Chapter 45

"What do you want me to say?" He demanded heavily. "I’m a 34-year-old man, and I did not embrace celibacy while getting to this age."

"I didn’t think you did," Charley said stiffly. "I just didn’t—"

She stopped, taking a bite out of her bottom lip, because she knew what she had been about to say sounded stupid and immature and totally unfair—but she just hadn’t thought about Adelina with him in that way. She didn’t even know why it should matter to her so much, yet it did.

"With Adelina, it was just—"

"Don’t," she choked, not needing to hear him compare the two of them as if they were—

"No," he sighed, hunching his shoulders and turning away from her, his stance weary and bleak.

Then—"No," he said again, spinning back to face her again. His chin jutted, and his expression turned fierce. "I am going to say it," he insisted, "because I think it needs to be said." Adelina and I were engaged to be married, so of course we were intimate. This is the twenty-first century, Cara, an age