Page 50 of In This Moment

Unable to help it, he grinned. “Damn shame you got company tonight.” He exhaled, brushing his thumb across her soft cheek. “For the record, you having this condition doesn’t change my desire for you or the curiosity to see where it leads.” He got the weird suspicion other men had bolted, and perhaps that’s why she had delayed telling him, but his interest only dug deeper the more he learned. “I like you, Rebecca.”

A whole heck of a lot. Probably more than was wise.

“I’m rather fond of you, too, Graham.” She glanced behind him out the window and back again. “But I’m gonna need you to kiss me and get out of my car. My besties are waiting.”

He swung his head around, and spotted said besties on her stoop, staring.

Laughing, he returned his gaze to all that blue. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Aw, look at you, using southern manners and—”

He kissed her, cutting off her teasing, but he was certain she didn’t mind. Her fingers threaded through his hair and she parted her lips upon impact. He lost himself in her for a selfish few seconds and their errant chemistry.

Groaning, he pulled away before they got too heavy and he said to hell with the friends.

She smiled against his mouth, and the sweetness nearly undid him.

“Goodnight, Graham.”

Boo. “Goodnight.” He opened the door, waved, and strode to his door.

He waited for her to back out of his driveway and into hers before going inside.

After feeding Twain and letting him run in the yard, Graham plopped on the couch, the dog’s head in his lap, and pulled up Google on his phone. It took him three tries to get the search or spelling of fibromyalgia in correctly.

For a condition barely researched or one he’d not heard of often, there was a stunning amount of people who had it. Something like four million in the U.S. diagnosed, which was two percent of the population. It affected more women than men, any ethnicity, at any age, though most cases were middle aged.

Sighing, he opened a link to read an article.

The deets mimicked what she’d told him already, however she hadn’t mentioned the vast number of people who’d had their pain ignored and how some doctors discredited the condition due to narc-seeking adults. In some medical communities, fibromyalgia was still considered a joke.

Shaking his head, he leaned back on the cushion. To think, Rebecca went through too many tests to get an answer to her symptoms, while others couldn’t even get their doctors to listen.

Unfathomable.

He glanced at the dog. “She’s in pain, buddy. She’s always in pain.” The very idea was causing him pain.

Twain whined as if he understood.

Needing to take his mind off what he’d learned, he thumbed through his contacts and connected to his mom.

“Everything alright, honey?”

No. “Yes. Can’t I call my mother?” Hearing her voice began calming the tattered fringes of his nerves.

“You absolutely can, but you don’t typically do it so late.”

He glanced at his screen and winced. It was after ten. “My bad. I know you were awake reading, anyway.”

“True story.” Rumblings of his father snoring disrupted the background. “Are you feeling homesick?”

Every other instance she’d asked that question, his answer had been yes. Oddly, he found his response different tonight, and wasn’t sure what to make of it. He’d grown up in Minnesota, had gone to college there, and though he had traveled some, he’d had the majority of his career there. Family. Friends. His apartment. His whole life. Minnesota and Georgia couldn’t be more different from one another. Hell, if he looked up the word “opposite” in the dictionary, the two states would be there as an example. He missed home, all the people and places. Always would, but he wouldn’t say he was homesick any longer.

Grunting, he wondered when that happened.

“Good,” Mom replied, even though he hadn’t technically answered. “I’m glad you’re finally settling in.”

Leave it to his mother to know everything without him uttering a syllable. “How’s Dad?”

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