He put her on her feet and she quickly stepped back. “That’s a ride I’m unwilling to take again for at least half a century, Abel Jin. You pick me up again only when I expressly allow that shit.”

“You need to calm down and listen to me,” he said quietly.

“Fuck calm, Abel. Did you miss the part about me being in so much pain I thought my insides were melting?” she asked sarcastically.

“Right, then don’t calm down. Just listen,” he kept at her and continued to do it quietly.

“So you’ve got something to say? Something that explains you lying to me and causing me that kind of pain when you know that shit happens when you leave me and I don’t know where you are?” she demanded.

“I thought if you thought you knew where I was, even if it wasn’t where I actually was, you wouldn’t experience the pain,” he explained.

“Wrong!” she yelled. “Very, very”—she leaned toward him—“wrong!”

“I get that now and it won’t happen again,” he promised.

She crossed her arms on her chest. “Yeah? You sure? You can say that for certain?”

“I can,” he confirmed.

“Right, you can. Now, next question. How the fuck am I supposed to believe you when you’re totally okay with”—another lean—“lying to me?”

Fuck, he’d screwed this up, and huge.

Now he had to see if he could find a way to fix it.

He started with conceding, “I deserved that.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “No fucking shit?”

He stared at her, deciding not to share that she was cute when she was pissed.

“No fucking shit,” he replied.

Her face changed and Abel braced because he didn’t like the change even a little bit.

Her voice changed too and he liked that even less.

“You can’t be sweet and you can’t be hot and you can’t be reassuring,” she stated, soft and low but firm and full of hurt. “Not after you lied. After you lie, Abel, it takes a fuckuva lot more than that to earn back what you lost.”

“I had to get out of here, bao bei. I had to do something and I wasn’t alone,” he told her.

“You knew I knew you were going stir-crazy,” she reminded him.

He nodded and replied, “I knew you knew. I also knew you wouldn’t be fired up about what we were planning and it was something we had to do, all of us.”

“I actually don’t even know what you were planning to do, but if it was taking you out of safety and into harm’s way, you’re right. I wouldn’t be fired up about it. But I wouldn’t hand you shit about it either.”

Suddenly, she threw an arm straight up in the air, apparently indicating herself by what she said next.