I mumble an “okay” to Gabe. I’m so not looking forward to this conversation.

I awkwardly pull up my pants, grab my phone from the nightstand, and leave the room, getting away from Gabe’s penetrating gaze.

I call my mom back. She’d better have a good reason for the interruption. If it weren’t for her phone call, I might already be a non-virgin by now.

Or I might be getting attacked by questions I can’t answer. I don’t know. Maybe I was saved by Mom’s phone call.

But then again… me trapped under Gabe’s control, him interrogating and torturing me… I don’t know, it sounds kind of hot.

“Hi, honey,” Mom says sweetly from the other end, sounding like nothing’s wrong.

“Mom, what’s going on?”

“I’m at your hospital, honey.”

“What? I thought your appointment with Dr. Craig wasn’t until Friday.”

The line stays quiet for a few seconds, but I can just feel the disapproval oozing from the other end of the phone. “You don’t sound very happy about me being here, dear.”

“No, it’s just…” I fumble for words to say. Luckily, I’ve had a lot of practice preventing one of Mom’s outbursts from happening. “I just think it’s too bad that you’re here today, because it’s pretty busy time.”

“Oh, that’s okay, dear, I’ll come and find you. You just stay where you are.”

“No, no.” That would be worse. I don’t want her to come here and bump into Gabe. That’s the stuff of my nightmares. I check my watch. “I can get away to see you. This hospital is like a maze. I don’t want you to get lost.”

“Oh, okay.” I can almost hear the smile in Mom’s voice.

“You’re near Dr. Craig’s office, right?”

“Actually, I’m still in the lobby, and I don’t remember how to get to his office. I was just about to ask the girl at the counter when you called.”

“Wait there. I’ll meet you there and take you to Dr. Craig’s office.”

I end the call, feeling like I’ve just dodged a bullet.

Nina, the new nurse working the main desk at the lobby, is incredibly chatty. She would’ve started a long conversation with my mom and introduced her to a few other people. She might’ve even taken a few selfies with my mom to show the people she didn’t get to introduce.

That would’ve pulled Mom too deep into my “workplace” box.

I breathe a sigh of relief when I see Mom sitting by herself in the waiting room. “Hi, Mom. Where’s Ray?”

“Oh, he had to go see a friend. He’ll pick me up after my appointment.”

Of course. What am I thinking? There’s no way Ray would just sit here in the hospital for one hour to wait for Mom to finish talking to her “head doctor.”

“So what are your plans for today, Mom?”

As my mom gets distracted by the task of reading out her to-do list, I nod and smile at Nina when we pass the counter, then I break eye contact and walk as fast as Mom can.

My eyes widen when I realize there’s a picture of the Chief of Medicine—Gabe’s dad—on the wall of the hallway. I move to the other side to block Mom’s view of it.

I don’t know how she’s never noticed it before, but she’s not the most observant person I know, and it’s not something people pay attention to. Hell, I’ve overlooked that picture even though I’ve walked through this hall hundreds of times before.

My mom is ten minutes early, so I sit with her until her turn with Dr. Craig comes. Some people recognize me and smile at my mom as they walk past, which makes me nervous. But nobody says anything.

I guess my mom looks just like any other patient, and they don’t suspect any special relationship between us.

As long as neither Gabe nor Gabe’s dad walks past, we should be fine.

I huff a relieved sigh when a nurse calls my mom’s name and she disappears into Dr. Craig’s room.

I know it’s a risk every week when Mom sees her doctor. That’s why I was opposed to her coming here.

But there’s nothing I can do about it. Dr. Craig is her regular shrink now and that’s that.

At least when she comes here on my day off, she doesn’t try to find me and wander all over the hospital.

Mom doesn’t like talking to strangers so she usually keeps her interactions with the hospital staff to a minimum. But if she gets it into her head that I know these people, she’d get a lot more talkative because they’re supposed to be my friends.

Oh, well. At least I got her to agree to go straight home after her appointment.

So that’s one crisis handled.

Now, I need to think about what to do with Gabe.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Gabe’s voice surprises me. It’s like just the thought of him has conjured him up before me.

Shit.

Mom just went into Dr. Craig’s room, like, a second ago. Did he see her?