“Mom and I aren’t tight. She…” She shook her head. “She and Dad didn’t get along and neither of them hid that from me, but she was bitter about it and she really didn’t hide that from me, even knowing I totally adored him.” She bit her lip, pausing before she carried on, “She also knew about the thing, that thing we share, that feeling of missing something. She thought I was crazy.”

His brows drew together. “Crazy?”

“Bona fide take-me-to-three-shrinks crazy.” She’d lifted up three fingers but dropped them when she finished, “I was in therapy for four years.”

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “She also tried to have me medicated.”

Her breath blew into his face in a whoosh when his arms contracted at her words.

He forced himself to loosen his hold, but his voice was dangerous when he asked, “Medicate you?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed hesitantly. “She was convinced I had an eating disorder and other mental disorders besides.” She curled her hand at his neck, her thumb sliding along the column of his throat in order to soothe him as she assured him quietly, “Dad stopped that part of my therapy before it ever happened, baby. I never was on meds. He totally got what was happening to me. I mean, not totally, but he didn’t think I was crazy. Just missing something I’d eventually find.”

Abel was beginning to understand her bond with her father.

“So you grew up with her and him?” Abel asked, and Delilah nodded.

“Yep. They had joint custody at first. But when Mom started the whole ‘you’re whacked in the head’ thing, Dad stepped in. He was never a fan of having me only half the time. But when that happened, he fought for full custody. Even got a real job to pay for it.”

Yes, he was beginning to understand their bond.

“I moved in with him when I was fifteen,” she shared. “But I’d pretty much checked out on Mom way before then. If I wasn’t at Dad’s house for his week, I was with my friends. Mom and me never really recovered from that even though I didn’t cut her out. I just keep…” Her head tipped to the side as she thought how to finish, then said, “Distant.”

Abel said nothing, mostly because he didn’t want to say what he had to say. That being that a mother not attempting to understand her daughter, instead sending her to others who would force asinine theories (he’d been with her for days and his woman had no eating disorder and certainly no mental ones) and unnecessary medications on her, was no mother at all.

She must have read this in his expression because she defended her mother by stating, “It isn’t like what I felt was normal, Abel.”

“Your dad seemed to get it,” he pointed out.

“Dad loves me,” she replied.