“I’m an open book.”
“Liar.” But she smiled. “Why the dating site? A guy who looks like you, who’s traveled the world, who can actually hold a conversation—you’re not exactly hurting for options.”
Oh. And he couldn’t bear the real reason, so he swallowed and asked, “Honest answer?”
“I’m only interested in honest answers.”
He turned the wine glass between his fingers. Chose his words. “I spent a long time not letting people in. Work made it easy—always moving, always on the next job. But somewhere along the way, I looked up and realized I’d built a life that was very efficient and very empty.” He met her eyes. “The site felt... intentional. A choice to try something different.”
The silence between them changed. Thickened. She searched his face for something—the lie, maybe, or the truth underneath it.
The worst part was that most of what he’d said was real.
“I know what you mean,” she said quietly. “About the efficient and empty part.”
“Yeah?”
“This town runs on purpose. Everyone has a mission, a cause, a five-year plan. It’s easy to fill your life with things that matter on paper and still come home to an apartment that feels like no one lives there.” She ran her thumb along the stem of herwine glass. “I got on that site because a coworker told me I was becoming my job. And I couldn’t argue with her.”
“Sounds like a good friend.”
“She’s insufferable. But Ruby’s usually right.”
He laughed, and it surprised him—not the performance of laughter, the real thing, pulled from somewhere he’d forgotten existed.
She noticed. Tilted her head again, that analyst’s gaze sharpening. “You’re very good at this, you know.”
His pulse ticked up. “At what?”
“At making people feel like the most interesting person in the room. You ask questions. You listen. You remember details and weave them back in. It’s...” She paused. “Most people don’t do that.”
The air between them went still.
He held her gaze. Didn’t blink. “Maybe I’m just interested.”
“Maybe.” She didn’t look away either. “Or maybe you’ve had a lot of practice being interesting.”
He could deflect—a joke, a redirect, the charming pivot that always worked on people who weren’t paying close enough attention.
But Sophia Randall was paying attention. And the deflection would tell her more than the truth.
“Both,” he said. “I’ve had practice. But tonight, with you—I’m not practicing.”
She held his gaze for another second. Then nodded, slowly, as if she’d weighed his answer on some internal scale and found it—not convincing, exactly. But worth another chance.
“Okay.” She picked up her fork. “Then tell me something true. Something you wouldn’t put on a dating profile.”
Something true.
He reached past the cover stories and the operational parameters and the careful architecture of who he was supposedto be tonight, and found something small and real, lodged deep where he kept the things that hurt.
“I had someone once.” The words came out lower than he intended. “A long time ago. She was... she was the only person who ever made the world feel quiet.”
Sophia set down her fork.
“I lost her. And after that, I told myself the work was enough. That staying busy was the same as being alive.” He lifted a shoulder. “It’s not. But it took me a very long time to admit that.”
The restaurant hummed around them—silverware clinking, the students arguing louder now, the waiter uncorking a bottle two tables over. Outside, the rain had picked up, drumming against the windows, turning the Georgetown streetscape into streaks of gold and shadow.