"And you're the only woman who I would make such an offer to," Cam said, deep meaning in his eyes. "Even more than the love of marrying me, I'm making this offer because you’re more than just the love of my life, but the true mate to my soul."
I brushed his hair out of his eyes and kissed him softly. "Take me to bed and show me. Then we can discuss the next step to take."
* * *
I was doing my first shift at the pharmacy since my unexpected short vacation. I walked in and found Jay waiting for me. "Hold on," he said, waving me into his office. We walked in, and he closed the door behind us. "Have a seat."
"If it's okay, I'd like to stand," I said, laughing ruefully. "Bruised my backside, kind of hurts to sit right now."
Jay didn't probe any deeper, which I was grateful for. I was sporting a wonderfully pink and bruised butt, and was wearing loose jeans because I wanted as little contact between my skin and anything else as possible. Still, telling your boss that you don't want to sit down because you've had multiple bouts of epic, athletic sex with your fiancée in the past fourteen hours isn’t an appropriate conversation.
“All right,” he said, sitting behind his desk. "I just wanted to tell you that your sacrifice over the past few days has been appreciated by everyone. I went ahead and did what you asked, so while the hours works out the same for the state boys, the pay rate is going to show them doing the overtime. So thank you again on that."
"You're welcome," I said. "I just thought other people deserved the chance to do what they needed to do."
"Actually, that's the other thing I wanted to talk with you about," he said. “Betty Cruddup turned in her two week's notice this morning."
I winced but nodded in understanding. Over the days since the incident, people were really starting to think about their lives and the lives of their children. Betty was a single mother, and in order to make ends meet, she did day shifts at the hospital while picking up night and weekend shifts with Jay. "Where's she going?"
"She said she's going to take a job in Santa Fe," Jay said. "I wouldn't be surprised if she left New Mexico actually. She came here back when her husband was doing work for the State, but she doesn't have any other family in the area. Now that they’re no longer together, I think she’s been wanting to get away for a while now. I don’t blame her.”
"I hope she does well for herself, she seemed like a good worker," I said. "What can I do to help?"
Jay gave me a small smile. "How'd you like to be a pharmacy manager? I know that you'd have to do more weekend shifts, but if you're willing, I can promise you that during the week there'd be no closing shifts at all, at least while school's in session.”
I thought about it. It was an attractive offer, but I also knew that by committing to a manager's role, even a shift manager, meant that I would have obligations that I wasn't sure I'd be able to keep. Despite Cam's assurances that he'd try to keep things stable with our actions involving Albertine, the fact of the matter was, we both knew we might have to disappear at some point. Thankfully, changing identities was about as easy as updating a Facebook status with Albertine, but that didn't mean I wanted to ditch my entire identity and leave people in a lurch.
"Let me talk with Cam about it, Jay," I said after a moment's reflection. "It's not that I'm not blown away by your offer and consider it an honor, but I need to know his long-term plans and such before I say yes to something like this. Would you mind if I give you a call on it maybe tomorrow?"
"Just wait until your next shift," Jay said. "It's not going to blow up before then."
As my shift progressed, I let my mind think about our next steps. I was certain that I wanted the job, not because of the money but because I wanted to have something in my life outside of Albertine. I'd heard Cam refer to it as the bitch goddess, and I understood the phrase perfectly. Sure, there was a lot to say to being the guardian of the world, but at the same time, it was a role that was truly thankless. If Cam and I did our job with Albertine properly, nobody would ever know what we’d done. While I'm not someone who needs public adulation, I couldn't go my entire life knowing that most of my energy was chained to a doomsday laptop.