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I feel him wince against my stomach. “I took the whole weekend off, though! I didn’t work a thousand hours. Only nine hundred fifty.”

I relieved breath whooshes out of me when the knot finally starts to loosen. “That’s true.” Slowly, his muscles give way under my hands. “I, on the other hand, have some work I need to do tonight. But you’re not allowed to work.”

His head pops up with a frown. “What work do you need to do? Just leave it until tomorrow. You’ve already done so much work on Randall’s case.”

I shove his face back into my stomach so I can continue my massage. “It’s not for Randall. I pick up other work sometimes.”

Officially done with his massage, Lucas lifts off of me and pushes himself to a sitting position so he’s facing me. “What kind of work?” he asks curiously.

I pull myself into a more comfortable position, knees up and my arms wrapped around them. “It’s PI work, but for non-profits. I guess it’s similar to the pro bono work you do.”

Lucas lets out a thoughtful hum. “What kind of non-profit? I mean, what kind of case do you have to work on tonight?”

“It’s, uh… this one is a DV case,” I explain quietly. “There’s a women’s shelter that helps women with their cases against the abusers. Sometimes I help them build their cases.”

Lucas’s eyebrows shoot up. “Wow. How do you do that?”

I shrug and pick at my pants. “I look for past behavior that helps prove a pattern of abusive behavior. Disorderly conduct arrests, animal abuse, stuff like that.”

He whistles softly. “Damn, Charli. That’s incredible. Do you work on other types of cases, too? Or do you focus on DV?”

I shake my head. “I do all kinds of work. This is just what I’m working on now. Sometimes I’ll help employees against their employers, or parents for child custody, or anywhere else I can help the underdog.”

He nods, not meeting my eyes. I can see the thoughts spinning around his head. He knows there’s a reason I take on this kind of work, he just doesn’t know how to ask about it.

Not for the first time, I think about telling Lucas everything. I haven’t talked to anyone about my past since the court case a few years ago, and while it hasn’t been eating at me, it might be a relief to get it off my chest.

I glance at Lucas beside me and realize…I trust him enough to talk about it. This weekend has proven that.

Just as I’m starting to wonder how I would even begin telling the story, Lucas blurts out, “Can I ask you a question?”

I swallow thickly. “Sure.”

“Feel free to tell me to go fuck myself if this is too personal, but…did something happen when you were younger? I know you said your mom passed when you were young, and obviously, a parent dying is a huge, life-changing event, but with the way you approach ethics in your job…” He sends a worried look my way. “I don’t know, I guess it just feels like you went through something.”

I must hesitate for too long because he suddenly hurries to backtrack. “But if you don’t want to talk about it, or if the answer is simply that you’re the most moral person I’ve ever met, then⁠—”

I let out a laugh at that. His nerves are sweet. And when I take a deep breath for courage, Lucas straightens, realizing I’m going to answer his question for real.

“The short answer to your question is yes, some things happened when I was younger,” I tell him quietly.

“You don’t—” His throat moves on a rough swallow, his hand landing gently on mine. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

If I wasn’t decided before, that would do it.

With a sigh, I turn my body toward him, grateful to feel his touch doesn’t stray from my skin. His fingers just tangle with mine, grounding me as my life story tumbles out.

“My mom died when I was thirteen,” I murmur, looking down at our hands. “She was nice, you know? Just a nice, caring woman who loved her daughter and worked really hard as a single mom.” Lucas begins sweetly brushing his thumb over the back of my hand. When I lift my head to meet his eyes, he’s giving me a reassuring smile.

I take a deep breath. “My dad wasn’t really in my life growing up. I’d get an annual birthday card during the wrong month and go on the occasional lunch date, but he was more of a sperm donor than anything else. But…after Mom died, I defaulted to his care.” A heavy exhale rushes from me. “Although, to be honest, I have no idea why he kept custody of me.”

I shake my head to clear the thoughts. “Anyway, it turns out he was a con man. I spent the rest of my teenage years moving from state to state, from woman to woman, watching my father con women out of their money. When a con was going well, we were living in apartments like yours. When we were between cons and he’d run through all of the money he’d accumulated, we’d be living in…well, in apartments like mine.” I wince. “I was eighteen when I finally ran away from him.”

Lucas’s muttered curse filters through my memory haze. I see his jaw flex in frustration.

“He involved you in cons, didn’t he?” he says through gritted teeth.

I nod. “Sometimes. Not always. After he figured out I was good with computers, he got me involved in other cons. Identity theft and embezzlement were the main ones. We were constantly faking things and moving before we could get caught.” I let out a humorless laugh. “It’s one of the reasons I’m good at the in-person part of PI work, too. I’m really good at dressing up and acting like someone else. I can blend in like you wouldn’t believe.”