Page 8

Trevor walked out to see if he could do anything to help. He never stopped Reeni when she was that determined and so in need of solitude. He had seen it before and knew better. So he wasn’t responsible for whatever had just happened and had only felt some of it, but it had caused enough of a shock from the others that he’d gotten the picture pretty quickly. As he approached, Bullard glared at him. Trevor nodded. “Yeah. She’s a bit of a wild card. Still, you might want to remember that she’s a wild card who came to help you.”

Bullard’s shoulders slumped, then he nodded. “Terk just reminded me of that too,” he muttered. “It’s frustrating to see your family being attacked and to not know who, where, how, or why. Then to have somebody else turn up with abilities you don’t understand was just too much. I was trying to get her to stay here, but she declined. Then I asked what she would do if I didn’t let her out of the gate.” Looking over at his wrecked gate, he stared at it and shook his head. “Anybody with that power—”

“Anybody with that kind of power, uncontrolled and crazy with anger at the world, is dangerous,” Trevor stated. “But, for somebody like her, who came to help you in the first place, that was just a bit of a temper tantrum,” he explained. “On the order of Stop it, or I’ll show you . You’ll notice that she didn’t destroy the gate, and she had all the power in the world to do so. Believe me, because I felt it.”

Bullard frowned at him and studied the gate. “Could she have?”

Damon joined them and laughed. “In a heartbeat. If she did this, then I’m sure she could have blown it sky-high. She also could have blown out all the electronics in your house,” he added. “I don’t think her gift is so much about energy as electricity, and she’s very in tune with that field, as we’ve seen here,” he pointed out, with a smile. “I’ve never seen anybody do that.”

“Yeah, but is that because they can’t, or because they don’t?” Bullard asked.

“Most of the time it’s because they don’t,” Damon replied, with a smile. “Most of the time they don’t get so pissed off that this is the end result.”

“ Great ,” Bullard muttered. “I’ll be the butt of a joke for this now, won’t I?”

“No, because I don’t think anybody thought she could do this. Obviously it was a harsh reaction, but maybe that’s a sign for you to be more respectful. She had a harsh childhood.”

Bullard nodded. “According to Terk she was institutionalized by her father, who wouldn’t listen to anything she had to say. So, she reacts harshly to feeling imprisoned.”

“Ya think?” Damon quipped, eyeing him. “I hadn’t heard about that, although I’ve heard rumors of something ugly in her past. I can’t say I’m surprised though. Her father’s a jerk.” Bullard just stared at him, and Damon went on. “He’s a billionaire dude.”

“Yeah, a billionaire dude who’s a complete asshole,” Trevor noted.

By the looks of it, he knew far more than they did.

Trevor continued. “He has absolutely zero love for his own daughter. Once it became apparent that something was different about Reeni—not even different in a bad way, just that she was different—was all it took. She wouldn’t be the daughter who grew up to be the trophy wife, who her father planned on marrying off to some business associate to consolidate their commercial relationships,” Trevor explained.

“I hadn’t heard specifically about the institutionalized event,” Damon noted, “although it makes perfect sense and aligns with everything that I do know. I should have already put that together.… It still doesn’t change the fact that she’s very powerful and knows something’s going on here. I just don’t know if she’ll be willing to work with Bullard anymore.”

“No, probably not.” Bullard ran a hand through his hair. “I need to go talk to her, don’t I?”

Such a note of resignation filled his tone that even Damon had to smile. “If you want her to come back and help, yes. If not, then it doesn’t matter,” he replied. “Can we do it without her? Probably. It just depends on if this is how you want to leave things, and that’s up to you.” Damon shrugged. “I don’t think anybody on your team will have a problem with it either way.”

“Oh, they have a problem all right,” Bullard said. “I can tell you that the women are definitely pissed at me.”

At that comment, the men just nodded.

“Now that we can see,” Trevor noted. “So, you decide what you want to do. In the meantime, I need to go after her and ensure she’s okay.” Trevor looked over at Damon, who nodded.

“You do that. We don’t want her to be any more adversely affected by all this than she has to be. The fact is, the police did find a roomful of bomb-making equipment in preparation for a major attack of some kind, and we don’t want to lose sight of that.”

“Right.” Trevor walked over to his rental, lifted a hand to Bullard, and added, “I’ll talk to you in a bit.” And, with that, he pulled out and went through the gate that nobody would control or close for quite a while. As he drove out, he called out to the ethers, Reeni, I’m coming. Don’t be upset. I’m just letting you know that I’m on the way .

No answer came, of course, and he wasn’t surprised. She was definitely on the stubborn side. As he considered what he knew about her father, it made sense. He’d only met the man once and had been deemed not good enough to warrant a greeting or any attempt at a conversation. Arrogant bastard.

He was clearly an asshole, and Trevor was totally okay to let him do that on his own. The world was full of them, and Trevor didn’t need to deal with them himself. Yet now he felt a pull to step in, as Reeni needed to know that someone would support her on this. As he drove toward the city, he realized he had no idea where Reeni was staying.

He quickly phoned Terk, and, when he got Sophia instead, he asked, “Do you know where Reeni is staying? I’m heading to check in with her and to ensure she’s okay.”

“I have no idea. I assumed she would be staying with Bullard.”

“She could have, I’m sure, but I don’t think she was ever invited,” he explained, “at least not until the conversation involved whether or not Bullard would open the gate. She left here pretty upset.”

“I heard,” Sophia stated, “and, just for the record, my sympathies are with her. I love Bullard too, but he blew that deal totally. What was he thinking?”

“Oh, don’t worry. He’s regretting his choice of words already. I just want to see that she’s okay.”

“I’ll get back to you. Give me a few minutes.” With that, she ended the call.

Trevor knew she could probably check credit cards for hotels close by within a few minutes, which would work, unless Reeni was staying under the radar and paid with cash. If she was trying to avoid her father, credit cards might be something she would avoid using. As he drove closer to town, he wondered if he could just follow the spray of erratic energy.

He definitely heard a distinct hum in the air, a weird buzz. He didn’t know if it was her or if it was something else entirely. When Sophia phoned a few minutes later with the name of her hotel, Trevor realized he was nearby. He stared up at the building rising in front of him, as he pulled into the parking lot, wondering at his ability to home in on Reeni’s energy.

“Are you there?” Sophia asked.

“Yeah, I am. I’m pulling into the hotel parking lot and was pretty well here already.”

She laughed. “You didn’t need me after all,” she said in a teasing voice. “Sounds as if you’re attuned to her all on your own.”

“Maybe. That’s certainly something to consider.”

“Just don’t overthink it,” she said. “Right now, a definite sense of need is coming from her corner.”

“I know. I feel it too.”

“Good. Treat her nicely.” With that, Sophia ended the call.

He found it odd that Reeni had picked up some very strong defenders so quickly. A few detractors too, but only in the sense that they didn’t know quite what to do with her. Trevor understood that, but her latest move with the gate wouldn’t endear her to some people. They’ll just look at her with more fear than anything else at this point, worried that she might be out of control or might do something that would upset other people as well. It was one of the problems that arose when you did demonstrate that you could do something that defied scientific explanation. However, he also agreed that she didn’t have to tolerate that behavior from Bullard or from anybody else. It would be interesting to see how this moved forward.

If the police wanted to talk to her, Trevor would have to coax her to go in and take care of that, before they told her that she could be hauled in for questioning if she didn’t show up. That wouldn’t sit well with her either, though it wasn’t fair that they always went after the messenger. He parked, remembering the room number she had been assigned, thankful that Sophia had found that for him, and walked up at a steady pace.

When he got to the room, he sensed a strong stay the hell away energy emanating from inside. With a sigh, he knocked anyway and called out, “Let me in. It’s just me, and I came alone.”

Maybe it was the fact that he was alone or maybe that she was tired and worn out, but she opened the door and glared. He gave her a crooked grin. “May I come in?”

“What? You mean, you’ll ask?” she snapped in a hard tone.

“Absolutely. Just like you, I don’t want to be anywhere I’m not welcome.”

She hesitated at that, then opened the door and stepped back.

He quickly walked in. As she closed the door and turned to face him, he didn’t say anything and just opened his arms.

She shook her head and jutted out her chin. “No,” she snapped. “I don’t need a hug.”

“We all need hugs,” he replied, “especially me.”

Her eyes widened at that, and, when he wiggled his fingers, she walked into his arms and gave him a hug. But even as he accepted the hug, he was generously pouring soothing energy into her soul. A good minute later, the dam finally broke, and she ended up bawling into his shoulder. He never understood why, but something to do with working with energy often made women cry to release the strain, the stress, or maybe just the electrical overload. He didn’t know for sure, but he’d seen it happen time and time again.

When the tears finally stopped, she stepped back, looked up at him, and muttered, “I wasn’t expecting that.”

“I was,” he said. “It’s one sure way to release some of the anger, stress, and frustration.”

“By crying?” she asked, with a mocking note. “Just makes me look even more helpless to the rest of the world.”

“It doesn’t matter how you look to the rest of the world,” he stated. “Believe me that Bullard is feeling pretty badly for what he did.”

She snorted. “I doubt it. He seems an awful lot like my father.”

“That’s not fair to Bullard. Your father is a complete bastard. Bullard is a lot of things but nothing at all like your father.”

Startled, she looked over at him and then burst out laughing. “Sorry, I forgot that you’d met him.”

“I have,” he stated, with feeling. “Definitely not the warm and fuzzy father figure everybody should have.”

“I don’t know that anybody ever gets that,” she noted. “It seems as if the men I see out on the streets just turn into these complete assholes once they’re married and have kids. Or else I never have a chance to meet the ones who appear to be kind, caring, and intuitive,” she added, with a shrug. “Maybe they don’t even really exist.”

“Maybe not,” he said, with a shrug. “Yet Bullard is a good father, and he’s a great team leader, and he cares very much about what happens at his compound. The fact that somebody was doing this to his place, without his even knowing about it, is why he’s so very angry. He’s very protective, and I think it rattled him that someone got that close, and he had no clue. They say he’s always been that way, but even more so now that he’s got a family.”

“I can understand that,” she replied, “but I sure didn’t expect to have it blow up the way it did.”

“No, and he didn’t expect you to destroy his gate either.”

Her lips twitched, and she nodded. “Of course not, but he shouldn’t have made me feel as if I needed to prove that I could. I shouldn’t have fallen for it either. That’s the part I’m really pissed about. But, every once in a while, I just get fed up with people always judging, never understanding, and never accepting.”

“Yet you also know that if you saw this for the first time…”

“I know, but that doesn’t make it any easier.” She was now glaring at him. “So, if you came here to preach, the door’s behind you.”

He chuckled. “I’m not the preaching type.”

“No, you never used to be,” she said, looking up at him curiously. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“I came to see if you were okay.”

“I’m fine. Now you can leave.”

He knew the prickly exterior and the fake frustration hid a very soft and wounded interior. So he just ignored her and sat down in the spare chair at the small desk. “Do you want some coffee?”

“Of course I want coffee,” she muttered, “but nobody said I want coffee with you.”

“No, but,… oh well.” He reached across the desk, grabbed the hotel phone, and ordered coffee from room service.

“It’s three times the price,” she complained.

“Yes, but you’re not prepared to go outside and to interact with the public, are you?” He watched the shudder ripple through her body, and he nodded. “That’s what I mean. So coffee from room service is perfect right now, even at three times the price.”

She slumped down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “I shouldn’t have let him get to me.”

“You shouldn’t let anybody get to you,” he clarified, “but since nobody is perfect… we’re all on a journey. We’re all working on figuring this out. You have abilities you don’t really understand or have figured out how to make good use of yet. Thus, when people doubt or anger you, you have a tendency to react. This is a learning curve.”

“ Great , you make me sound like a pubescent teenager,” she muttered.

“When it comes to energy, yeah.… We’re all teenagers, so that’s not even a bad analogy,” he teased, with a cheeky grin.

She sighed. “I didn’t hurt him, did I?”

“Just his pride, and he’s got plenty of that, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

At that, she laughed. “That he does. It’s just the way he said it, as if he wouldn’t let me out,” she explained. “Just hearing that tone again makes me angry even now. He sounded like—”

“Your father, I get that. But maybe you should just try to understand where Bullard was coming from, why it happened, and it’ll make it a little easier to walk past.”

“I walked right past it when I smashed his gate. He’ll have fun fixing that.”

“It’s what he does, and he’s an electronics expert himself, so no worries there. He’ll get over that.”

At that, she stared at him. “Oh, so that’ll just make him more pissed off about somebody getting in his system.”

“Exactly,” Trevor agreed, “but that’s what I mean. Events are happening in his world that he didn’t know about. He’s trying to protect his team and now his young family as well. So, from his perspective,… he failed.”

“How could he fail if he didn’t even know about it?”

“Exactly, but, when you’re somebody like Bullard, you expect to solve everything, and when you suddenly can’t, and somebody can breach your home base,… it’s terrifying, and he feels out of control.”

“Particularly when this young carrot-topped Tangerine can do something about it,” she added.

“Carrot-topped?” he replied, with emphasis. “A girl walks into his place, with this crazy tale, and then manages to prove that she knows something that he should have known—or at least he feels he should have known—just makes him very irritable.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I have a temper myself.” She stared up at the ceiling. “I didn’t really expect to have it come out in this instance. I really was just trying to help,” she said, looking over at him. “It seems as if that always goes wrong.”

“It doesn’t always go wrong,” he corrected, “but a lot of the time?… Yeah, I can see how that happens.”

“Back to that whole thing about not having Terk behind me, huh ?”

“Having Terk behind you would definitely give you some validity, but you’ve never been someone to wait for somebody else to blow your own horn,” he noted, “so validity isn’t necessarily what you’re after.”

“Isn’t it?” she asked. “Don’t we all want validation? It solidifies that I can do this.”

“You already know what you can do. It’s validation that you have the same, if not more, abilities than other people and have a right to be you,” he explained. “Yet the kind of validation that you are enough and that who you are is okay all has to come from inside you, and no team can provide that for you.”

She stared at him for a long moment. “I wasn’t expecting a self-help talk.”

He smiled. “That’s good. I wasn’t expecting to give one either. It just seemed you needed to be reminded of that.”

“What? That I’m okay, that I’m a whole person, not bits and pieces of my father?”

“That you are a whole person, that you’re a valued person, that what you offer is also valuable,” he reminded her. “No matter how much we don’t want to acknowledge it, there will always be people we may not want in our life, yet are there for a reason,” he shared, “and this may be one of those scenarios.”

“My father used to laugh at me and would say almost the exact same thing, about not letting me out of the house. What could I do about it back then?” she asked. “So when Bullard said basically that…” Her shoulders slumped. “It wasn’t very nice of me, was it? Now I feel bad, and I really don’t want to.”

“Don’t even worry about whether it was nice of you or not,” he replied instantly. “You reacted, and, while we may wish it had been less volatile and damaging, it’s over.”

“Yet it’s not over for anybody else,” she argued. “Not for Bullard, not for me, not for the people who have to fix that gate, not for those people who will always look at me differently now. I try so hard to be normal, and then… something like this happens, and I realize just how very abnormal I am.”

“You’re not abnormal,” he declared. “You have an affinity for electricity, even though you don’t really understand the workings of most electronics.”

“Not quite true. I worked hard to learn,” she stated. “I really did, but it seemed as if the more I learned, the more I lost in terms of learning. I know that sounds pretty stupid, but it just got so confusing because everything I was picking up was more energetic. As if my instincts were messing with the facts.”

“Maybe focus on learning enough jargon so you can have a conversation with people in this field. Then maybe you’ll realize you have no need to blow up gates to make a point.”

“Which I thought I did,” she declared, with a pointed look at him.

He nodded. After a moment he said, “Bullard probably needs a little bit of time to fix his gate and to calm down, and you need a little bit of time to calm down yourself. Other than that, I’m not sure there is any need for anybody to do anything.”

“Do you think I should apologize to him?” she asked.

He looked at her steadily. “Do you feel as if you should?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

“Then don’t,” he said. “You need to understand what happened, why it happened, and go from there. You’re not beholden to him. You went to him of your own free will, and, if you don’t want to go back and talk to him, that’s fine.”

“No, that’s running away,” she murmured.

He gave her a ghost of a smile again. “In some ways, yes, but maybe that’s what you need to do. You have to figure out what you need and go from there.”

She fell back on the bed and muttered, “I need food.”

“Now that I’m not surprised about.” He chuckled. “Did you order anything?”

“No, of course not,” she muttered, rolling her eyes. “My temper was keeping me full for quite a while, but now that’s fired in the wrong direction,” she noted. “I don’t have anything here to eat.”

“Okay, do you want to go out?”

“Not when we just ordered coffee.” She looked at him sideways.

“But we could order room service.”

She winced. “But it’s so expensive.”

“It is, but it’s also convenient,” he stated calmly. “And, right now, maybe convenience is more important.”

She didn’t appear to know what to say to that and just stayed quiet.

When a knock came on the door, he stood. “Let me get that. It’ll be the coffee.” He opened it up and brought the coffee inside, then asked the waiter how long it would take to get a room service meal.

“The kitchens aren’t backed up right now,” he replied, “so, depending on what you order, probably twenty or thirty minutes.”

With that, Trevor smiled, and nodded. “Okay, we’ll phone in an order here in the next few minutes.” Armed with that information, he headed back into the room and served her a cup of coffee in bed. “Food can be here in half an hour, so let’s find the menu and order something.”

She reached over and grabbed the room service flyer. “You really think it’s worthwhile?”

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s worthwhile or not,” he said, eyeing her curiously. “You need food. You must have burned through a ton of energy blowing up that gate,” he pointed out, with a note of laughter. “Even I know that you’ve got to be running on empty.”

“It was stupid,” she muttered. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Don’t start crashing that wonderful sense of hard-done-by-ness that you have,” he suggested, with a smile. “You did what you needed to do at the time. Now let it go.”

She groaned. “Now I feel as if I should apologize.”

He looked over at her and nodded. “If you still feel that need in a while, I am sure you’ll get the opportunity, but you might want to give Bullard an opportunity to apologize too.”

She stared at him and then laughed. “Somehow I don’t see that happening.”

“Bullard is not your father,” he stated, his gaze watchful, looking for any nuances in her facial features that indicated she heard what he said. “Don’t make the mistake of confusing the two.”

She stiffened and glared at him, but he stayed firm. Finally she relented and admitted, “I guess I am confusing them, aren’t I?”

“I think anybody you encounter with a forceful personality who questions you in some way or who otherwise tries to stop you from being you will always get that side look,” he murmured, “and that’s okay. You just have to decide which of them you’ll let into that wonderful world inside your head,” he stated. “And, if Bullard doesn’t get a pass inside, then Bullard doesn’t get a pass. Just don’t knock him because you can’t stand your father.”

She glared at him and then shifted up against the headboard. “Are we not ordering food?” she asked pointedly.

“I am. I don’t know about you,” he quipped, with a smile. “You could have stayed at Bullard’s and got food, and that would have been free too. Dave is a mean cook as well.”

She sighed. “I was starting to get very drained there.”

“A lot of people live and work there, and you’re not used to being surrounded by all that many people.”

“No, I’m not,” she agreed. “Sometimes a lot of people is okay, but there was definitely that off sense.”

“ Off as in off with the people there, or off as in you were tired?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t really give myself a chance to sort it out.”

“Because you realize that there’s always a chance—though I’m not saying it’s a big one—but, with something like this, we always have to consider the possibility that it’s an inside job.”

“Of course. That’s what Bullard’s thinking, isn’t it?”

“I’m sure it’s something he’s afraid of, and he has to take a closer look at everybody he lives and works with, and nobody ever wants to do that,” Trevor stated. “Same thing with Terk and his team, who are very close. And same thing with Bullard. He and his team are close as well.”

“But haven’t they had a bunch of new people join in?”

He frowned and stared at her, as he sipped his coffee and nodded. “Yes, he has. So did you get an odd feeling from one of them?”

She snorted. “I got an odd feeling off practically everybody there, but mostly because I felt as if I had to defend myself.… That whole nobody knows me element, so they must be judging me thing.”

“Which is why it’s interesting you went up there in the first place.”

“Yes, it is.” She nodded. “It was mostly because of the babies.”

“Ah,” he muttered. “Leia and the children got to you.”

“Not just them, the others too. There are other pregnant women,” she declared. “There seems to be an awful lot of pregnancies going on.”

“Also an awful lot of that at Terk’s place. I’m not so sure about Bullard’s.”

“It’s there too,” she declared, with a shrug. “Again, it’s got to be electrical, doesn’t it?”

“It’s energy,” Trevor corrected. “It doesn’t have to be electrical. It’s just energy.”

“And yet, to me, it’s electrical.”

“I think we’re just splitting hairs.”

“Maybe I want to,” she stated argumentatively, glaring at him.

He smiled. “Then you argue all you want. I’ll just chill for a bit and relax.” With that, he settled in his chair, a cup of coffee nearby, and sent Damon a text message.

“What are you telling them?” she asked.

“That I’m here with you and that you’re fine. Believe it or not, everybody is quite worried about you.”

Her eyebrows shot up at that. “Why?”

“Because not all people are assholes,” he said. “And people care about you. They care about what happened, what is happening, so there’ll be a lot more people than you’re expecting in your face now.” She winced at that, and he nodded. “That’s what happens when you get into other people’s lives. Then other people get into your life. You can slam the door, but you can’t keep them all out.”

“I could if I wanted to.” He just looked at her, and she groaned. “Fine, that was a childish thing to say.”

“It was an I’m still angry at my father thing to say,” he pointed out. When she glared at him, he shrugged. “You know me. I’ll call it as I see it, whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t know you all that well,” she said, staring at him. “The person I do know was someone I didn’t think was this developed.”

“Of course not, any more than you were,” he said, with a grin. “We’re all coming into our own abilities, and that makes a hell of a difference.”

“I’m not sure I like it,” she muttered.

He grinned. “Maybe not, but it’s right there in front of us, and that’s what we have to work with.”

“Sure,” she muttered. “Easy for you to say.”

“No, not so easy for me to say,” he declared. “I don’t have the same history, but we all have a certain amount of the past that we don’t really want to discuss or to deal with. Everybody has something in their past. I don’t know anybody who got through life unscathed.”

“And yet it shouldn’t be this marathon,” she said, staring at him. “It shouldn’t be a case of, Wow, you survived . It should be a whole lot easier, a whole lot nicer on us.”

“Maybe if we weren’t always alone, always bucking the system, always trying to do something that other people didn’t particularly want us to do, maybe it would work out that way,” he noted in exasperation. “Yet, so far, it appears that almost everything we do is exactly that, bucking the system, trying to stop people who are assholes, trying to do something to help others who don’t believe in us and our gifts.” He held up a hand as she started to contradict him. “And, yes, that’s still what I’m doing. I don’t even work for Terk, but he knows me, and he sent out a beacon, looking for workers.”

“I felt that,” she murmured. “However, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”

He looked at her curiously. “Why? Are you really thinking Terk couldn’t see past your father?”

“I’m thinking that he probably doesn’t want a wild card,” she noted.

“Will you always be a wild card?”

She stared at him and shrugged. “I have no idea what I am, really,” she shared, her tone soft and contemplative. “Sometimes I think my father was right, and I should have just stayed locked up.”

“Don’t,” Trevor snapped. “Don’t ever think that, much less say that out loud. Whatever was going on in your father’s mind was his problem, not yours. He made it your problem, and he was wrong. You’re a good person, and you don’t deserve what he did. The truth is, he didn’t deserve to have you in his life,” Trevor declared. “So just ditch all that.”

She snorted. “You make it sound as if it’s something I can just pull out of my brain and get rid of with a snap of my fingers,” she said angrily.

“I know that Terk has energy healers he works with all the time. Plus, some of his people are married to some very incredible healers as well. Some of these people… could help you get rid of this baggage.”

She blinked several times, processing that information. “What a thought, to think of a healer going into your brain and pulling out all those unwelcome memories.” She shook her head. “That’s a level of trust I don’t think I have.”

“It’s a level of trust if you’re expecting them to invade your mind to pull out those memories. However, if you will do the work yourself, there’s much less trust required. Anyway, that’s all a discussion for later. Right now, we need food, and we still haven’t managed to order it.”

“No, because you went and sat down in your chair,” she said, tossing the menu at him.

He took a glance at it and announced, “I’ll have burgers and fries.”

She smiled. “That’s almost cliché. You always order that.”

“I thought you didn’t know me that well,” he teased.

She rolled her eyes at him. “I do know you somewhat,” she replied. “I could have picked out your menu choices from a mile away.”

“So why didn’t you?” he asked, with a yawn.

She frowned at him and yawned herself. “Will you fall asleep here?”

“Maybe,” he said cheerfully. “You got a problem with that?”

“Maybe,” she snapped, glaring at him. “It is my hotel room.”

“Right. So you want me to get my own?” he asked. “Order lunch or dinner, whatever it is, will you? After that, I’ll have a five-minute nap, so that I can get up and leave your fine establishment.” He made a fake bow to show off, and she laughed, then quickly ordered the food.

He felt the burn starting to hit, and he needed just a little bit of time to recover. As he closed his eyes, he whispered, “Will you watch over me?”

“Of course,” she murmured, her voice equally soft. “You watched over me, so I’ll watch over you.”

He gave her a quick thumbs-up, closed his eyes, and drifted off.