He took a step back, straightening up. Both his eyebrows arched up. “Uh.” He shook his head, his eyes blinking a few times. “I—I didn’t know you wanted to know this stuff.”
“Of course I do! Why wouldn’t I?”
His mouth opened, hung there, then closed. He lifted up a shoulder. “I don’t know. You were adamant about only doing grad school—”
I shoved back my chair, and my hand flew out. “That was last semester! Things were different last semester.”
“Uh. Yeah…” He frowned, then scowled, then just looked confused. He raked his hand through his hair, and when it fell to the side, he did it again. His whole palm ran down over his face. “I’m sorry. When was I supposed to fill you in on all this?”
“From the beginning.” I huffed that out.
“The beginning?”
“Yeah. The beginning.”
“You were in counseling, trying to process the second kidnapping attempt…”
He was muddling things for me, and I shook both my hands in the air. “Stop trying to rationalize things.”
He bit out a laugh. “It’s called rationalizing things.”
“Oh!” Now my eyebrows went up and both my hands were in the air, palms turned toward him. I leaned back. “Now I’m being irrational?”
“What?” His mouth hung open again. “Wait.What?” He was shaking his head. “I’m lost here.”
“Well, that makes two of us.” I crossed my arms over my chest, one more huff coming from me. I was all heated. My blood was rolling, but damn. I should’ve known. So I told him that. “You should’ve told me.”
“One, I think I actually did. Two, when? You went from only focusing on grad school, trying to bury yourself in your schoolwork, to then mourning your mother and trying to process witnessing her murder!”
I flinched.
“Okay!” My hands flung up in the air and I sat down, whipping my chair back around to the computer screen. “I got it. I was a mess.”
He was quiet behind me.
I didn’t care. Or I was telling myself I didn’t care?
I went back to work, pulling up another security system, until I realized that there was a camera at the intersection, smack above the stoplights. I’d missed that one, so I started working to get into that one, too.
“What just happened here?” He sounded so cautious.
I let out a sigh, getting in and then getting the angle. I clicked over the time period, fast-forwarding and waiting for a big black blob. “We had a little tiff.”
“We did?”
I wasn’t doing this.
I flicked my eyes upward, still speeding through until the time frame when the vehicle should’ve gone past. I slowed the time. “It’s a couple thing.”
He sat in the chair beside me, rolling it to face me squarely. “We did a ‘couple’ thing?”
I paused, my hand on the mouse, and glanced sideways. “Yeah.”
His eyes were intense, fastened to me. “That’s an okay thing?”
“Yeah.” I frowned. “Isn’t it?”
He frowned at that question and leaned back in the chair. His hand came up, raking over his head before he let it fall to the desk. “I have no idea. I just don’t want to upset you, and you seem to be doing good, with all…” He wavered, his hand gesturing to the computer. “You’re doing your thing, and you seem good. You’re good, right?” His brows furrowed together and he leaned forward slowly. “Are you good?”