A/N A bit of a breather before we finish. Thanks for reading and for responding. There's been a glitch with reviews; I haven't seen any for Chap 7. I will catch up on responses once the reviews are available.

We are on pace to finish by Valentine's Day. Yay!

Thanks to michaelfmx for his beta work.

Don't own Chuck.

Miss Trust?

Sunday, September 3, 2017 (Labor Day Weekend)

Boca Raton, Florida

Sarah's house

CHAPTER 8 Purgatory to Paradise

Sarah awoke to an inky and grumbling Florida thunderstorm. The rain was blown by heavy winds that made the sound of it inconsistent, now splashing in bucketsful against the house, now not, as the wind tossed the heavy curtains of water. Her room lit up with the flash of lightning. She heard thunder.

She felt warm and comfortable and safe beneath her blankets and she snuggled into them. Wait? How did I get here?

She remembered. She had told Chuck her awful story, the second one in the span of a day, and then he had held her. She must have fallen asleep on his lap. He'd put her to bed. She then realized that the other side of the bed was mussed. She put her hand out—it was cool to the touch. Another flash of light, another peal of thunder. Sarah reluctantly got out from beneath the covers and walked to the window. She looked out at the morning, dark gray and wet.

She still hadn't entirely gotten used to these storms. They didn't frighten her, but they affected her. They were a reminder of how large and powerful and indifferent the world could be, and of her limited ability to understand and attempt to cope with that world. She could see the creek behind her house was badly swollen, engorged with muddy water, rushing, careening sloppily inside its banks.

She felt Chuck enter the room. She turned from the window. He was suddenly lit up by a flash of lightning outside. His hair was mussed, like the blankets on the bed, his curls pushed a bit more to one side than the other. He gave her a tentative, lopsided grin. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. He held out a steaming mug. "Coffee?"

She walked to him and took the mug. She held it in both hands, closed her eyes, and allowed the aroma of the freshly brewed coffee to envelop her. Another lightning flash. The warm aroma was a counterpoint to the dark thunderclap outside. She sipped it and hummed her approval. She grasped the mug by the handle and freed her other hand.

She reached out and put her hand around the back of Chuck's neck and pulled his lips to hers. She could taste the coffee on his lips and knew he could taste it on hers. Lightning. Thunder. She pulled back from the kiss and sought out his eyes.

"Thank you for last night. I never thought I would tell anyone that story. I told the clinical, spy version to Graham when I called him to report what had happened. I wrote it down as part of the investigation. But I never…told…it to anyone. Maybe not even to myself."

Her hand was still resting on Chuck's neck. He reached up and gently pulled it around to his mouth. He kissed the palm of her hand a couple of times. She kept her hand joined to his after the kisses.

"Was there trouble for you after it happened?"

"No, luckily, there was enough evidence in Bryce's phone, on his computer and at his apartment back in DC for my story to be borne out.

"Graham was…embarrassed, I guess. He did all he could to keep me at the Agency, but he knew I was done. I stayed on for a while but then started preparing to leave. He helped—again, he felt bad about it all, even if he didn't want me to go. I believe he mainly felt bad that he'd been played. He was less concerned with me. But, still, he helped me. He worked with Harvard to get me academic credit for my field experience. They gave me some tests and eventually awarded me my Master's. Maybe, if this book I am writing goes well, I can submit it as a thesis and get my Doctorate. I have all the coursework I need."

Chuck took the coffee cup and took a sip. "What're you writing about?"

"Dante's Divine Comedy—specifically on Purgatory."

"Oh, yeah, right, Purgatory is the place of waiting, where those who are guilty of the Deadly Sins purge themselves of what they've done so that they can eventually enter Paradise, right?"

"Right." Sarah nodded, and took the cup back and took another sip of coffee, hearing the rain continue to fall.

Chuck grinned. "Cheerier than Inferno, I guess, although less cheery than Paradise. Say, it's been years since I read it—and I read it only in translation, of course—but isn't Purgatory like, a mountain, with seven terraces, Pride on the bottom terrace and Lust on the top?"

"Good memory, yes. Dante thought that all the sins were related to love, forms of love—excessive or deficient or corrupted."

"Oh, yeah, yeah. I remember that. It always seemed right to me—or at least as good an account of wrong-doing as I know."

Chuck looked off into space for a moment, considering it. Sarah picked up the discussion, enjoying getting to share this with Chuck.

"I suppose one reason I find thinking about Purgatory interesting is my childhood. Looking back on it, I realized that one of the things that makes conning other people so shameful is that it uses people's love against them—increasing it when it's already excessive, like the proud, decreasing it where it's deficient, like the slothful or indolent, or corrupting it further when it is already corrupt, in the greedy or lustful. The real secret to a good con is figuring out what people love with a love that is in some way...improper—and then playing on that improper love. It's much the same with spying, with marks and assets."

The silence that settled over them both broke eventually-another flash of lightning and peal of thunder.

Sarah kept Chuck's hand in hers and they walked into the kitchen. Sarah could see that Chuck had been at work. The tote bag Sally brought was on the floor and a metal device, about the size of a cell phone but thicker and heavier, was on the table, its back separated from its front. The Vortex. She had to admit: it looked like a garage door opener.

She put her coffee down on the table and then sat herself down in one of the chairs. "So, that's…"

Chuck bent formally from the waist, extending his arm slowly toward the device, and in his best ringmaster's voice proclaimed: "…The Mighty Vortex!"

He had no more than finished when the Vortex chirped, a lazy, fading chirp—an audible anti-climax. Sarah began to laugh and Chuck joined her. She knew it wasn't as funny as she found it, but she knew she needed that laugh. It washed away the vestiges of the story from the night before.

Chuck sat down in a chair and looked at her. "So, Sarah, why are we back here? Shouldn't we be back in Okeechobee or somewhere on the road, you know, driving North by Northwest or something? Me, Roger Thornhill—you, Eve Kendall? Why are we here?"

"Thank you, Chuck, for trusting me and for letting me talk about me last night, about my past, and not our present. I needed to do that. But, you're right, now we need to think about the present. It turns out that around the time you visited my office Friday night, I got an email from Graham.

"He orchestrated the 'attack' on your lab and he sent the team to South Dakota. He wanted to scare the Hintos into bringing this," she gestured to the Vortex, "to you. The CIA—or maybe I should say Graham—wants the project and the Vortex. I guess Graham wanted it all here with you hoping that you'll just give it all to him, that he won't have to…take it.

"All of this, the break-in, the dark SUVs, the intimidation of the Hintos, all of this has been to scare you into giving him the project. He wants it, but—given my knowledge of him—he also wants you to give it to him, and wants you to be grateful to him, I think. He wants to…humble and humiliate you. I got that from the tone of his email.

"He got in touch with me to see if I would be willing to…cultivate…your willingness to give the project up. So, yesterday, when I saw the email at the coffee shop, I told him I would and asked for more time—I have until tomorrow. So, I knew we wouldn't be bothered if we came back here last night."

Chuck said nothing. She knew he had become angry. Furious,even. But he was controlling it.

"Did I ever tell you I met your…boss?"

"No, and it's former boss. How did that happen?"

"He came to Stanford when I was on the faculty and tried to recruit me. I didn't like the guy then and I refused. I made sure I did so in a way that…expressed my dislike for the man." Chuck's teeth clenched for a moment. "I'm not proud of the way I reacted. But I still believe I was right to refuse him and to dislike him. I just shouldn't have flaunted that dislike. It was unnecessary."

"Well, Chuck, Graham is my former boss. He's not my former friend. If you two had a run-in and you angered him, then I understand part of why he's doing this—he's putting you in your place, trying to force you to be grateful to him. He really is a son of a bitch.

"Anyway, he and I had a professional relationship, not a personal one. Although, as I said, Graham felt that our professional relationship gave him permission to manipulate my personal relationships. I understand your dislike of the man. Had I met him at a less impressionable age, or felt less professionally indebted to him, I suspect I would've disliked him from the beginning too. I came to dislike him and I have to say I dislike him heartily right now."

Chuck's fury was on simmer. "But, Sarah, if he is your former boss, why did you agree to do what he wanted?"

"I didn't, Chuck, I just pretended to. I bought us time. We need figure out a plan to get you out of this, so we can get on with our lives…together. By tomorrow night, we have to have a way out."

The fury vanished from Chuck's face altogether—at least for a moment. "Our lives together?" Outside, a silence became noticeable; there was a break in the clouds; sunlight shafted into the kitchen through the sink window.

"Yes, Chuck, but we'll talk more about that later," she couldn't keep a grin from her face.

Chuck grinned too, but then she saw him think of something and his expression darkened a little. "Ok. But when you got up yesterday, at the coffee shop, after you saw the email, what was that all about?"

"That was me coming to terms with myself—about you, and about you and me. It was about me realizing that I do trust you. I can't give a reason, except to say that you seem worth trusting, and my reason for that is that I trust you. And that's kind of circular logic, I get that. But It's a good circle—it's real and anyway it's my circle. I just had to recognize that that is where I am, in that circle, and that I'm there, with you. Because, unless I'm very much confused, you're in that circle too, with me?" She paused; Chuck nodded happily.

Sarah went on. "I trusted you from the moment I saw you, the moment we saw each other, at the new faculty party. I know that now. It's why I reacted as I did there, and why I ran from you at the Union. You couldn't have scared me so much, unsettled me so much, without prompting that kind of deep, immediate change. I dared you to trust me because I already dared to trust you. I knew when I saw your eyes for the first time, that if I allowed myself to do that a few more times, I would start feeling things, telling you…things." She smiled at herself, shook her head. "I wasn't wrong about that, it turns out. I was just wrong to be so terrified of it. So, are you in that circle of trust with me, Chuck?"

Chuck grinned again—a large, happy, concessive grin. "Yeah." He was nodding his head too.

"Then I need you to stop being angry with Graham and start plotting to stop him. I should tell you that he could do a lot more than cost us both our jobs. He could do all sorts of things—including kidnapping you and throwing you in a bunker to force you to give up the project, even finish it for him. He could let old enemies of mine—Fulcrum agents, for example—know where I am.

"I don't know that he would resort to such tactics. But there is no way of knowing for sure. He has…played hardball in the past; sometimes, I was his…enforcer. I was the person who played hardball for Graham." Sarah stopped, and her gaze drifted to the wall. She swallowed hard. Then she looked back at Chuck, scanning his face for a reaction. He showed no sign of being upset or bothered by what she said. She sighed quietly in relief. "Do you have any ideas, Chuck?"

Chuck stared at the Vortex on the table. He sipped from the coffee. Sipped again. He drummed his fingers on the table for a few minutes. Stopped. Drummed again. All the while, he continued to stare at the Vortex.

"Sarah, do you have a grill?" Chuck asked, a small smile beginning in one corner of his mouth and then stretching across it all the way to the other.

"Yeah," Sarah answered, surprised by the question. "The previous owners actually built a brick grill in the backyard. I haven't used it. I don't entertain." She cast her eyes down, sure that his time in her house had made that clear.

"Well, you make a fine lemonade. I say you contact Graham and invite him to a Boca Raton Labor Day Cookout. We'll see if we can't find something to burn while he's here. We could roast a weenie…" Chuck's eyes narrowed above his smile.

"Can you think of some friends you might invite over? It would be best, I think, if the gang were all here, so to speak. It will make things more confusing for Graham, harder for him to misbehave."

"I suppose I could invite Carina. She's the tall redhead who was sitting with me in the Union the…ah…the other day." Chuck nodded. "We could invite Morgan and Alex, I guess. You know them, right?" Chuck nodded. "I mean, I like them and I think they like me, although I am not sure it would be quite right to call us friends. And Casey and his wife and daughter."

"That sounds great. Why don't you make some phone calls? I need to think for a few more minutes, and once we know who's coming, we can work out a plan."

Sarah smiled at Chuck. The mere thought of having people over before would have sent her into a panic. It still made her a little jumpy. But it also seemed like it might be…fun. To be with those folks and with Chuck. Then she remembered that Graham would be there too—because, she knew, he would come if she dangled Chuck and the project in front of him.

"Tell you what," Chuck said, getting up and looking out through the kitchen window at the emerging sun turning the storm's leftovers into steam, "I'll go outside and make sure the grill is working. Yes, sir, we're going to have a real Boca Raton Labor Day Cookout, CIA Style."

}o{

The next couple of hours Chuck spent outside, repairing and prepping the grill. He was good with his hands and found that the time spent fixing, cleaning and adjusting the grill helped him clear his head. Sarah had made her phone calls. Everyone accepted. Chuck could tell that made her nervous. He was sure—although she had not said so—that he was the first person she had ever allowed into her house. Now, everyone was coming, as it were: most notably Langston Graham and (no doubt) his espionage entourage.

Sarah had reported the result of her phone calls when she brought Chuck out a glass of ice water. He drank it thirstily. She told him she had also taken his clothes from Friday and washed them. They were now drying. That was good because the clothes he'd been wearing for the last couple of days were getting foul and were soaked with sweat.

Chuck was pleased that there was also an old, longish picnic table on the back section of the porch. It would work well for tomorrow's event. Chuck finally finished with the grill and went inside. Sarah had his clean clothes folded on her bed. She'd left for the store to get supplies an hour ago. He stripped down and put his sweaty clothes in as discreet and unobtrusive a pile as possible. He got into the shower and stood under the water.

He was nervous about the showdown he was planning with Graham, but he knew it was unavoidable. At some level, he must have foreknown that he and Graham might end up like this. Their meeting at Stanford had ended without a resolution. It was like a cliff-hanger ending, as if To Be Continued had been in subtitles beneath the two of them during their hostile final handshake.

Chuck got out of the shower and began to towel off. He was rubbing his hair with the towel when he heard a deep, long sigh. He turned, lifting the towel as he continued rubbing his hair so that he could see. Sarah was standing in the door of the bathroom gazing at him eagerly and unapologetically.

"I put the groceries away. We can make some lunch in a little bit but, I confess, I'm not hungry—well, not for lunch…" She licked her lips unmistakably and winked at him, open-and-shut blue.

"Why, Professor Walker, I'm shocked that you, a Dante scholar, a woman of letters, could make so carnal a suggestion. I would have imagined you to have risen well above the flesh, to dwell in a realm of pure spirit." Chuck had tucked the towel around his waist and taken on a lecturer's tone. He was gesturing grandly but nearly nakedly toward the ceiling, the realm, presumably, of pure spirit.

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Tell you what, Professor Bartowski," she sighed as she began to slowly undo the small blue buttons on her blue blouse, "if, once I open my blouse, you believe you can remain in the realm of pure spirit, I will join you there." She finished with her buttons and her blouse hung open, her bra light blue beneath the flash of her electric eyes.

Chuck turned bright red. She could see that he was reacting…all over. His breath caught in his throat. "Well," he offered finally when he had found his voice, "I firmly believe that the…material is the vehicle of the spiritual."

Sarah smirked her satisfaction, glancing at the tented testament to his firm belief. "That's good because Sarah Says: Drop your towel."

He dropped his towel.

}o{

One lengthy, vigorous and mutually rewarding game of Sarah Says later, Chuck found himself half-asleep in the bed beside her. She was nestled comfortably against his body, half-smiling as she looked up at him. He looked back down at her, but just by moving his eyes. She laughed in gentle satisfaction. "What?"

"I don't want to get up, but I need to go to the lab for a little while. I guess we should eat and then go. Do we need to stop and get your car?"

"No," Sarah said, "Casey's going to drive it over tomorrow. He'll take the Land Rover home. What do you need to do?"

"I need to do a bit more tinkering with the Vortex, and then I need to start it up."

"Why on earth did you give it that silly name, Chuck?

"As I've told you, I had a lot of time on my hands that summer, and when I wasn't tinkering or spending Farmer Hinto-supervised time with Sally, I was reading The Pound Era. The Hugh Kenner book. Pound and some of his fellow poets used the image of a 'vortex' as a way of thinking…"

"…about their poetry," Sarah finished the thought. "Yeah, Carina has me reading Pound. The guy was an ass, a loon, but seriously brilliant. Not a poster boy for the sanity of true genius," Sarah noted as Chuck gave her a questioning look. She ignored it and went on. "Didn't he write an essay called 'Vortex': 'the vortex is the point of maximum energy'?"

"I know he wrote that essay and, yeah, that sounds like one of the things he says, one of the things that was in my head that summer, so I lifted the name. I do that a lot. Those passwords that got tried in my lab, well, other than 'Janet,'" he felt Sarah tense slightly at the name, "were all from that mysterious passage in Thoreau's Walden, a passage in which he mentions losing a hound, a bay horse and a turtle dove, and notes that he is still looking for them, but without ever explaining what their symbolic value is, if any. I used each of those as names for other projects of mine."

"Do you mean, Chuck, that there are other projects out there that might cause us trouble?"

He pursed his lips. "Um, no. No. I don't think so. No." Were there?

"So, do you need to work on the Vortex?"

"Not much, I just need to alter it a smidgen," he pinched his fingers close together in front of them both, "otherwise, it may end up doing nothing more than opening all your neighbors' garage doors. I need to combine it with some items in my lab—and then I'm going to need some help from you."

He turned to her. He knew the work on the Vortex wouldn't take long once they got to the lab. They had time. They could eat later.

"Professor Walker," his voice sounded like that of a curious undergraduate, "can you explain again the difference between Purgatory and Paradise?"

Sarah's eyes lit up, and she offered the classic professorial response. "Since you're such a quick study, Mr. Bartowski, maybe you could explain that to the class?"

Chuck rolled over and embraced her, his lips beginning to explain. The class moaned in response.

}o{

Sarah maneuvered the Land Rover into a parking spot in the lot near Chuck's lab. She couldn't stop smiling. Her world had awakened from its coma. It was alive again; she was alive in it. There was still vestigial sadness, and always would be, given her past—but she was moving ahead.

She had made herself promises about her present and future that had been anchored in a toxic spill of emotions from her past. She knew that it would take time to completely work through all of that—but she also knew she had begun.

Those burdens could, she believed, eventually be sloughed off—with Chuck's help. The promises of her past self were punishments of her future self for her past self's awful present—the awful present in which she watched Bryce die, the awful present in which he offered no explanation of his treachery, the awful present in which she believed that maybe…she deserved what he'd done somehow, or deserved nothing better.

That was twisty: the point was that the promises were made under duress—she was not obliged to keep them. Sally had been right. She had to decide whether to let those misbegotten promises add Chuck to the burdens she had been carrying, or to let Chuck help her with the burdens she had been carrying. She knew she had made the right decision—hence the smile she could not stop, even with a visit from Graham looming tomorrow. I need to figure out how to thank Sally somehow.

Sarah turned off the engine and she and Chuck got out of the car. Sarah took his hand and he smiled at her when she did. As they made their way to the lab door, two students strolling, holding hands, came around the corner: Robert and Cheryl. Cheryl smiled and called out to Sarah.

"Professor Walker!"

Sarah stopped and so Chuck stopped too. Robert and Cheryl crossed the last of the distance and the two couples met each other on the sidewalk. Sarah recalled her envy of the two students after class a few days ago. Now, she stood holding Chuck's hand—her hand and his hand each full of the hand of the other.

"Hey, Cheryl, Robert," Sarah said, "this is Dr. Bartowski, Chuck." They nodded at him, recognizing him, and he nodded at them. "So, what are you two doing on campus on a holiday weekend? The place is deserted."

Robert looked at Cheryl and she answered, "Our families are both a long way away, and we were apart most of the summer, so we decided to take advantage of the long weekend and just have some time for ourselves. It's actually been great—one of the best weekends I've ever had."

Cheryl looked slightly embarrassed but very happy. She looked at Robert and he nodded, letting go of her hand. She held it out and, in the last light of the day, Sarah could see the sparkle of a diamond on Cheryl's finger. Sarah took her hand and spoke her admiration of the ring.

"I asked her a little while ago and she said yes", Robert explained, joy present in his voice. "We're both seniors—as you know, Professor Walker—and we are planning to get married sometime next summer…" He drifted out of his explanation and into the misty eyes of Cheryl, whose smile seemed preternaturally expansive and bright. They were slipping back into their own world—a two-seater world. Sarah knew a little bit about that; she and Chuck had spent most of the day in theirs.

"Well, I couldn't be happier for you! It's a wonderful thing for you both. Congrats and best wishes," Sarah enthused. Chuck chorused his agreement.

Cheryl leaned in close to Sarah, making sure Sarah saw the conspiratorial smile on her face. "Dr. Bartowski! Good job, Professor." Sarah laughed along with Cheryl.

The young couple walked on. Their whispers and laughter sparking against the darkening day. Sarah and Chuck gazed after them, smiling.

"You know, Chuck, the other day I felt envious of those two—I envied them each other and their romance. I think I also envied the freshness of what they have. Is it bad for the students to be the teachers?"

"No. All good teachers learn from their students—and about all kinds of things. Those two seem great. You said 'envied'—past tense, Sarah. Now?"

"Now I know how they feel. I've not felt…not felt like this…ever, Chuck." She took his hand again—she had let go of it to take Cheryl's hand and admire the ring—and she squeezed it. She looked like she was gazing into the future, and she began to glow. But then she caught herself and looked at Chuck, her gaze back in the present. "Well, C'mon, Tron-boy. Let's get ready to do whatever it is you have planned. Are you going to tell me about it?"

"Yes, I just thought it would make more sense if we talked about it here, so that I could show you and tell you what the plan is." Chuck held up the bag with the Vortex in it.

"Oooh. Dr. Bartowski's Show and Tell. Now that's a game we might want to add to Sarah Says." Even in the warmth of the gathering night, she could feel the heat rise from him.

"I get the feeling I'm never going to know exactly what game I'm playing with you," he chuckled.

She looked at him, using the darkness to enhance the deliberate unreadability of her features. "That's true…" she held her mask for a beat and then allowed herself to smile, "but you can trust me on this, Chuck. It will always be a game that we both win."

Shaking his head while continuing to chuckle, he punched the security code for the lab on the keypad and the door unlocked. They went inside.

}o{

Sarah had listened carefully. Chuck had explained it to her, and it seemed like a good plan to her. Simple and direct. It capitalized on Chuck's gifts in a way that she thought would make an impression on Graham. It utilized her special knowledge of Graham.

Chuck finished, put the Vortex back in the bag and they locked up the lab. Sarah drove Chuck to his apartment. It was in a nice but not a fancy building. Chuck needed some clean clothes and a toothbrush. Sarah had to confess that she was curious about where he lived and how he lived.

They climbed the steps to the second floor and walked Chuck's apartment. Chuck took out his keys and opened the door. He closed the door behind Sarah once she had gotten inside. He clicked the light switch.

Sarah was struck by all the color. No single item in the apartment was multicolored or bore a design. Everything was solid colors—mostly browns, greens, and blues, but with a smattering of reds and oranges. It was warm and inviting but not showy. On one wall were photos. On the opposite wall, there were a couple of original paintings.

It was the apartment of a man, but with no trace of being stereotypically male. The most striking feature of the apartment was…books. Almost all the walls were covered with bookcases. They were full, sometimes with books two rows deep. Books were stacked neatly on the coffee table, on the end tables, and in corners of the room. On the small table that looked to be both a desk and the place where Chuck ate his meals, they were more books—as well as a stack of graphic novels mixed with old comic books. Almost all of Sarah's books were all on the bookcases in her office. She didn't quite live with hers as Chuck did with his. She and Chuck dealt with their loneliness in different ways.

Sarah walked into the room while Chuck excused himself and went into the bedroom. He left the door open, obviously inviting her to follow if she chose to do so.

She stopped at the table. A copy of a noir detective novel, The Mouse in the Mountain, was face down and open there. So too was a copy of Gottlob Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic. A piece of graph paper covered with various sketches and what looked like calculations peeked out from under the Frege book.

The Commonwealth Bulletin was on the table, and she noticed that it was bookmarked with a torn piece of paper. She picked it up and saw the bookmarked page was the one that had her information on it. There was a small pencil check in the margin beside her name and office number.

She smiled and put the Bulletin down. Although he had, in effect, already admitted it, she knew that he had not shown up at her door Friday night by coincidence. She also smiled because she knew that his entry in her Bulletin was highlighted in yellow. Each had been seriously on the other's mind.

She walked into Chuck's room. He had out a gym bag and was putting clothes and toiletries in it. On one wall, as she had guessed, was his Tron poster. There was a desk in the room. On it were three large computer monitors. Beside his bed, on a nightstand, was a copy of Thoreau's Walden. It looked like it had been well read.

She left the bedroom to look at the photographs on the wall. She had not done more than notice them as she came in. There were only two pictures of Chuck, both as a boy—both with his parents and his sister, presumably. She was looking at the family photograph when he came in from the bedroom. There was no trace of his prizes or honors. He looked at one of the family pictures.

"My family. Mom and Dad died in a car accident when I was in my early teens and my sister, Ellie, raised me. She's a doctor back in LA—and a painter in her spare time. Those are hers." He gestured to the abstracts on the opposite wall. "I haven't seen her much lately. She's busy and she's never really forgiven me for how things ended—uh, how she thought things ended with Janet. I guess I should talk to her about that. I'm sure of one thing: she'll like you. She tolerated Janet. Her anger about the ending was about my supposed behavior, not about the loss of Janet."

"Maybe…we can go and visit her at Thanksgiving?" Sarah tried to ask off-hand, but her eyes flicked up to Chuck as she did and her glance was serious. Chuck stepped to her in one long stride and took her hand.

"Really?" Excitement shone in his eyes.

"Really." She grinned at his excitement. She glanced down at her hand in his. His touch was warm and gentle, like the man.

"You'll like her husband—Captain Awesome."

"She's married to…a superhero?"

Chuck's chest shook with suppressed laughter. "Pretty much. Ellie doesn't much like it when I call him that. But wait until she realizes that my girlfriend is…well, you. I'll see her superhero—and raise her one kick-ass ninja Dante scholar." Sarah stood on her tiptoes and kissed Chuck on the cheek.

"How do you know I'm a kick-ass ninja, Chuck?"

"I may not like Graham, but I'm quite sure his go-to girl is going to be a go-to girl. And I...uh...have some experience with how you can...move." Sarah shook her head and kissed him again.

Chuck turned out the lights and they headed back to Sarah's. Soon it would be time for the labor of Labor Day.