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“Right? What is that about? Like come on, dad, my reputation can only take so much of this.”

We walked in silence for a few minutes, his arm around my shoulders, just listening to the sounds of the forest.

“Actually, that’s not quite true,” I said after a while.

“What isn’t?”

“About my reputation. I don’t think there’s anything anyone could say that would trash it any worse. I’m already the crazy drunken librarian who’s down to fight over a drug dealing murderer. It doesn’t get much lower than that.”

“Sure it does,” he said cheerfully. “At least they aren’t calling you ‘Old Lady Raff.’”

I laughed and shuddered. “Fair enough. Poor guy.”

“What happened to him?” Kash asked.

I shook my head and sighed. “I don’t know. I think he disappeared around the same time you did, but I’m not sure. Like I said, my dad had me on lockdown for a long, long time. By the time I was allowed to rejoin the land of the living, Raff was gone.”

“Damn,” Kash said pensively. “Hope it wasn’t withdrawal. That’s a shit way to go.”

“Do you regret it?” I asked.

“What?”

“Selling. Lots of people in this town spent a lot of time really messed up. Do you ever wish you hadn’t started?”

Kash frowned down at the ground ahead of us. He was silent for a while, then he shook his head. “If it wasn’t us it would have been somebody else. We had our hands full defending our territory, trust me. And at least we had rules, you know? Hunter did, anyway. I guess I would have too, eventually, but I would have had to earn them the hard way. Hunter just knew what to avoid. He had a sense about these kinds of things.”

I sighed. “I asked him the same thing once. He told me it was just a way to pass the time, but I knew he was full of it. I still don’t really know why. I hate to think that it was all about the money.”

Kash gave me a strange look and I returned it. He coughed a little laugh and looked away, then gave me a disbelieving little grin. “You really don’t know?”

I shook my head. “You do?”

“Of course I do.”

“Tell me?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we figure this out.”

“Oh, come on, you’re bribing me with a mystery? That’s not fair!”

“Of course it isn’t fair. It’s strategy. Using your greatest weakness against you to get you motivated.”

I almost got mad, but I couldn’t. He looked so adorably proud of himself.

“Okay, you win. We’ll figure something out. But not tonight. All I want to think about tonight is crawling into my bed.”

“What a coincidence! All I want to think about is crawling into your bed, too.”

“Oh, shut up.” I said it with gusto, but I could feel myself blushing and I was glad that the moon had gone behind a cloud again. Because, honestly, how did we get here again? Just a fraction of a second ago, it felt like I was doing the smart thing and protecting my heart. And now, well, now it feels like I’m doing the smarter thing and letting him in again. After all, it’s not like Kash left me because he wanted to. It’s also not like he forgot about me or what we were – what we still are – to each other.