Locked down in every way there is sounds right in my head, but it would sound wrong to the world. It would sound obsessive and over the top, the way the security team sounds to Jane. Well, too bad. That’s how I feel. Obsessive and over the top. I want our names on paper together. I want it to be official.

I pace to the kitchen and get a beer from the fridge.

What I need to do is relax, goddamn it. Jane is young. She wants to finish college before she settles down and starts a family. That’s reasonable. I can’t blame her for wanting to get her feet under her before we get swept away by babies and kids and all that comes with it. We both have some sense of how all-consuming it is. Before you know it, months have gone by. Years. Time doesn’t slow down when there’s a child in your life. There are simultaneously too many hours in the day and not enough months in the year.

I should have gone with her. I drink the beer with a sullen expression that I catch in the window over the kitchen sink. Yes. This is what Jane wanted at her college meetup. A grumpy older man who’s impatient as hell to get her home and behind a locked door. Home and in his bed, where she belongs.

I finish the beer and make a point of brushing my teeth for the full two minutes. Anything to pass the time.

Time isn’t cooperating.

I find myself back in the living room, then my office, then Jane’s study area. The house feels huge without her. It feels soulless. Weeks of planning went into this place, and the moment she steps out the door, it ceases to be a home.

I want her back.

I want her back now.

I sit down with my book again and try to focus on the words. What I need to do is accept how much I have of Jane already. Her heart belongs to me. She wants to be with me so much that she’d rather go to college online and forego the whole on-campus experience.

And she deserves that experience. After everything Jane’s been through, she deserves to throw herself into school and the social life that comes along with being in college. Her childhood was difficult enough. There had to be intense pressure to make it out, to make it to college, so she could have any sense of stability. But I don’t want her to go to class every day because she’s scared of what will become of her if she doesn’t get a degree. I want her to go because she loves it.

I stand up and get my keys. If she’s not going to be home in the next ten minutes, then I’m going to get her.