My doorbell chimed as I tugged a set of yellow rubber gloves from my hands. Tossing them into the empty sink, I tucked a wayward strand of hair behind my ear as I crossed the living room to open my front door.

“Hey you.” David gripped a bunch of my favorite flowers in one hand and a bottle of expensive wine in the other. “I come bearing gifts.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever been happier to see you.” I grabbed hold of the wine bottle and cradled it to my chest. “My precious,” I said, using my best Smoegel voice as David laughed and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

“Rough day?”

I tossed a look over my shoulder and as I made my way to the wine cabinet in the corner of my living room. “A story broke about one of the mayoral candidates, which had me rushing around all morning trying to get someone to speak with me. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I also had breakfast with my mom.”

The cork popped and I poured the wine into two glasses, adding an extra splash to mine. I’d definitely earned it. Grabbing them by the stems, I met David in the kitchen, where he was putting the flowers in a vase.

“That bad?” he asked.

I nodded and took my first sip, sighing with pleasure when the ripe hints of cherry and leather hit my taste buds. “She kept asking about my love life. Apparently, she wants to set me up on a blind date with one of your dad’s friends’ sons.”

“Which one?” he asked, a raised eyebrow visible over the rim of his glass. Those two words held a note of barely restrained frustration.

Not that I could blame him. The only reason my mom was trying to set me up with someone in the first place was because she was operating under the misguided belief that I was single.  

And ever since she’d found out that David and I had grown friendly, she’d been worried that my little crush—as she’d called it—would only lead to heartbreak and disappointment. Rather than trying to make her see reason, it had seemed easier to let her assume things were one-sided.

David, suffice it to say, had not been a fan of this approach. The fact that my mom was no longer talking in the abstract about me getting back out there, couldn’t have been easy for him.  

“Scott somebody or other. Markowski, I think.”

David groaned and rolled his eyes. “He’s a coke-head and a philanderer. His wife left him when pictures surfaced of him doing lines off a stripper’s ass.”

I nearly spit out my wine. “What?”

“Everybody knows.”

“Everybody except your dad, it seems.”

His eyes turned to frost. “No, he definitely knows. They have the same divorce attorney.”

I stared down into my glass, trying to keep him from seeing my disgust at his father’s matchmaking skills. If Richard knew Scott was a lying, cheating douchebag, why had he recommend my mom set me up with him?

“It doesn’t matter,” David said, tugging me between his knees, “since you’re not going out with him.”

I laughed. “I’m definitely not.”

His eyes narrowed as he settled his broad palms on either side of my hips. “Because you already have a boyfriend?”

I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement. Sometimes I had a hard time reading him.

“I do,” I said, nodding and playing along. At least I thought we were playing.

The possessive gleam in David’s eye as he stared up at me made me wonder. It also made me shiver in spite of the fire blazing in the next room.

“And my boyfriend’s waaaaay hotter than stupid Scott Markowski,” I added, hoping to lighten the mood.

David’s thumbs bit into my flesh at the sound of the other man’s name, but then he released his hold on me. “You wouldn’t actually go out with some other guy, would you?”

“What? No. Of course not,” I answered, settling into the chair across the table from him. “How can you even ask me that?”

“It’s just that …” He trailed off, his gaze sliding away to focus on a spot over my shoulder.

This was happening more and more frequently the past couple of weeks. If we reached a difficult point in the conversation, he’d seemingly change his mind and veer the discussion in a different direction.

Well, not this time. “It’s just what?” I pressed, desperate to hear the end of that sentence.

“It’s just that we haven’t talked about what this is. Are we exclusive?”

I let out a laugh, repeating the asinine question under my breath. “What do you think?”

“I think,” he began so slowly that I could practically see the wheels turning in his head, “that maybe it’s time we figured out what it is we’re doing here.”

“I thought we were doing each other.” I waggled my eyebrows suggestively, but it didn’t produce the reaction I’d expected.

His face remained blank for several long seconds, and then he blinked … long and slow. “Except we’re not. Not since you found out about my divorce.”

Shots fired. Target hit.

I knew we’d need to talk about that at some point, but as the days had worn on, it had seemed harder and harder to casually drop our lack of a sex life into the conversation. Ironically, the situation had given me new appreciation for how David must have felt when he’d failed to tell me about Stacia.

I’d forgiven him that lie of omission. I really had. But it had made me realize that we’d gone about our relationship pretty backwards. The list of things I knew about him—and vice versa—was significantly shorter than the list of things I didn’t. And so I’d kind-of-sort-of decided we shouldn’t have sex again until we got to know each other better.

“About that—“

“—I feel like you’re punishing me.”

Speaking at the same time, we both stopped mid-sentence.

“I’m sorry. You go first.” He gestured for me to continue.

“You think I’m punishing you?” It took everything I had to get the words out. Never in a million years had that been my intention. I was trying to save our relationship, not destroy it. The fact that’s what he’d thought made me feel horrible.

He scrubbed his palm over his jaw and then looped it around the back of his neck. With his head dropped slightly forward, he glanced up at me. “Yeah, sometimes.”

My own jaw hung loose. “I’m … that’s … why …” I sat further back in my chair and tried to recover. “No. that’s not it at all.”

“I know I fucked up, and I don’t blame you. I just want to know what I can do to make things right between us.”

My shoulders dropped and my chest deflated. I reached across the table to take hold of his hand. “I’m not punishing you … not any more so than I’m punishing myself. I just think …” My sentence died on my lips.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to tell him we should wait to become intimate again. My brain knew it was the right thing to do, but my heart—and my lady parts—weren’t necessarily in agreement.

“You think?” he encouraged when I didn’t immediately continue, his shoulders tight … as if he was bracing himself for bad news.

I blew out a breath. If I couldn’t bring myself to have a mature, adult conversation about our relationship, I wasn’t ready to be in a relationship. It was just that it’d been so damn long since I’d had one that I was rusty and out of practice. Baring your innermost feelings was never easy at the best of times; doing so when things were so unsettled was even more difficult.

“I like you, David. I probably even love you.”

He winced and pulled his hand from mine. His face shut down, his eyes dimming as he crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “Hmm, and here I thought we’d already said our ‘I love yous.’”

This was the moment I’d been avoiding. We’d rushed headlong into the whole I love you thing without really knowing one another, and now it felt like I was backtracking. Well, not backtracking so much as hitting pause. But I needed to make sure that’s what this actually was. If I was going to cause a huge rift with mother with my choice of partner, I needed to know it was worth it.

I thought David was … but I needed more time to be sure.

“I know. And I meant it. But …” I dropped my eyes to the table and drew circles with the pad of my finger. God, this was so much more difficult when he was sitting across from me.

I’d practiced this conversation in my head countless times until I thought I knew what to say, but now that it was happening, I couldn’t seem to find my words.

“But what, Victoria?” His voice was hard, his tone gruff.

I raised my eyes back up and squared my shoulders. “If we do this—” I wagged my finger between us “—that’s it for me. The next time I say those words to you, I want them to be forever. So until I know that’s what this really is, I think we need to take a step back.”

“A step back.” He shook his head, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What happened to moving forward?”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” I told him, praying he would understand where I was coming from. “When we’re alone and naked in bed, I know you’re the one for me. No one’s ever made me feel the way you do. But when we’re not in bed, you have to admit things are a little less defined. I don’t actually know that much about you. Like, what’s your favorite meal? Or, what do you think about the Patriots? You know, for example.”

“I hate football.”

“See, me too. But I didn’t know that about you.”

His shoulders drooped. “I knew that about you.”

“How? We’ve literally never had a conversation where we talked about football, or how much I hate Tom Brady’s smug face.”

He stared at me for a beat, and there was so much written in his expression that it nearly broke me: disappointment, realization, heartbreak, and determination. I had to look away.

“Not specifically, no,” he finally answered. “But last week when we were on our way to the movies, you and Theo were texting and he must have said something about the game because you shook your head and said, ‘He knows I fucking hate the Patriots’ as you typed out your response.”

My palms dropped to the table in surprise. “But that was like a two-second comment made under my breath. How did you … what did … ugh.” I cringed, and then opened one eye to peer at him. “It was a throwaway comment.”

He nodded. “It was.”

All at once disappointment washed over me. I was a terrible girlfriend. Even worse, I was a horrible person. I’d been acting like some sort of sanctimonious asshole by withholding sex because I was supposedly worried about intimacy. Meanwhile, it was my fault our relationship lacked true intimacy. “I am a no-good, terrible, horrible person.”

David’s lips hitched to the side in a sad smile. “And just like I know you can’t stand the Patriots, I also know that’s your immediate reaction when you feel like you’re not holding up your end of a bargain. Your brother comes out to you, and even though you said all the right things, you still feel bad because maybe you didn’t say enough right things.”

He continued listing off all the recent times I’d come to a similar conclusion about myself. As he did, I realized I had some deep seated self-esteem issues that I probably needed to talk to someone about—professionally.

“You take three days to return an email from someone who only writes to you to brag about her fabulous life, and you feel horrible that you didn’t immediately respond to congratulate her. Your mom’s been married six times, and you feel like a terrible daughter because you’re worried that if we’re together she doesn’t get to be happy too. News flash: you’re not a horrible person. You’re actually a terrific person … just one who could stand work on her communications skills.”

I rested my elbows on the table and dropped my face into my palms. “I’m terrible at this.”

David pulled my hands away. “It’s true; you’re not great.” He chuckled. “But I’m not going anywhere, Victoria. Even if you’re not ready to say it, I am. I love you, and I want this to work. You just have to talk to me.”

I nodded and felt a tear slide down my cheek. “Right now I kind of hate you.”

He smirked, so I knew he didn’t believe the obvious lie. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because you’re so much better at this than I am.”

He pushed up out of his chair and dropped down into a crouch next to me. Wiping an errant tear from my cheek, he placed a quick, soft kiss to my lips. “Stick with me, babe, and you’ll be an expert in no time.”