “No, I can’t imagine you would,” he agreed.

I smiled back at him, feeling almost breathless in the moment. I quickly took a sip of my drink, trying to calm my beating heart. “So, originally they had me working on clearing roads so that we could get relief supplies in,” I told him. “Afterwards, I did some work in the medical wing. And then it was digging wells and building houses.”

“That’s incredible,” Oliver said, shaking his head, and I had to wonder if maybe I really had been wrong about him. Maybe he was more interested in this stuff than I had realized. After all, if I’d learned anything tonight, it was that I really didn’t know Oliver at all.

But, somehow, I still couldn’t picture him working at a relief site.

“If there’s anything else that you need, just let me know,” Oliver said seriously. “I can give you a blank check—whatever you need.”

“Thanks, but I think Le Monde has done everything that it can for now,” I sighed. “Helped, of course, by your generous donation from before. It’s time to turn our attention to other projects, though.” I frowned. “To be honest, this is always the most difficult part for me. It feels like I’m abandoning them halfway through.”

Oliver shook his head. “I can only imagine how difficult that must be. How difficult all of it must be, from seeing the devastation close up, to actually doing the work, to leaving the project. You’re very strong.”

I blushed, touched by his kind words. I couldn’t help feeling that this was the genuine side of him, like I was somehow finally privileged enough to see his true colors—the side of him that he hid from the tabloids.

His hand was still wrapped around mine, and I felt a sudden jolt of desire go through me as I realized this. I bit my lower lip and ducked my head. When I glanced up at Oliver, he smiled knowingly at me.

“So do you always work with the same people when you go to these places?” Oliver asked curiously.

I thought again of Javier, who wasn’t like anyone that I had ever worked with before—who wasn’t like anyone I had known before.

“No,” I told Oliver. “It’s different people every time, and a lot of them I never end up seeing again.”

“That must suck,” Oliver said. “To come together over something that important and then know that you’re never going to see them again . . .”

I shrugged even though that hit a little too close to home, especially with thoughts of Javier still on my mind. “Yeah, but that’s life,” I said brusquely.

Oliver must have sensed that I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, because he let the subject drop. “Well, you haven’t missed much around the city,” he said. “It’s been pretty rainy and miserable.”

“And yet you still found it in you to come by my office every day that I was gone?” I asked, trying for teasing but sure my tone was a little too serious.

Oliver ducked his head, looking embarrassed. “Yeah, well,” he muttered.

I laughed and shook my head. For everything that I couldn’t stand about Oliver, there was something about him that I just liked. It wasn’t just sexual attraction either. He knew what he wanted, and he went after it. I admired that.

We chatted about his work and about Le Monde’s next plans for a while, until we had both finished our drinks. Then, Oliver looked at his watch. “I should probably get you home,” he said, a faint smile playing at the corners of his lips.

* * *

“I imagine you’re going to be up bright and early tomorrow morning to go in to work?”

I groaned. “Don’t remind me,” I said as we approached my office, my arm looped in his. “Seriously, the amount of paperwork I’ve come home to is absolutely heinous.”

“I can imagine,” Oliver said. “I always hate that at the end of a long business trip.”

I lingered next to his car for a moment. “Well, I should probably get myself home,” I said.

“No way. Let me drive you,” Oliver said. “I know it’s not far, but come on.”

“It’s in the opposite direction from where you need to go, though,” I pointed out.

Oliver shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

“Alright,” I said finally. I got into the car with him and was secretly pleased that he was willing to drive me home, even though I knew it wouldn’t take long.

“You know, you never told me about you and your cousins,” I said, trying to sound casual.

Oliver looked over at me for a moment, puzzled. “I take it that Avery has been whispering in your ear,” he sighed.

“Well, sort of. But don’t blame her, I wanted to know. I thought I knew everything . . . but I guess I didn’t know much at all about your life,” I said. “I’d like to know more though. . .”

He idled the car outside my building and then put it in park.

He took a deep breath. “They showed up to my place, they had nowhere else to go. I did what any other person would do,” he said, not looking at me.

I turned in my seat toward him. “I know, but you never mentioned that you grew up without money . . . I’ve made a terrible assumption there I’m afraid.”

“You and everyone else sweetheart,” he sighed.

In that moment, I found it hard to reconcile the man before me, with the man who I saw splattered all over the tabloids every other day. Why did he insist on allowing them to portray him like some rich jerk who feels nothing and helps no one?

“It must have been difficult for you, taking both your cousins into your home, while also raising you sister. I can’t even imagine the weight that you were carrying on your shoulders.”

He turned and looked me in the eye. “It was a no-brainer. Yes, my family eventually become wealthy, but I still remembered what it was like to be hungry and to go without. I remembered watching my father working day and night, hustling every deal he could, to get us out of that life.” He looked pained as he continued on. “Will and Julian were in the same boat, but they weren’t lucky enough to have my dad. I could easily have ended up on the streets like them,” he replied, his hands shaking as he gripped the steering wheel.

“You did a good thing, Oliver,” I said sincerely. “There’s no getting around that.” I reached out to steady his hand, slowly removing it from the steering wheel and bringing it up to my lips. He looked at me bewildered as I placed a tender kiss on his knuckles.

In answer, Oliver leaned over and kissed me sweetly on the lips, his thumb lightly tracing my cheek. It was silent and tender, and I felt so at peace being alone with him in that moment. As he pulled away, he rested his forehead against mine. “I really thought you’d never speak to me again,” Oliver whispered. He lifted his head and looked me square in the eyes.

I can’t quite say what came over me in that moment, but the next thing I knew, I was unbuckling my seatbelt and climbing over onto his lap. I hadn’t performed a maneuver like that since my junior year. All I could think about was how much my body had been aching for him in the weeks since the dinner party.

Oliver looked pleasantly surprised as I straddled him, watching my hands as I reached out to feel him. I ran my hands over his hard chest, then up along his shoulders and down his biceps. I’d never had a chance to feel his body and it was a heady feeling to have him so close, beneath my fingertips.

Our breaths were becoming so heavy they were starting to fog up the windows. Oliver leaned forward and kissed me deeply, his tongue insistently pushing into my mouth. I wanted to giggle almost at the fact that we were making out in his car. But then Oliver’s hand came up between my legs and giggling was the furthest thing from my mind.

I groaned as Oliver slid his hand under my skirt and into my panties, rubbing his fingertip over my nub and then pushing his fingers inside of me. He continued kissing me all the while, until I was whimpering against his mouth, breathless and needy and surprised by how badly I wanted this. It felt as though the time in Argentina had been building to just this, as though my body had been waiting for this—even though, like he said, we hadn’t left things on the best terms and I’d planned to never have contact with him again.

His fingers dragged at my walls and I automatically opened my legs wider for him. He would thrust his fingers deep inside of me, and then he would twist them and slide them out at different speeds, first one and then the other, so that there was constantly some new sensation to be experienced. With his thumb, he continued to stimulate my clit as well, and I could feel my body rapidly tensing, ready to climax.

“O-Oliver,” I stammered out. “Don’t stop,” I gasped. “That’s not—don’t stop!” I laughed breathlessly. “I just . . .” My eyes fell shut of their own accord, and whatever it was that I’d been trying to say—something about having missed him, maybe?—died on my lips.

Oliver grinned sweetly at me and then continued to move his fingers inside of me. I gasped and arched back against the steering wheel, pleading wordlessly for release.

It washed over me all at once, my core spiking with heat and desire. My walls clenched and released around his fingers, pulling him even deeper into me. Oliver continued to work me throughout, until I was writhing with overstimulation. Slowly, his fingers stilled. I took a deep breath and forced my eyes to open.

“Stay with me tonight,” I blurted out.

Oliver looked amused, like he hadn’t expected those words to ever come out of my mouth—to be honest, I hadn’t either. I didn’t want to retract them though. I bit my lower lip. I had already cum once, but it hadn’t done anything to slacken my lust. I wanted him to take me up to my apartment and lay me down on the sheets, to spread me out and work me open again, to kiss along my body. To slide deep inside of me, to fill my aching hole, to pleasure me again and again.

I thought it was what he wanted as well. But Oliver glanced at his phone, and I suddenly wondered whether he was really taking me home now because he knew I was going into work early the following morning, or if there was some other motivation behind it.

Sure enough, he grimaced. “There’s actually someplace I need to be,” he said.

I felt tears prick the corners of my eyes. “Sure,” I said, getting up from his lap. I could hear the bitterness thick in my voice. This was still nothing more than a game to him. He took me out for drinks and got me off in his car of all places, and now he was going to drive over to the next bar and meet the next woman and get her off as well.

“Sophia,” Oliver said, sounding pained.

I opened the door and tumbled out, already stalking towards my building. “Oliver, I swear to God, if you follow me, I’ll call the police and tell them you’re trespassing,” I snapped.

Oliver used his long legs to his advantage, easily catching my arm. And when I looked up into his face, I could see exactly how upset he was. “Sophia, please, don’t be mad at me,” he said. “I’m not going to meet some other woman or whatever you’re thinking right now.”

“Whatever,” I spat. “If not tonight then tomorrow night, or the next night—right?”

“No,” Oliver said vehemently. “Sophia, you of all people should know what it’s like to have commitments that you can’t break. I remember how you were the night you found out about the crisis in Argentina. This is a similar thing.”

“Oh, is it?” I asked sarcastically. “And who are you running off to save?” But the more I thought about it, the more sheepish I felt. “It’s a business thing?”

“Sort of,” Oliver said, glancing away from me. I could tell that he wasn’t quite telling the truth, but I remembered what he had said before, about there being certain things that he couldn’t tell me about.

And when I thought about it, he was the owner of some multi-billion-dollar international company. It made sense that every once in a while he might have to get on a business call late at night with people located around the world.

“Oh,” I said quietly. I slumped towards him, and Oliver pulled me close, petting my hair.

“I’m sorry I don’t do more to inspire your trust,” Oliver said softly.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry I don’t just . . . trust you,” I told him.

“If you were the kind of person to trust everyone that you met, you wouldn’t be half as interesting as you are,” Oliver told me.

I smiled up at him, and he leaned down to kiss me, gently and sweetly. “Sleep well, sweetheart,” he murmured. “I’ll see you again soon.”

As I walked upstairs to my apartment, my mind was spinning through dozens of different thoughts. The main thing was that I needed to relax, to stop getting worked up over the idea of Oliver going off with other girls. I knew it was going to happen, sooner or later. That was just the way he was.

This relationship between him and I, it wasn’t supposed to mean anything, not to either of us. As long as I could hold him at arm’s length, we would be all right—we could both use the relationship to our advantage. I liked our dates; surprisingly enough, I liked spending time with him. Fantastic sex was a bonus. If we weren’t in an actual relationship, I didn’t have to let him develop into a distraction.

I clung to that idea as I fell into bed: I didn’t want a relationship because I didn’t need a distraction.

But for the first time, it felt like I was lying to myself.