Chapter 24: Olivia
The next morning, we both sleep in. It’s a rare occurrence for Davis, but I don’t draw attention to it. Based on the way he immediately begins to kiss me as soon as I open my eyes, I suspect that he’s been awake for a while but stayed in bed for my sake. I want to tell him how sweet that is—that no guy has ever waited around just for the privilege of watching me wake up. But after last night, I sense that Davis is still uneasy about trusting me; my words might just confuse him.
I choose to go with the flow, which is hardly a sacrifice on my part. We don’t have to be online until business opens on the East Coast, so Davis orders room service and tells me that the morning belongs to us. After breakfast, we shower together and then we spend the morning at the Rijksmuseum.
The late morning and the afternoon belong to Davenport-Ridgeway. We set up our laptops on the balcony and enjoy the mild summer afternoon, taking in the canal views as we email and catch up on other projects. For most of the day and into the evening, Davis’s phone flashes nonstop with the emails that simultaneously pop up in his inbox. There’s a mild vibration against the tabletop where we work, an omnipresent reminder that this company is his life. His everything.
When the sun starts to tilt towards sunset, Davis lets out a big sigh before he takes a drink from his cup of coffee. “Ugh,” he murmurs with a grimace as he puts down the cup. “That’s really cold.”
“No shit. You’ve been nursing it since noon. It’s almost six.”
Davis glances down at the clock on the corner of his laptop screen. “You’re right,” he notes, shrugging like this is a common occurrence in his life. “Should we talk about dinner?”
“What’s there to talk about?” I reply. “We’re obviously getting frites.”
He lets out a laugh and he really is so fucking fine when he’s happy. “Works for me.”
A couple hours later, we’re heading back to the hotel with a large cone of frites each. The sun is beginning to set over the canals and the midweek evening slowly turns over into nightlife. We pass a few stag parties and hen dos in their preliminary stages: nobody has blacked out yet. As we move out of the stampede path of a particularly rowdy group of women, I tell Davis all about that bride I saved from getting her stomach pumped when I was staying in that hostel eight years ago. He chuckles along with me until I tell him that I was awake that early because I couldn’t stop reading the text he sent me. After that, Davis stops eating his frites so that he can put one arm around my shoulders and keep me close.
When we return to the hotel, he suggests we go out for drinks. I agree, so we head to the bedroom to change into attire better suited for an upscale bar.
On the other side of the bed, Davis is shirtless and searching through his open suitcase with his back turned to me. I stop what I’m doing, practically in awe of him. His size. His muscles. The smoothness of his skin. The first time I saw him shirtless eight years ago, he was softer and less confident in himself, but he still had me nearly speechless.
And to think that the guy I slept with that night had never been with a woman before.
I was his first. Before it happened, he probably thought about sex for years, wondering how a woman feels. What it would be like to be inside her. To finish in her. All of those thoughts had to culminate with me, and I didn’t even have the grace to honor it—or the wherewithal to savor it. As far as I knew, I had never been anyone’s first. I was wrong though. So wrong.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” I mention, knowing that I won’t be able to get dressed if I don’t get this off of my chest.
“About what?” Davis asks absently as he turns around.
In his hands he has a shirt that he’s inspecting—and I sort of want to tell him to forget it and go shirtless. I stop gawking long enough to say, “About how I was your first.”
Suddenly attentive, Davis stops what he’s doing and lowers the shirt slowly. “What about it?”
“I wish I had known,” I say softly, refusing to break eye contact with him even though he’s surveying me with so much intensity. “I would have made it special.”
“Who says it wasn’t special?”
I cast him a dubious look. “Was it?”
“Well, up until the moment when my brother sent you a bunch of cash and I found out that he had sold my virginity to a random girl I barely knew, it felt special.” Davis raises a shoulder in a quick shrug. “And even if it wasn’t, maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter?” I repeat. “Big words from a man who has been on a decade-long vengeance pursuit in the name of his virginity.”
He snickers. “Yeah, I walked right into that one. But since last night, I’ve been thinking. I don’t think I was actually upset about my virginity. In retrospect, I think I was questioning our connection and if we ever had one. Plus, was losing your virginity special?”
I let out a scoff. “Hell no. It happened in the backseat of a car—a Kia Optima, if I remember correctly. Isn’t that awful? It should either be a lemon or a luxury car, but a sensible, low-priced family sedan? That’s humiliating.”
Davis asks, “Well, did that one experience ruin sex for you?”
“No.”
“So there you go. Sex for me has been great; you didn’t ruin anything.”
I hesitate a beat too long, which makes Davis turn around to face me directly. “What?” he inquires, his tone sharp. “Where has your mind gone?”
The next few seconds pass in silence as I try to find the right words. Even so, I end up missing the mark and asking, “Have you been having a lot of sex since…”
“Since you hijacked my first time?” he fills in, all sardonic smugness.
“Since I sweetly deflowered you in this expensive hotel suite in this gorgeous, UNESCO World Heritage Site city?” I challenge.
Davis shakes his head. “I went to business school and started dating someone early on, but it didn’t last. I think she could tell that I couldn’t let her get close.”
“Because of me?”
“Sort of,” he answers with a shrug. “But mostly it was because I was unhappy with who I was.”
“So was she the only other person?” I try to pose the question without revealing any of the curiosity and abject jealousy that courses through me at the thought of another woman with her hands on Davis. Her mouth on him. Her body touching his. The idea alone makes my arms feel like they could bend steel.
“You’re asking me how many women I’ve slept with?” Davis confirms. He leans back and folds his arms across his chest, which really should be criminal.
“If you don’t want to tell me—”
“Five including you,” he answers without hesitation. “And all, except you, did it for free.”
For some reason, that number strikes me as perfect. His count leaves me feeling inexplicably…extraordinary.
“Did you want to know my number?” I inquire. “Quid pro quo.”