Yeah, Tammy had made him hot chocolate and toast and chicken noodle soup when he was sick.

But she’d done this, too.

And dammit, he didn’t understand why people had to be so complicated.

Because on the one hand there was manipulation. And on the other hand there was chicken soup.

And it was difficult to mesh those two things into one person and make it all make sense. But it was all one person, and he called her Mom. And at this point, he didn’t know what the hell to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

JAMIE FELT LIKE she was having trouble nailing Gabe down. He had gotten weird the day before, saying that he had something to do that evening. And then he had been scarce the couple of days since at work. She’d spent the night at her house, which was reasonable enough; it wasn’t like she lived with him. But usually they talked a little bit more.

And so today Jamie was planning an ambush.

She might have experienced a small bit of reformation over the past few weeks, but she was still her. And when she wanted something, she was more than happy to go and get it. Whatever that might be. And so today she was packing camping supplies and a plan. She was going to propose an overnight trip, of the trails they had ridden on earlier. And sex in the woods.

Anyway.

It was her birthday. So she supposed she could probably get him on her team by playing that card.

She never did much for her birthday. It was a strange and complicated time of year and always had been. What with her mother’s death happening two days afterward and all. Wyatt and the others would give her a party this weekend. Which would fall after the anniversary of her mother’s death. That was the way they usually did it.

It was an unspoken thing.

And she really didn’t mind.

But she wanted to do something this year. Because it felt different. Because she felt different. And because she wanted to find a way to connect with him, in spite of the creeping strangeness that she had a feeling pertained to his family. At least, she hoped it did. Because if not, it might have something to do with her. And she just... She didn’t want his uncertainty; she didn’t want any of that to be about her.

In some ways she’d been happy to let him have his weirdness. Seeing as she’d been wrestling with some things of her own.

That whole love thing.

She really very much didn’t want to be in love. Not right now. She was finding herself in so many interesting ways. But the problem was, he seemed to be inextricably linked to it. It wasn’t as if she thought all these newfound pieces of herself would go away if she didn’t have him. It was just that she thought—no, she knew—that these experiences that were so magical and healing with him wouldn’t be the same with anyone else. Wouldn’t be the same alone. He was an important part of her life. A catalyst to her self-discovery. She’d lived with her own self without him for nearly twenty-five years, and she hadn’t found any of these things. She would never be able to separate that from him.