“What do you mean he just left?”

I picked at my salad, not really wanting to eat it; my appetite was obliterated. After consuming nearly an entire pizza by myself the previous night, I wasn’t in the mood to eat anything for about a week. But Lucia asked me to join her for lunch and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to tell her about my disaster of an evening.

“He just left. No word, no nothing. First he’s nice and then he’s a complete dick…”

Lucia sat back against the wrought-iron chair, her expression one of surprise. “So you slept with him then.”

My cheeks flushed as I thought about the steamy encounter in my bathroom before it, too, had gotten out of hand.

“Well I don’t know if you can call it that. It was hot, raw sex against my bathroom counter.”

Lucia laughed. “God I haven’t had hot sex against the counter since I got pregnant. Jacob is once again thinking he’s going to hurt the baby if he, well, you know.”

I burst out into laughter, thinking of how pissed Lucia had been the first time around with her husband. “I’m sorry.”

“I love him,” she sighed, pushing away her empty plate. “But sometimes I just want to strangle his thick neck. He has the weirdest notions, I tell you. Before, though, he’d be bending me over anything that doesn’t move.”

“Okay, enough,” I giggled, holding up my hand. While I knew that my best friend had a pretty healthy sex life, I didn’t want to hear the details. Especially since mine was so complicated and very seriously lacking. “At least you have Jacob.”

“Yeah,” Lucia said, that soft smile coming over her face. “You’re right. He’s pretty special.”

“I just wish I could figure out Luke,” I sighed, pushing my salad away. I didn’t understand why he was so difficult to, well, understand. He was so much more than a mere construction worker who apparently loved baseball. There was something deeper, something that he was desperately trying to hide.

“I don’t want to sound like a broken record,” Lucia continued. “But are you sure he’s not hiding a wife and ten kids somewhere? That could have been who was on the phone.”

I shook my head, though I really didn’t know if I was right or not. “I doubt it. I think he would have been caught by now.”

“Maybe,” Lucia said with a shrug. “Maybe not, but I’m not saying that’s what’s wrong with him. Actually, I kind of like the guy.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I admitted, thinking about his handsome profile.

After he had left last night I had been pissed initially, attacking the pepperoni pizza like a woman scorned. But then I grew worried, thinking about the man who had comforted me after my freak-out and the man who had flown out of my apartment like the devil was on his heels. They weren’t the same guy. It was almost like he was a man torn between two realities. I wanted to help him, but to do that, I had to know what was eating him alive.

The therapist in me wanted to fix it with soothing words. The woman in me wanted to lock him up in handcuffs chained to my bed until I fucked it out of him. “What if he never tells me, Lucia? I can’t live like that.”

“No one could,” Lucia agreed, sympathy crossing her face. “I wouldn’t be able to stand it if Jacob had some secret life he wasn’t telling me about. You have to have trust in any relationship.” She leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “Do you think he will talk to me?”

“No,” I said honestly. Whatever it was, it was far deeper than a few therapy sessions. “Besides, you would hold it over my head and use the whole patient-therapist confidentiality thing against me.”

“I would not!” Lucia laughed, throwing her straw paper toward me. I arched my brow and she grinned. “Okay, maybe I would. I would be bound by law to keep silent.”

“That’s why he’s not coming to see you until he tells me,” I reiterated. She stuck out her tongue as the waitress brought us our checks, and we spent a few moments arguing over whose turn it was to pay for lunch until I conceded and let her pay. “What am I going to do, Lucia?”

“You are going to keep your distance but remain engaged,” she said, spouting some therapist crap at me like I didn’t know what she was trying to do. Those words meant “I have no idea what you should do but doesn’t it sound good.” I had used it a few times myself in a couple of sessions.

“Thanks,” I said dryly as we made our way back to the office. “You’re such a big help.”

“That’s what I am here for,” Lucia said cheerfully, choosing to ignore my sarcasm. “Seriously though. If he’s unwilling to tell you anything about who he really is, then cut him from your life. You don’t need that shit.”

I nodded and hung a left turn into my office, surprised as I looked at my desk. A beautiful arrangement of wild flowers sat on the corner, the vibrant colors making the room feel brighter. Instantly I felt my heart melt at the sight, knowing exactly who they were from. Could I cut him from my life? Flowers weren’t going to give him a get-out-of-jail-free card… but it was a start.

“Hey, Cara, whoa,” Lucia said from the doorway, looking at the arrangement as she held a newspaper in her hand. “If that’s not an apology, I don’t know what is.”

“I know,” I said softly, walking over to finger a soft petal of the sunflower that dominated the arrangement. There was no card of any sort on the arrangement, but one wasn’t needed. Maybe, just maybe, this could work out. But I was deluding myself. I shook my head, dropping my hand and looking at Lucia. “You’re right. I can’t be with someone I don’t trust, Lucia.”

Lucia put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed them gently. “I know that, but doesn’t he look pretty damn awesome in baseball attire?”

“You’re a little shallow, you know?”

“So sue me,” she said with a giggle. “Here, look.”

I looked down at the paper that she was holding out in front of me, a black-and-white photo of the entire team that participated in the charity event gracing the page. It wasn’t difficult to locate Luke, standing in the back row next to a grinning Jacob. Luke’s expression wasn’t necessarily a grin though, it was more along the lines of shock, which had me wondering all over again what the hell he was hiding.

“Jacob is over the moon with the response they got from the event,” Lucia was saying as I stared at the one man in the photo that I wanted to see more of. “He’s already getting calls from people who want to sign up for next year’s event.”

“Maybe he should host more events for every kind of sport then,” I mused, turning away from the photo. “That way he will have enough slots.”

Lucia tucked the paper under her arm and gave me a grin. “You are awesome. I am going to text him right now.”

I shook my head as I watched her bounce happily out of the office, wishing for once that I had both the energy and the life that my best friend had. I knew they had their own issues, but man she and Jacob made the entire relationship/marriage thing look so easy.

With a sigh, I turned back to the flowers, not sure how to proceed. What if I never found out what his deal was? Could I live with that? Did I want to?

What if it was something dangerous that, if we progressed that far, would eventually put our family’s lives in danger? Perhaps even James’ life, if I was ever going to be allowed to be part of his life.

Surely Luke wouldn’t take that kind of chance or maybe that was the whole reason he was pushing me away. Or it could be something much simpler and he didn’t consider what was between us anything other than sex?

I wasn’t looking for total commitment, at least not right away, but damn a girl had to start somewhere.