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“You wanna talk about it?” he asked.

I’d rather distract myself by watching him work, but there was something I’d been meaning to ask. “What’s going to happen to my house? At some stage, the authorities will assume I’m dead, right?”

He laid his tools on the ground and made up the short distance between us. “Unless you own it, I guess the bank will keep taking mortgage repayments from your account until there’s nothing left, then they’ll repossess it.”

I frowned. “What about my belongings?”

“Not sure. They might put them into storage for a while. Perhaps auction it and put the money away in case you turn up.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “What a mess. Years of hard work down the drain. I’ll have to start from scratch.”

“At least you’ll be alive. Hey, listen to me.” My gaze snapped to Shep’s when he rested his hands on my shoulders and lowered himself to my eye level. “You’ll be okay, Cam. You’re still young. And you’re smart, a hard worker. One day you’ll look back on this as a blip in your life.”

A nervous laugh escaped me. “A blip? It’s a pretty serious fucking blip, don’t you think?”

“It is. But everything fades with time.” He winced a little. “Sorry, I’m not very good at giving a pep talk.”

A small smile formed on my lips. “You’re not so bad.”

“Come on,” he said, and I hoped he might put his arm around me, but he didn’t. “I’m finished here. Let’s go to the next spot.”

He retrieved his tools before securing them on the bike.

I hopped on up front and flashed Shep a wicked grin. “I’m driving, big guy. You scared?”

He got on behind me and put his hands around my waist, giving my belly a light squeeze. “Not at all.”

At least that made one of us.