My mother called again that night.
We'd migrated to the bedroom after our talk — needing comfort, needing connection, needing to feel alive in the face of everything closing in around us. Now I was straddling Fao's lap, his knot firmly locked inside me, his arms wrapped around my waist while we waited for his body to release me.
My phone rang. Again.
"Just ignore it," Fao murmured against my neck.
"I've ignored it four times. She's not going to stop."
He sighed, shifting slightly, and we both sucked in a breath as the knot moved inside me.
"Don't — don't do that while I'm on the phone with my mother."
"Then don't answer."
The phone rang again. I grabbed it off the nightstand and hit accept before I could think better of it.
"Elowen Marie Walsh, why haven't you been answering your
