Page 107 of Absolute Certainty
Trying to withhold a smile, she turned back to him. “You think my eyes are pretty?” she asked, a hint of cheekiness in her voice to contrast the shock it sent to her bloodstream.Had any of her exes ever commented on her eyes before?
It was always her body with others. Sometimes, her smile.
Occasionally and stereotypically, her accent if they were American.If she recalled correctly, no one had ever called her eyes pretty.
“I think a lot of things about you are pretty,” he answered candidly, chancing a glance at her as he took his foot off the brake. “But that’s not why I want to know everything about you.”
“Further details would bore you, so they’re better kept under lock and key. But thank you,” she said.
Another irritating halt in the road slowed him down. “No detail about you would bore me.”
“Get me drunk enough, and you might get them then.”
Tilting his head, he cocked an eyebrow at her. “That adds up. You like me better when there’s alcohol in your system.”
She let out a loud laugh. If nothing else, the fact that their conversations could be unfiltered like this made her feel better about everything.
“I like you without alcohol, too. I just seem to think less when it’s present.”
“That can be arranged,” he declared with a wink.That bloody fucking wink.
Sahar grabbed her coffee again, taking another sip. In all fairness, conversations mattered, and if Jay were willing to give her parts of him, then maybe, just maybe, it’d be easier for her to give parts of herself back. “Okay. Answer this question, and I’ll answer whatever you want. Have you ever had your heart broken?”
“Straight for the jugular, I see.”
“Are we surprised?”
Dropping his gaze toward her first, Jay sighed. “My last serious girlfriend. Her name was Lillian. About five-ish years ago, I think. I really liked her, but I was closed off, so I’m mostly to blame. She tried to fight for us, and I just sort of didn’t.” He punctuated the last word with a tinge of regret.
“She was moving away for her residency, and the idea of being far away sort of snapped me back in, so Iwas willing to do the whole long-distance thing. We’d been in LA at the time, but understandably, she didn’t think it was worth it anymore.”
Sahar’s face fell. She wasn’t sure how to respond.
“If she wanted to give things a try today, would you?”
He eyed her for a second, then looked at the road again. “No, I wouldn’t. We were two completely different people back then, and I’m sure that’s still the case today. Plus, her dad hated me.”
That made her double-take, wondering if she’d heard correctly. “I’m sorry, what? Why?” Protectiveness made her voice grow louder.
He’s not asking you to fight his battles for him. Relax.Shifting her body, she eyed the road, too.
“She comes from a long line of medical professionals. Everyone in her family is a specialist of some kind, so I was just some loser making movies who needed to grow up.”
Her pupils blew wide. “Did he say that to you?”
Jay replied with a slow nod.
“And didshedefend you?”
More traffic allowed him to look at her again. “Yeah, she did. I don’t think it’s something that got to her in the beginning, but it would have eventually, you know? We would have probably clashed over her stability and my lack thereof on certain occasions.”
Sahar felt herself growing angrier.Relax. He’s not yours to defend.
“Does Maya’s family give you grief over that, too? Since she’s a pediatrician.”
He shook his head. “Nah, Maya’s family is great. Granted, we aren’t together, but they’ve never cared. Lillian’s family, unfortunately, always did. He hated me the day he met me. On top of that, I had a three-year-old from another woman. His judgments used to bother Lillian as well.”
Jay’s hand wasresting on the gear shift, so she reached forward and held on, incapable of not doingsomething.Then, for a fleeting second, she wished for him to lace their fingers together—lift her hand up to his lips.
