"I don't know if I want to avoid them." The honesty surprised her. She had no frame of reference for this, no way to put her questions into words. She was baffled, but Angelica didn't run from puzzles; she dissected them, solved them, and wrung every usable bit of knowledge from the subject. The puzzle that mattered most was him.

"I cannot tell you how I feel about it because I don't understand." She walked him through her logic, needing to clarify what she could of this. "And I want to understand." It was one thing to know he had secret pursuits; it was another to find she didn't have language for what she witnessed. Any other moment, this might strike her as funny. She'd always considered herself worldly.

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