At length, his gaze met mine again. “Fine. We’ll play truth or dare.”

“You want to make this a game?”

“I…I need an escape hatch.” The buoyant energy he’d displayed earlier disappeared. He was completely still. It was the first time I’d seen him so vulnerable. Not even when we’d made love, not even when he’d said I love you had his expression conveyed such deep-rooted self-preservation. Alex inspected me as if he could see our future written across my features. “Truth or dare,” he repeated.

I gave in to the idea of playing a game, but I knew that truth or dare would not get the job done. “No,” I stated bluntly. “We’re not playing that, because you’ll pick the dare every time.”

“Okay, then what do you propose?”

I thought for a moment, tried to come up with something fair, not too threatening. “How about we take turns saying something about ourselves? It can be real or it can be made up. Then the other person has to guess whether it’s true or false.”

“What do I have to do if I guess wrong or if you guess right?” Alex studied me with a measured look. Even in a game, he needs to know all possible outcomes, I mused.

Nonetheless, I was determined. “If I guess correctly, then I get to ask you a question, and you have to tell me the truth.”

He was shaking his head even before I finished. “No.”

“No? Why not? And don’t tell me it’s for my safety, because I promise not to ask you about your hacker past.”

“I don’t want you asking me questions.”

I huffed and sputtered. “Well, what do you propose as your forfeit?”

“I’ll tell you something true, but you don’t get to dictate what it is.”

I stared at him for a long moment. He stared back. His face was expressionless, blank.

It wasn’t much, but it was something. It would have to do…for now.

“Fine…fine—that’s fine.”

He cleared his throat. “What will your forfeit be?”

“Same as yours. If you guess right, then I’ll tell you something true.”

Again, he was already shaking his head before I finished. “No. Not good enough.”

“What?! Why?”

He just shook his head, his lips firm.

“Well then, what do you propose for my forfeit if you guess right or if I guess wrong?”

He lowered his voice and his eyes narrowed slightly, sharpened. “I’ll ask you to do something I want.”

At his words, heat suffused my chest, and my heart rate spiked. I met his somber stare, but I was forced to take a deep breath before I could respond without a squeak in my voice.

“Can you be more specific?”

He shook his head, arrested my gaze, unyielding as granite.

I huffed again, gritting my teeth as I rebelled at the idea of blindly agreeing to some future unknown whim or favor. What if he wanted me to clean his apartment, or worse—have anal sex?

Just…no.

“You can’t expect me to just write you a blank check,” I said. “I gotta have something, some idea before I agree to this. Can you give me an example?”

As he considered me, his gaze shifted to my hand, which was still holding the sheet like a protective cocoon. “It won’t be anything illegal.”

“Oh, well, in that case, fine!” I mock laughed, mock shrugged, waved my free hand through the air mockingly. “Fine, fine—as long as it’s not illegal, of course I’ll do anything as long as it’s not illegal, because that’s really the only line of concern to be crossed, isn’t it?”

His mouth twitched, but he added, “Or painful. It won’t be illegal or painful.”

“But, really, what’s the point of doing anything unless it’s illegal or painful?” To my surprise, my voice was louder than I intended and infused with half sarcasm, half anger.

Yeah. I was definitely feeling all over the place.

He reached for me, held me by the shoulders, attempted to still my movements. “And I promise you can say no.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, I did still my movements. I blinked at him. “I can say no?”

He nodded. “Yes. You can say no.”

“No hard feelings?” This time it was my eyes that narrowed.

He smiled, small and sweetly, stuffed his hands in his pockets. “No. No hard feelings.”

“Hmm….” I contemplated this and studied him with my experienced shrink-Sandra eyes. I finally determined that I felt this game was fair. At last, I stuck my hand out for him to shake—which he did.

He motioned to the living room. I turned, walked to it, surveyed my options, and decided on a chair next to the couch. The last thing I needed was him touching me before I had a chance to learn something about him.

He appeared to be amused by my choice and claimed the other single chair in the room—opposite mine across the length of the coffee table.

“I’ll go first,” I said, and waited for him to offer an objection. When he did not, I said something true—convinced he would guess wrong. “I lost my virginity at fifteen to a seventeen-year-old.”

Alex choked, his mouth falling open in plain shock. “Sandra…!”

“True or false?”

He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped in front of him, and studied me. He said, “False.”

“Wrong. It’s true.”

He frowned, and I watched as his eyes moved over me with compassion. “I knew it was true. I just wanted it to be false.”

His words stung a little, and I looked away. I didn’t feel ashamed. Losing my virginity wasn’t an act I’d ever romanticized. From a young age, growing up around animals, it seemed like something to cross off a list rather than an expression of affection and respect between two people. I’d wanted it over and done.

I cleared my throat, waved my hand in the air. “Okay. Your forfeit, please.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “I thought you were a plant, a narc, when you first started coming to the restaurant.”

My eyebrows did weird things on my forehead as I attempted to understand his statement. I blurted, “What? Why?”

“Like I said earlier, you were too perfect. I thought it was a set-up.”

“I still don’t get this; how was I perfect?”

A spark of something electric ignited his eyes, “Gorgeous, green-eyed, loud-mouthed female who makes men cry comes in every other Friday night for years. Wears only sexy dresses, high heels, and discusses topics such as Star Wars parenting theory, karaoke as foreplay, sleep obsession, the phallic qualities of knitting and crochet tools, and the continuing status of Pakistan as a viable US ally. All this and she couldn’t be bothered to give me the time of day. You were perfect. You were a fantasy.”

I buried my face in my hands because I didn’t want him to see me smile. “I’m a fantasy.” I repeated it. I thought about getting stickers made.

“Yes, you are, Sandra. But I thought they’d set it up—invented you. I thought you were one of them.”

“They being…?”

“Take your pick: NSA, FBI, CIA, MI-6.”

“This is crazy.” I leaned back in the chair, met his gaze, now unencumbered by the glasses that he usually wore. His mask was off.

“I thought this kind of stuff was only for movies and bodice-rippers. But then you’d be a one-eyed duke, and I’d be a plucky orphaned governess, and we’d be fighting French spies in Regency England.”

“I’ve never known any different. Paranoid is my normal.” He shrugged.

“How can that be? It’s not like you were born this way.”

Alex’s mouth firmed and something passed behind his eyes. “Okay…my turn.”

His desire to change the subject was not lost on me, but I let him anyway, unchallenged. I shelved it for later.

He licked his lips then took a deep breath. “Do you remember when I told you those three stories at the coffee shop after we saw Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I remember—the one about the wolf, your father, and the boy.”

He glanced away. When he spoke again, his voice was barely audible. “The story about the boy is true.”

The silence resulting from his confession was like a third person in the room. I don’t think either of us was actually breathing.

When I began to feel lightheaded, I forced myself to inhale. “What…what did you say?”

His eyes met mine, and everything about him felt different, like he was suddenly a stranger. “The story about the boy was true. When I was eight, I killed him in self-defense.”

“What?!” I fought to swallow. “Oh, my God,” I said on a long, exhaled breath, and my next words were an autopilot reaction. “But how? Why were you…was he your brother?”

He shook his head, glanced at his hands like he hadn’t seen them in a long time, and said, “Foster brother.”

“You were…you were in foster care?”

He nodded, his hands still absorbing all his attention.

“Why were you in foster care?”

“My biological father went to prison, and my mother died in a car accident when I was five. I had no other family, so they put me in a home until he was released.”