AllFreeNovel
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Nalla was just wrong. All parts of the message tracked: If a person wanted to change, they could. Change required discipline and the ability to withstand being uncomfortable. Evolution was always the goal if you wanted to be better in any part of your life. Anything that you didn’t directly control, whether it was thoughts about yourself, your goals and ambitions, your finances, your house, your decisions, was subject to a third-party tax that could wipe you out if they collected on their due.
Yes, it was on social media. Sure, there was a glitzy side to it, an aspirational oh-so-shiny of beauty and success. But none of it was wrong, and all of it was better than hiding at home and pretending you were being forced to be a shut-in.
Skip.
The woman resumed her talk, Bitty resumed her typing, and when she came to the last of her notes, she checked on how much longer she had to go on the video. A good twenty minutes. She was getting readyfor a proper break—and as she stretched in her office chair and felt her back crack in a dozen places, she grimaced.
Not that kind of break.
Putting the video on pause, she got to her feet, took out her pods, and had to turn around in the tight spot between her desk and the back wall. She loved her micro-sized space. The old broom closet was on the second floor of Safe Place, just down from her mother, Mary’s, office—and she’d been allowed to decorate it any way she wanted because nobody else would claim the nook. But come on, it had a window with a view out the side of the house.
And okay, fine, she’d gone a little girlie with things—and by “girlie,” she had antique patterned wallpaper made up of pink roses, and pretty cream and yellow drapes on that one little window. The carpet was a needlepoint project she’d stitched herself from a Victorian design, and the sketches on the walls were Dior fashion prints from the nineteen fifties with ladies in perched hats and teacup skirts. There was barely enough room to roll her chair around, and if she wanted to meet with someone, she needed to do it elsewhere. But it was a cozy nest that she enjoyed coming to when it was time to be quietly productive.
Or… when she was engaging in a heated, one-sided argument with a friend who she was not really speaking to anymore—
A wink of red light caught her eye and she glanced to the window.
Down below, in the cheerful illumination from the living room, a dark figure was standing underneath her office and pointing a little laser up at her.
Frowning, she peered out her open door—but like the hall could help her?—and then she scooted around her office chair and bent over the sash. When she got nowhere with the lifting, she realized she’d forgotten to flip the lock.
The cold air curled in, and she shivered as she… leaned… out. “Are you—ah, are you looking for me?”
Down on the ground, L.W. nodded. “You got a minute.”
“Um, yes. Sure. Hold on.”
She tripped over her chair on the way to the door—then doubled back to shut the window and hit the rollers again. As she spilled out into the second-story corridor, she pulled her sweater down and her jeans up and fluffed her hair. Then on the way down the stairs, she found herself tiptoeing and told herself to get over it and lose the fluster while she was at it. She wasn’t a prisoner, and even though males weren’t allowed in the house, it was perfectly fine to meet one on the lawn.
Her adoptive sire did that a lot when he came by to see his Mary.
Down at the base of the stairs, she smoothed her sweater again and patted at her hair—and told herself that she wasn’t doing it for any particular reason—
“Oh, Bitty!” someone called out from the back of the house. “Hey, can you—”
“I’llberightbackjustgimmeaminute—”
“What about your—”
Bitty waved to the other social worker over her shoulder, and refused to look too closely at why she didn’t want anyone to know who she was meeting. She was also absolutely not going to go into how excited she was. Or how fast she moved as she blasted out onto the porch, all but skipped down the steps and then skidded around the corner of the—
“Hi,” she said breathlessly as she halted in the snow.
God… he was huge. And as L.W. tromped down toward her, his long strides and heavy shitkickers making quick, crushing work of the distance, he got even bigger.
As Bitty measured the breadth of his shoulders under the black leather that covered them, she realized she’d never seen him in “civilian” clothes. Never blue jeans or a sweatshirt. Absolutely never a jacket and tie.
“Are you cold?” he said as his jade green eyes narrowed.
Wow. His eyelashes were as jet-black as his hair, and just as thick. Like usual, he had a thick braid running along the center of his head,the long tail disappearing down his back, and the sides had had a fresh shave. He’d also put in a pair of black earrings. Black diamonds? Set in black metal?
Would it kill him to wear a color—
“Bitty? I asked you, are you cold?”
As if she’d stroked out from the zero-degree temperatures or something.
“Oh, no. I’m fine.” She crossed her arms and rubbed her upper arms. “I was getting stale at my desk, so your timing is great. What’s up?”
