Page 107 of The Kidnapped

“It is fine. It’s a paycheck. And I’m okay at it, apparently, but I don’t like researching crimes and the criminals who commit them. I’ve had enough of this stuff in my life recently, so I’d love to go back to work at a library.”

“They let you go,” Raleigh noted, reaching for Hollis’s belt and undoing the buckle.

“A library, not the library,” Hollis replied.

“A library here?”

“No libraries are hiring here. Are you trying to take my pants off while you grill me about this stuff?” Hollis looked down just as Raleigh unzipped her jeans.

“Yes.”

“Raleigh, I don’t know if I feel like having marathon sex right now.”

“You still need your pants off to sleep, babe,” she said, thinking that she no longer felt like having marathon sex, either.

Hollis took Raleigh’s hands away from her pants and put them against her own cheeks, kissing the inside of one of Raleigh’s palms.

“You’re worried I’m leaving?”

“I’m not worried. It’s just not something I’d thought about until now. That’s all.”

“Until now?”

“I don’t know why,” she said.

“But now you’re worried?”

“There’s a lot going on, Hollis. Finding out that my girlfriend doesn’t want to buy a car here, doesn’t even like the job she has, and can’t find the one she wants just makes me think that things are temporary. I don’t want things to be temporary.”

“I don’t, either,” Hollis replied.

“But you don’t know if you’re staying yet?”

“I want to,” Hollis told her. “I just know that I need to find a job that’s not researching homicides, kidnappings, rapes, and just about every other horrible thing people do to one another. I’ve been looking, but nothing has popped up. I can save up and get a car, but I don’t feel like I need to rush to do that. I’m here at least while my mom’s–”

“I know,” Raleigh interrupted her softly, lowering her hands from Hollis’s face and moving them around Hollis’s neck instead. “You don’t have to say that part.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to feel when she’s gone, Raleigh. It might be–”

“Too much,” Raleigh finished for her. “I get it. This house is too much for me, too, sometimes. I can still hear Eden’s baby giggle echo in this place.”

“But you stay because this is her home, and you want to be here in case she comes back.”

“And your mom won’t come back,” Raleigh said.

Hollis shook her head, and Raleigh placed a gentle kiss on her lips.

“It’s okay. Let’s just get some sleep tonight.”

“Raleigh, I want what you want. I want a normal adult relationship with passionate honeymoon-phase sex and–”

“I know. And that’s enough for tonight, isn’t it? That we both want those things? The timing is just off.”

“I don’t want the timing to be off,” Hollis replied.

“Neither do I. But we can’t change that. We just have to keep talking to each other like this and get through the tough stuff so that the good stuff that comes after feels even better.”

“The marathon sex?” Hollis asked seriously.

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