There is sex and there is love, but this is an incredible combination of sex and love. I know he can’t love me—he doesn’t even know me—but the way he touches me is the way I want to be touched, and the way his body covers mine in bed is exactly right. I feel amazing. I feel… like me. Only good. Better.

I want all of it, all and everything, and everything he’ll give me. I don’t know why I thought this would be so awkward. It feels so natural, and I’m so comfortable with him. I kiss him as though he were really mine, as though he and I weren’t just strangers off a beach, and I give him some of my heart even though it makes no sense. But it just feels right to give him my heart since I’m giving him access to the rest of me.

But nothing lasts forever, not even great lovemaking, and when we finish the room seems very dark and very quiet. Kai seems extra quiet.

My heart squeezes up inside me, and everything feels different. I feel different. I can tell I’m missing a little piece of me. Shouldn’t have given him that bit of my heart. Shouldn’t have given him anything that would make me feel less. That would make me hurt. I’ve hurt too much these last two years, and I’m still not my old fighting self quite yet.

He rubs my back once, twice, and then with a pat, pat he’s climbing out. Leaving the bed. I’m not sure where he’s going, what he’s doing, and then I realize he’s picking up his clothes. He’s getting dressed.

My God. I suck in a breath, reeling a little on the inside. He’s leaving. Already. But of course it’s already, it’s not as if we’re a match made in heaven.

I bite my lip. I’d forgotten this part. Forgotten what it was like for a man to roll out of my bed and reach for pants while I just lie there hearing the zipper zip and the belt jingle.

When you’re married there’s no rolling out of bed into trousers or jeans. There’s no zipping of zippers while you’re still lying in bed in the dark, all warm body and warm emotions.

Shit.

I’d forgotten this, and all the warmth inside me is rapidly going cold.

Shit.

I feel dangerously close to tears as all hell breaks loose inside me. Be calm, Jack. Be cool. It was just sex, nothing else. But the sex had been good, really, really good, and he’d felt so good near me, with me, and I’d been so comfortable—

“You going to be all right, girl?”

Kai’s buttoning his white shirt now, letting the bottom hang out over his shorts.

“Yes.”