Chapter Forty-Nine

~ Jameson ~

I’m not familiar with Nikki’s pensiveness.

She’s out on the balcony, pacing.

I’m observant enough—and highly attuned to her—to understand her frustration. Language barriers are a complicated hurdle to jump. And I can see, quite clearly, she’s considering this to be a fault of hers, a failure on her part. She’s blaming herself for having had difficulty keeping up during the meetings.

She’s used to excelling, and that’s one of the things I admire and respect about her. She’s accustomed to being wholly present, in the moment, so that even when I’m contemplatively mulling something over and only murmuring to myself, she’s fully immersed and engaged so that she can mentally catalogue what I’m working through and instantly—instantly—pick up my lead when I latch onto where I want to go. She doesn’t hesitate or falter, she simply falls right in line with me, and we continue as though there was no disruption or delay whatsoever.

Thus, for her to be trapped in a vortex of prior disc