Page 104 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah. Whatever you want. I'm just glad you called."

And she meant it. The new Janice kept knocking me off balance, like a stair that isn't there will. Part of me wanted to hand her the reins back just to make the strangeness stop. Most of me had spent years getting moved around by people who were sure they knew better, and I didn't want them back.

I got my bike down. We rolled out onto the trail without settling a single thing, which was exactly what I'd come for.

The first half mile we didn't talk at all. The trail ran flat and pale ahead of us, two lanes with a seam down the middle, and we rode side by side. The trees closed over and the light came down green and moving. We'd ridden like this a hundred times, before any of our drama, and I knew the rhythm in my legs even while the rest of me stayed braced.

"Okay," I finally said to the trail. "So. Derek's house."

"Mm." Careful.

I told her about the dinner. The house being too big and too quiet. The kitchen where he cooked for us himself, which I hadn't expected. The burned heel of his palm he ran under the tap without comment, like pain was a thing you handled and moved past. Jessica's drawing on the wall in a frame worth more than most of what was in my house.

Janice rode and listened. The old Janice would have been three questions deep by now.

"He's not what I pictured," she commented, when I paused. "From how you've always talked about him."

"No. He's not what I pictured either."

Then the harder part, and I gave it to the road instead of to her.

"At one point he held my wrists," I said. "Both of them. In one hand. And I felt that sensation, that craving, you know. What you showed me. On the cruise." I made my voice even, didn’t let the anger creep in. "And this time I knew what it was while it was happening."

A long beat. When she spoke, she'd set the words down with care.

"Derek Harrington." A pause. "Huh." And then, lower, almost to herself, "Yeah. That makes sense."

It did make sense, I told myself. Big man. Strong hands. Of course I'd go somewhere under that.

We came to a rise and I dropped a gear and stood on the pedals, and she stood on hers, and for a few breaths we were both just working, the talk suspended in the effort. At the top, the trees fell back and the valley came up gold on the left through a gap in the green. We coasted.

"There's more," I said, while we were moving.

"There's always more with you." A flick of the old dryness, there and gone, and she winced. "Sorry. Go on."

"Jessica went into a crisis. Derek's daughter. She coded in front of me. And my hands knew what to do, they just did it, while the rest of me stood there watching them." I let it sit. "For a few minutes I thought I was going to lose her. And I have no business loving a patient that much, it's unprofessional."

I'd slowed without deciding to. Janice slowed with me, matched me without a word, and for a stretch we just rolled, the trail unspooling under us.

"God, Lacey. A week and a half. You've held all of this in a week and a half."

"Yeah."

"And you didn't call me." Her hand twitched on the bar like it wanted to cross the gap between our bikes and couldn't.

"I'm calling you now," I said.

I pushed back up into the pace. Used the burn in my legs to get the last of it out.

"After, when Jessica was stable and I could breathe again, Derek joined me in the cafeteria. And he saw the bracelet. And I figured here it comes, the judgment, the look he gives when scrutinizing a budget. I had my back up before he opened his mouth. I snapped at him. Told him it was mine to wear and none of his business."

The trees broke and the light came down hard and white and I squinted into it.

"And he didn't say any of the things I'd expected. He looked at it, and he said, Glad it's working." The words sat as strange in my mouth as they had in his. "Glad it's working. And then nothing. Like that was a complete sentence I was supposed to already understand."

I shook my head at the road.

"I've turned it over a hundred times. I have no idea what he was talking about."