“She’s nice, but the job isn’t that great. Kinda boring. The same thing over and over again. She pays me okay. I do better than some of my friends.”

Her attention sharpened on him, and when she continued, she did it openly if still somewhat guardedly, as if needing to tell him what she was going to tell him but doing it concerned about his response.

“I didn’t go to college. School just wasn’t for me. Neither my mom nor my dad lived in a great part of town with a good school system. So Dad says it was because I was smarter than the system and I was bored.” Suddenly, she grinned. “I like that he thinks that, but he knows better. So do I. It was mostly me being my father’s daughter, hating authority, schedules, assignments, people telling me what to do.” She shrugged. “That said, it wasn’t a challenge and I got good grades. Just didn’t want to buy into more even though Dad said he’d put me through college if I wanted to go.”

Nothing about this surprised him, but two things about it troubled him.

He started with the hardest.

“You seem okay with leaving your life behind,” he noted carefully.

She shrugged. “I am, but I’m not. I don’t have a job I love, though I dig my apartment and will miss it. But it was just a place to live and I didn’t suspect I’d live there forever. So I guess now’s the time I’ll be saying good-bye to it, though I hope there comes a time when I’ll get my stuff back.”

Abel decided that time would come soon, no matter how he had to manage it.

Her sadness filtered into her features and he braced before she went on.

“I’ll miss my friends. That’ll suck. And I hope we get to a place where they can be back in my life, even from a distance. But I’ve been waiting for you my whole life and I learned early that life is not a tiptoe through the tulips. Shit happens. Life changes. If it’s important, you deal.” Her eyes grew soft on him before she gave it all to him. “You’re important. So I’ll deal.”

Her words meant he gave her another squeeze and he did it lifting his head to touch his mouth to hers, to show her just how much they meant.

Her eyes were softer when he dropped his head back to the pillow.

She knew what her words meant.

“Until just now, you haven’t mentioned your mother,” he remarked.

The grin left her face entirely.

Not a good sign.

He gave her yet another squeeze. “Lilah?”