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“No, stop. We’re not going to try to do this ourselves. The detectives are following their processes. He can’t disappear entirely. They’ll find him.” I sound more confident than I feel, but I have to believe it. I can’t live a life knowing he’s still out there. I can’t go back.

“We could get someone to make him disappear, though,” she quips, still obviously searching for who knows what on the internet.

“Oh? And supposing we even find someone, how do you think we’ll pay for it?”

She pauses, silence ticking for a moment. “You think they’ll do it as a good deed? Ridding society of a fucknugget?”

“I’m not sure anyone who gets into the line of work of disappearing people does it as a good deed.”

“Argh, you’re right. They should, though.” She sighs pointedly. “Like an act of kindness or a pay-it-forward thing.”

I chuckle, even as my chest swells at her support. “How would you even pay something like that forward? You made this person disappear for me, so I’ll pay for a stranger’s parking?”

“Well, when you put it like that…no. Fine, you do it the boring, morally correct way,” she mutters, her tone full of sulky disappointment.

I smile. “Thank you.”

“Anyway, going back to your earlier comment. There’s no part of me that doesn’t love how they make you feel. If you want to get hot and heavy with any of them again…only you can know what pace you need things to go at. There’s not going to be a right and wrong way to do all of this. There’s no linear way to heal from what you went through, and no one can tell you there is. You know your own mind, your body. Everyone else’s opinions are irrelevant. Unless it’s mine, but I’m always going to be Team Rosy and her vagina.”

I splutter, choking on the saliva that’s suddenly decided to drown me.

The door to Nate’s bedroom pops open, and the man himself strides in with concern etched all over his face.

“Are you dying on me? Was the vagina part too much?” Steph’s voice projects from my phone’s speaker.

Nate’s expression turns into a scowl as he glares at my phone, then reaches for me. His warm palm slides along my back.

“I’m…o-okay,” I cough, still dying of mortification.

“Good, because you hadn’t spilled the details on the dic⁠—”

My hands fumble, and I end the call, my cheeks burning with the panicked heat. She was so close to finishing her sentence, and Nate would have heard it.

“What details?” he asks gruffly, his hand still circling gently across my back.

“Nothing, just Steph being weird. Haha…” I cringe.

He grunts, and whether it’s in agreement to what I said or disapproval of my avoidance, I can’t tell. Sometimes the man’s grunts all sound the same.

The bed shifts, and his hand drops away. He stands and walks over to a gym bag on the floor by his door.

“Strip and lie on the bed,” he murmurs, the words thrown so casually over his shoulder as he starts rummaging in the bag. It’s demanding, but he’s managed to soften it somehow. It doesn’t bite or whip me like his orders did.

“What?” I ask, staring at him blankly.

“You heard me, little tease.”

“I might’ve heard wrong,” I say, my stomach dipping low. He’s finally initiating something with me. Although stripping naked feels a little quick. I’d rather he turned me drunk from his heated kisses before throwing that request at me. At least then I’d have a little more courage.

He stands, something fisted in his hand that I can’t quite see.

“Take off your clothes. Get on the bed for me,” he instructs, then strides into the connecting bathroom. A moment later, I hear the brief sound of water running before it’s shut off.

Frustrating, enigmatic bear.

My hands take over, following his instructions far too easily, and suddenly I’m lying on the bed in just my underwear. Cool air brushes my bare skin, raising goosebumps as I wait for him to tell me what to do next.

FORTY-FOUR