After a negligent shrug, he stretches his neck side to side. It’s the dog who is watching me, bloodshot eyes pleading, begging me to say something to make his person feel better. I’m trying to decide what that should be, when the surf gives a thunderous crash.

I wait for the sound to die. “I’m sorry.”

Jack nods. “It happens.”

“That doesn’t make it easy. The frustration must be awful.”

He darts me a look. “Try anger.”

“Anger?”

“At the car that hit her. At the family that couldn’t keep her secure. And at myself. Maybe if I’d focused on her lungs. Maybe if I’d stabilized her before trying surgery. Maybe if I’d spared her the pain and euthanized her at the start. I knew her chances were slim.”

You tried, I want to repeat, but the words clearly hadn’t done much. “Were you trying to swim it off?” His hair and shorts are damp, and the sand spattering his lower legs says they’d been wet as well. When all he does is snort, I say, “Didn’t help? Not even a little?”

“For the time I was out there, yeah, the waves are that strong. Come ashore, though, and it’s waiting right fucking here.” He finally turns his head, eyes finding my breasts. “Sex would help.”

He is serious.

I am suddenly, acutely aware that he isn’t dressed, and that I desperately wish he were. Jack Sabathian wearing nothing but shorts is a sight to behold. My sisters thought him too rough, though Margo said this only after it became clear that he wasn’t interested in her. Rough, to them, meant too much of everything—height, breadth, physicality. It meant too brawny. It meant un-refined, though that had nothing to do with upbringing, or physique, and everything to do with attitude. Same with outspoken and abrasive. None of that had ever put me off.

All these years later, I feel the physical pull. It doesn’t help that his eyes have gone lower. It is all I can do not to press my legs together. But sex with no relationship behind it? Oh, I did that a time or two in New York—well protected, thank you—when I found a man hyper-attractive, but the details elude my memory. What I do remember is the emptiness of it. To feel that emptiness with Jack would break my heart. Better to preserve the memories we had than to dilute them with something less.

“Uh, no.” My voice lifts, gentle but firm.

His eyes rise. “Why not?”

“Because that was then.”

“But it was good.”

“It was.” I have to give him that. “Well, after the first time.”