Chapter 61

“Okay. But truth is our thing, right?”

“And pride. The first time we almost did it, though, back at your estate, beside your lake, you said you’d waited seventeen years. So that wasn’t true?”

“That wasn’t about sex. That was about something else.”

“What?”

“More than sex. Look. The leaf guy was…”

“I’m the leaf guy now. Leaves are us. We’re leaves. Call him something else.”

Mathias huffed again. He still didn’t seem angry at all, but rather overwhelmed with frustration, maybe not all sexual. “Our gardener’s assistant…he wasn’t all that much older than I was. I went out to talk to him. I told you I was lonely. It was bound to happen. Couldn’t be helped. Sex is attention…and I was starving for that.”

“So just half a semester in Psych 101 you have yourself all figured out?”