As I lay on his chest, back in his house, the two of us naked and tangled around each other like weeds, I could hear his heartbeat, fast and steady. I looked up into his eyes and wondered what kind of secrets he was hiding from me.

“You okay?” he asked languidly, the tiredness obvious in his voice.

It’d been a hell of a night, and I’d given him a hell of a workout as soon we got through the door. I wasn’t sure how much longer I would be able to stay in town, and I wanted to see if there something more permanent we could step into. Since I could easily become a freelancer, I could even be persuaded to move back to town.

“Just…” I trailed off, trying to think of a way to frame it. After what he’d done for me back at the party, I felt as though I had seen a side to Jesse that I’d never laid eyes on before. And I wanted to see more of it. “Tell me about yourself.” I grinned and watched him expectantly as a shadow flickered across his face.

“There’s nothing to tell. I’m just your ordinary mechanic.”

He was brushing me off. He tried to hide by letting his hand stray a little lower down my back suggestively, but I shook my head and pulled it away. Planting it firmly back on my waist, I looked up at him. “There must be something. You just turned up in this town out of nowhere. How did you end up here in the first place?”

“Fostered,” he replied curtly. There was also a touch of frost in his voice.

I furrowed my brow. “Oh, I didn’t realize you had a foster family. Who was it? Do I know them?”

“Nope,” he replied, shaking his head, his jaw set. It was clear that he really didn’t want to talk about this.

Then I knew I wouldn’t be able to coax the truth out of him no matter how hard I tried. Jesse only did the things that Jesse wanted to do, and that didn’t involve telling me anything he didn’t want to.

“So what can you tell me?” I wasn’t giving up. I pressed gently. “I feel like I don’t know anything about you.”

“You don’t,” he replied bluntly.

My heart ached in my chest at his words. He didn’t seem to think it was a bad thing to lock me out.

He fell silent for a long moment, as if considering something.

“But I want to,” I implored hopefully. “You know so much about me—”

“Your family makes it hard not to,” he shot back.

“I know things were different for us growing up, but I want to know you,” I went on. “You don’t have to tell me everything, just tell me…just tell me something.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. Tell me about your brother, or your father, your dreams.”

“Look, I really don’t want to talk. Can we continue just having fun? No need to bog it down with the shit that happened years ago.”

“I…” I stopped myself before I could come out and say it, before I could express my hurt over the apparent fact that this was all just a causal thing to him. “It’s just, the way you were with Mark.” I shook my head. “It seemed like—”

“I just don’t like it when I see people touching people who don’t want it,” he cut me off. “Simple as that. Would have done it for anyone.”

“Right,” I murmured, and I fell silent for a long moment. I guess I had mistaken sex for real feelings. It hurt like crazy, but maybe he was right. I had my life back in the city, and he had his life down here. More importantly, he would hurt me in the end. If I moved back here and he found another woman, it would kill me to see him with her.

Saying nothing, I listened to the steady pulse of his heart beneath my head. I knew it should have comforted me, but instead it served as a reminder. A reminder of everything he held in his heart that he would never tell me. He would never be mine, not properly. In fact, I wasn’t even sure he could belong to anyone in a serious way, given that he never seemed to want to go past the superficial.

It was what Kayla said when he had first turned up at that bar. He was the kind of guy you had fun with, then moved on and married someone else. Had he ever had a serious girlfriend in his life? Hell, had anyone ever come close enough to figuring out what was going on in that closed-off head of his?

“This is just fun, right?” he reminded me. As though I’d needed it underlined. “We’re just having fun.”

“Right,” I agreed slowly, even though it hurt to concede that point. I’d been the first one to say it, and now I wanted nothing more than to reel it back to the start and begin again. To do it properly, let myself love him from the start.

“We should go out for lunch tomorrow,” he suggested, as if the last few seconds of our conversation hadn’t just happened. “Could be fun. See what state the town’s in after what happened tonight.”

“Yeah sure,” I agreed, and felt a shiver of apprehension for the future go through me.

“You all right?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “Let’s sleep for a bit.”

He brought his arm around me, and soon enough his breathing smoothed. He had fallen into a deep sleep, but I lay there, on his chest, eyes open while staring into the dark, and wondering what the hell kind of secrets, this man was hiding. Wondering if I would ever find out what they were.