“I care about you.” His eyes held hers. “A lot. I’m worried you don’t feel the same about me because I haven’t heard from you for a week.”

“I . . .” She selected her words the way she’d carefully choose shells on a beach. “I care about you, too. I didn’t call you because it seems to me that parting ways at this point is the wisest step.”

His mouth thinned. “Why?”

“Because our . . . connection was supposed to be carefree and fun.”

“It is carefree and fun.” He spoke in a voice so much the opposite of carefree and fun that she laughed.

“No,” she insisted, “it’s not.”

“Your time with me in Atlanta wasn’t fun?”

“It was fun—up until we argued. It hasn’t been fun since then. Potentially worse, though . . . my feelings for you are no longer as lighthearted as I’d have them be.”

“Explain to me why it’s important to you that your feelings for me stay lighthearted.”

“So many reasons.”

“I’d like to hear them all.”

“Well, before I’d feel comfortable allowing my feelings for you to become more . . . entrenched, I’d want to have some assurance that you’ll be able to let me in. Otherwise, what are we doing here? We’re wasting our time because we’re destined for failure.”

He seemed to weigh her point of view. “I’ve been letting you in. As much as I can. This is me, letting you in.”

“And what about trust? Do you think you’ll be able to bring yourself to trust me?” She hastened to add, “I won’t blame you if the answer’s no. If the answer’s no, I’ll understand why.”

“Look, I can’t stand here with a straight face and tell you that I’m skilled at relationships. I’m not. But I can tell you that I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I think about you all day. In any given moment, I’m more worried about your happiness than my own. Food tastes terrible to me. I can’t concentrate. Markie has accused me of waking up on the wrong side of the bed every day this week.” He scratched the back of his neck. “You’re worried about taking this to the next level, and I get it—because so am I. I’m worried enough about where this is going that I’ve been losing sleep over it. But here’s what it comes down to for me: I’m willing to lose sleep over it. The thing I am not willing to lose right now . . . is you.”

Oh dear. Her inhibitions were swooning like Victorian women.

“I can’t guarantee that I can be what you want me to be or anything else about the future,” he continued. “We won’t know what’s going to happen with us until we let it happen.”