My lunch break the next day was a repeat of the one before it,

and I honestly didn’t know what to think of it.

Or even if I should waste my time thinking it over.

I went outside, had all of my food out, my clothes were rolled up the way I liked them, and I had my legs stretched out in the sun when the door opened and out came the same man I had just seen hours ago when he’d come into my room and peeked through the window of the booth while I sprayed. That day, he had on a gray compression shirt and another pair of jeans that were somehow dirty even with the coveralls he wore over them.

Everything on him was covered like usual.

From his neck down over his wrist bones, everything accentuated that big, muscular figure I had checked out every chance I could without getting caught for years.

But this time, it wasn’t so hard to look away. It really wasn’t hard at

all.

I’d had another dream about my dad the previous night, the same one

as before that left my head uncomfortable and tight and left me in bed sweaty and out of breath. It had only taken me a couple hours to shake it off. All it did was remind me of why it wasn’t hard to look away from Rip right then.

The thing was, I didn’t need to use my eyes to know what he was doing.

Rip did the same thing he’d done the day before. He came over and sat beside me, and neither one of us said a word. Not while we ate. Not in the sparse minutes I had after I’d forced down my food. Not while I looked at my phone and scrolled through reviews of couches that were on sale.

When the time came to get back to work, I didn’t even do more than glance at him as I collected my stuff and headed back to my room more than half an hour after he’d appeared.

 

The very next day went a lot like every other day before it, at

least since Mr. Cooper’s heart attack.

I showed up to work. Ripley was already there. I pretended not to see him as I headed into my room, and then pretended not to see him some more when I went upstairs to prepare my coffee or when I went back downstairs with it in my hand. Just mine. Not his. Like it was our new thing, because it was. I shouldn’t have to go out of my way to be nice to my boss when he didn’t want it, and when it wasn’t like he was doing me a favor by employing me.

He couldn’t fire me without going through Mr. Cooper. Because even if chances were very, very high they were related, I knew that when it came down to it, I had a better relationship with him than Rip did. I had gone to see Mr. C the night before, had dinner with him and Lydia, and stayed to watch a movie. I knew my place in the older man’s life.

But just like every other day lately, at some point in the beginning half of the morning, I had a visitor stop by my room.

A six-foot-four-inch visitor who I would bet weighed around two hundred and fifty pounds.

The man I didn’t want all up in my space anymore.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked, using the same exact words I had used every other time he’d come in. Calm, cool, professional.

Unlike every other day though, my boss didn’t use an excuse about wanting to check something or see something.

He just stood there with his hands on his hips, gritted his teeth, and said, “You done?”

“Yes. I just finished the hood in the booth, and I’m waiting a minute before I get it out of here and start on the panels. Ashton already said he’d help me move it out.”

He stared.

I stared back.

Then he let out a deep, deep sigh, cocked his jaw to the side, and grumbled, “You know what I’m talking about. You done for real?”

I used my nicest voice as I asked, “With what?”

Lord, he was staring right at me as he held his hands out to his sides. “With this.”

“With what?”

He pressed his lips together. If I looked hard enough, I bet I could see how white they became as he did it, but I didn’t. I didn’t even look a little bit. “With this, Luna,” he replied, flipping his hands again.

Looking back on it, I should have chosen a different approach. But that was the thing with looking back on your actions: life didn’t have a rewind button. Unfortunately.

But at least I could look back and remember that I’d held my head up high, kept my voice even, and looked my boss right in the eye as I told him, “I’m treating you the way you wanted me to treat you, Mr. Ripley. With respect. Like you pay my bills. I’m leaving you alone. I’m not annoying you. I’m not forcing myself on you or asking you to do things you wouldn’t want to. I don’t know what else you want from me.”

That intense gaze didn’t stray a centimeter. Not for a second. Not for a millisecond. He stared at me like his gaze was made of laser beams and he wanted to burn me to ashes.

And then he tried.

“Would you fucking stop with the Mister Ripley?”

I didn’t flinch. Didn’t move. I just looked at him like his words didn’t affect me at all. “That’s your name, sir.”

Maybe the “sir” was overdoing it.

“You fucking kidding me right now?” Rip’s asked, his voice starting to rise.

All right, it was a little much, I guessed, but that didn’t change a single thing. Not about me, not about this situation. “No, I’m not,” I answered him calmly. “And I don’t understand why you’re raising your voice. I’m not doing anything.”

Rip’s eyes almost, almost bulged out of his skull as he leaned forward. “The fuck you’re not doing anything. You’re talking in circles, doing exactly what you know is gonna bother me.”

“I’m not doing anything to bother you. I’ve done enough to bother you in the past, remember? So I’m stopping. I’ve stopped. All I’m doing is exactly what you asked.”

My boss took a step forward. “Quit talking to me like that.”

“Like you’re my boss?” I asked slowly, knowing I was baiting him but not sure what else I could say. “Like an employee who didn’t lie to the cops for you when they showed up one morning asking where you’d

been? When I gave you an alibi because I believed that you were home alone? So I told them I had been with you that night and you let me give you a kiss on the cheek?”

“Goddamn it, Luna,” he griped.

I could hear my dad’s voice using that tone with me. I could hear him saying those exact same words.

But I was done listening to that tone and that phrase when it was said like that together. I really was. Especially when it was out of Rip’s mouth.

“I know you didn’t do anything, Rip. That’s why when the cops came, I told them you were with me that night. I didn’t expect anything from it. What I’m saying now is I know where we stand. I had no problem lying for you, but you started this favor business. And you told me to leave you alone,” I spit back at him, trying to sound collected and distant but knowing I was failing. “So that’s what I’m doing. I wanted to be your friend. I tried to be your friend. I thought you wanted to be mine too. I wanted you to like me, and I would have wanted you to like me as more than a friend, Rip. You know, I would have wanted that more than anything.

“I knew better, but I still felt that way. But I really would have just taken being your friend if that’s all you’d been willing to give me. I was trying not to think of you like that anymore. I think one day, I would have eventually moved on with this stupid infatuation I had with you, all on my own. Probably once I found someone else to like. I’m used to caring about people who don’t care for me in return, Mr. Ripley.

“But I’ve got enough people I love who haven’t wanted me around. And I’m not going down that road again. You want to be mean to me and push me away because you were upset or whatever it was with Mr. Cooper? I get it. I can’t begin to figure out how confusing your relationship with him is. I get that you’re mad he married someone else so soon after your mom. I get it. But I didn’t do anything to deserve you kicking me aside. I tried to be there for you, and even if you warned me that you didn’t want to hurt me, you still did.

“But I’m done. I know how to listen. I can tell when I’m wasting my time, and I’m not going to waste my time anymore. I’m not going to give and give and give to someone who doesn’t want what I have to share. My parents have done it to me, my siblings have done it to me, everyone does it to me when I let them, and you’re going to be the last person who makes me feel like a freaking nuisance.

“All I’m doing is what you’ve asked for. I’m doing what you told me, and I’m totally fine with it. Don’t feel guilty. You’re doing me a favor. You’re speeding along exactly what would have eventually happened.

“I’m not quitting. I’m not going to start doing a bad job, or start deciding I’m not going to stay late if I have to, so you don’t have to worry about this affecting my work, all right? I’m just going to mind my own business like I should have been doing from the very beginning, Mr. Ripley, instead of spending my time and energy on something that would never happen,” I finished snapping out, the wind rushing from my lungs, my shoulders coming down hard when I hadn’t even realized how tight and high they had been in the first place.

God, I was pissed.

I was hurt. But mostly, I was pissed and exhausted, and some part of me wanted to cry, but I wasn’t going to. Not for someone with misguided guilt. Not for someone who wanted me to leave him alone. Not for someone who didn’t want me and never would.

We didn’t want the same things, and I had been too stubborn and desperate to see that.

I watched him the entire time I spoke. Witnessed the way his fists tightened. Took in the way the tendons at his throat became more pronounced.

But I missed the way his gaze changed.

And chances were, that wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

I felt bad for snapping at him. It wasn’t totally his fault I was at this point in my life, was it? He’d been just another hammer on my already bent nail. And none of this had been meant to force him to feel something that he wasn’t capable of.

“Look,” I said, ignoring how hollow and tired I sounded, “I should have treated you like my boss from the beginning. I haven’t, but I will from now on. I’m sorry for making it seem like you broke my heart. Sometimes I forget it got broken a long time before I met you. I’m sorry for making it seem like I was pressuring you into keeping me company or being nice to me. I’m sorry for forcing you into doing me all these favors.”

I met his gaze, ignoring the weird expression on his face. Ignoring the way his eyes were narrowed. “I’ve got enough going on without adding more problems. I just… want to pretend this didn’t happen. I want things to go back to the way they should have been from the beginning.”

From the moment we had met.

Rip blinked at me. He even swallowed too. It was so rough that the collar of his shirt dipped down to expose more of the skull at his throat than usual.

I managed to take a step back before he said my name. I looked at him.

He tipped his chin up high and kept those blue-green irises on me as he said just about the last thing I ever would have expected from him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, baby girl.”

Yeah, I was sure he hadn’t.

“I didn’t,” he insisted like he’d read my freaking mind, watching me with those crazy eyes.

Sure.

Sure, he hadn’t.

I was so done with this. I just wanted to go back to when things were less complicated. I just wanted to be happy again.

“Well, you did, Mr. Ripley, and it’s fine.” I slid my tongue over my teeth and took a step back. “I need to get back to what you pay me to do. If you need anything else, let me know. I’ll be here for that.”

 

“Oh, honey,” Lydia cooed as she waved me into the same house

that I had lived in with them for years.

Giving her a hug first, I stepped inside and waited while she shut the door behind us. I didn’t need to look around to know exactly what the layout was like. It hadn’t changed much in the time since I had moved out. Lydia had a thing for antiques, and most of the furniture was dark and cherry. From what she had told me, a lot of it had been inherited from her family, but some of it she had purchased herself—a few things with me when I had gone with her on my weekends off.

I remembered how nervous I had been for the first few months after moving in. I had kept worrying I would knock over something that had been in her family for generations. I had gone out of my way not to touch anything. The only nice thing I’d had at my dad’s house had been the television, and unless I’d been home alone, or stayed really, really quiet, I hadn’t really watched it.

If I was going to be honest with myself, even now, I was still nervous about knocking something over at the Cooper’s place.

“How are you?” I asked as I toed off my shoes.

She sighed. “I’m all right. Stressed. Worried. Hopeful.” She gave me an exhausted smile. “You?”

I shrugged, purposely shoving all thoughts about Ripley and his actions earlier that day into my imaginary trash can. “Okay. Busy at work.” I dropped my shoulders and returned her smile. ”Do you need help with anything?”

She shook her head, then stopped. “Actually, would you mind staying long enough for me to run out to the store and pick up his prescription? I was going to wait until Allen fell asleep, but if I can avoid driving at night… These eyes aren’t what they used to be….”

“You know I don’t mind. I was planning on staying anyway.” I tilted my head toward the door.

Lydia flashed me a smile that made me wonder what kind of woman Mr. Cooper’s first wife had been like that she had been the love of his life and this woman… wasn’t.

That was an unfair thought. They had always been happy and loving and warm, and Mr. C had always treated her like a queen.

“I won’t be long,” she promised, already reaching for the keys left in the bowl by the door.

“Take your time,” I said as I waited for her to grab her purse too.

It didn’t take long for her to leave. I left my purse where hers had been, and then made my way down to the living room down the hall. I’d spent countless nights on the couch next to the recliner that I found Mr. Cooper sitting in. The upper half was slanted back, his feet propped up on the footrest, and he honestly looked really, really good.

“Mr. C,” I called out softly when I realized I couldn’t see his face to see if he was asleep.

He wasn’t.

“Little moon?” His hand went into the air, waving me closer. “Come sit, unless you want something to drink.”

I made my way to the couch and sat down. “I’m fine, but do you want something?”

“No, I’ve got some water over here.” He pointed toward a bottle on the side table between his recliner and the couch. “Lydia has got me drowning in it.”

I couldn’t help but grin at him as I reached to slip my hand into his. “I told you that you needed to be chugging it.”

He squeezed my hand. “Still tastes like dirt.” “You know what would taste like dirt?”

Mr. Cooper gave me a funny face.

“No salt on your food.” I raised my eyebrows as I slipped my hand out of his. “No bacon.”

The older man groaned. “Don’t remind me. They told me no caffeine either.” He sighed. “I guess it should be good you’ve been sneaking decaf into the mix for the last few years.”

If I hadn’t already let go of his hand, I would have right then. “You knew?”

“Yes.” He chuckled. “Sneaky girl. You remind me so much of someone I used to know.”

“Someone good?”

“The best,” he said softly before aiming that gaze, which I just realized was so much like Ripley’s, at me. “Luna… I’m sorry, honey. I’ve gotta tell you, it’s been eating me up inside.”

It was me who swallowed. “You have nothing to be sorry about,” I told him because it was the truth.

The older man shook his head, the face that had aged overnight from his heart attack, showing every inch of the ten years it seemed like he’d lost. “No, I do. I really do.”

He knew that I knew, or at least assumed that I had an idea or a guess that, he had kept something from me. “I understand that things are complicated sometimes, Mr. C. I’m sure you had your reasons,” I said as gently as possible. I had tried my best not to think about him and Rip, I really had.

I saw his hand going up toward his face before I saw the way tears had beaded up in his eyes and made them shiny. “None of them seem that good when I look back on it,” he admitted, his closed fist coming to rest over one eye. “I’ve screwed up a lot over the years, little moon, and I don’t have any good excuse why.”

“We all screw up a lot,” I tried to assure him. It was the truth. “It seems like I do more than anyone else does.”

“That’s not true. I’m still alive.”

His laugh was watery. His face was still partially covered as he shook his head and sniffed. “Oh, Luna, I really am sorry I never told you the truth. I thought about it a hundred times. Maybe even a thousand. Every time you would bring me my coffee. Every time you tried to break up one of my arguments with Ripley… I thought, I should tell her. And I was too ashamed to.” He exhaled. “I didn’t want one more person being disappointed in me, especially not you. I know it’s selfish, but I couldn’t bear it if you were.”

I had been disappointed in him for not being upfront with me.

I’d been disappointed to think that he hadn’t cared about me or valued our relationship enough to tell me that he had a son.

A son I worked with.

I had been a little hurt he’d looked into my background, but thinking on it, I understood. I’d been a seventeen-year-old girl who magically appeared.

But this wasn’t all about me, and I was no one to talk about keeping things to myself so that I wouldn’t disappoint others. This was about him and whatever was going through his brain. Whatever had gone through his heart in the time before we had met.

I didn’t want to lie and tell him that I wasn’t disappointed he had kept something this massive a secret, so I told him what I could. I told him my own truths that I had kept. “I never told you that my dad dealt drugs, or that my uncle made them, that my cousins sold them, or that I left the day my dad held a gun to me and told me he wished I had never been born.” I started to smile but stopped because… because I didn’t have one in me. “I never told you I had an older brother who up and left one day. I didn’t want you to know where I had come from so that you wouldn’t expect the worst out of me like everyone else had while I’d grown up. I’m sorry I made you find out another way, Mr. C. I should have just told you the truth, but I was too ashamed of it.”

He sucked in a breath and shook his head, those eyes bubbling over until one tear streamed down his weathered cheek. I wasn’t surprised when his hand reached over and took mine, his voice a little shaky as he sniffed, “You are the best girl I have ever met, Luna Allen. I couldn’t think that. I wouldn’t think that. Not ever. The devil could’ve been your daddy and you would still be the same girl.”

It was my turn to sniff, to hold my breath.

“I hope you can forgive me for not being upfront with you all these years, if we’re going to talk about holding secrets.” The back of my hand came up to my face to wipe across my cheek. “I’ve screwed up a lot, Mr.

C. We all do things that we can’t explain or don’t want to. There’s a bunch of little things I haven’t told you lately either.”

Mr. Cooper gulped and nodded.

But I figured it was time to at least ask this one thing before I lost my nerve. “Is Rip really your son?”

He nodded, but it felt… I wasn’t sure exactly how it felt. It felt like a weight off my chest, but it had only moved to my shoulders. Maybe I

had accepted that they’d both had their reasons for keeping it between them, but I was struggling with it. Just a little.

“As you can see, we don’t have the best relationship,” he chuffed, trying to make it sound like a joke but failing at it.

“Not that this helps, but I don’t have that great of a relationship with my parents either.” Then I thought about it. “I don’t have the greatest relationship with Thea or Kyra right now either, if that makes you feel better, and I don’t really want to talk about it yet, if it’s all right.”

His laugh was another watery sound that didn’t sound like a happy thing at all. “But I bet your sisters don’t hate you.”

He thought Rip hated him. But what could I do? Deny it? Instead, all I could get out was, “I’m sorry, Mr. C.” “Don’t be sorry for me,” he replied quickly. “I deserve it.” Hell. “Was his mom your first wife?”

He nodded, his hand coming back up to cover most of his face. “I messed up so much with him… Nothing I do will ever be enough.” He paused and made a choking sound that broke my heart a little more. “I can’t bring his mother back, but if I could trade our lives, I would. I would do it in a heartbeat,” he said in a gutted voice that broke my heart all over again.

I knew what it was like to live with regrets, and from the tone of his voice, this wasn’t just a regret. It was so much more.

It was an amputation that no prosthesis in the world could replace.

And the poor man kept talking in that cracked and hurting voice. “I didn’t see him for twenty years. The only reason I knew he was alive was because I’d pay a private investigator every year to find him.”

I couldn’t help but tense up. Not that I was one to talk, but twenty years? That was a lifetime.

Sure, I couldn’t say anything because I had left my house for almost ten. The only difference was: I knew no one gave a crap about me. Whether I lived, whether I died, whether I had somewhere warm to sleep or food to eat. Nobody I had left behind gave a single shit.

The longing I had seen on Mr. Cooper’s face when he looked at Rip suddenly made so much sense.

“By the time you came around the shop, everyone who had known Ripley as a boy had quit or moved on, so I stopped talking about him at the shop when there was no one around to ask for an update. The years… rolled by, one after the other, and before I knew it, I hadn’t mentioned him to any of you until he came back,” he explained.

I swallowed for him. For the way his voice wobbled as he told me this story.

“He showed up out of the blue one day, Luna, and said he wanted to buy into the shop… I didn’t mean to lie. Not talking about him… snowballed out of control until if I did tell you all the truth, it wouldn’t seem so innocent anymore.”

“I get it,” I told him, quietly. Because I did get it. I really did.

His sigh was sorrowful. “I don’t know how to get myself out of this mess.”

“I haven’t told anyone anything,” I let him know. “And I wouldn’t. Not ever. It’s your story and his, not anyone else’s. There isn’t a reason why anyone else should know either.”

The older man choked, rubbing his hand over his face as a couple tears escaped through his fingers. “He doesn’t want anyone to know I’m his father. He hasn’t in decades; that isn’t going to change any time soon. I could die tomorrow, and he would be perfectly fine with it,” he choked out, his chest hiccupping with emotion and maybe even a dozen other emotions I would never understand.

“I would care,” I told him. “I know I’m not a replacement for him, and I would never try to be, but you’re just about the only father figure I’ve ever had. And I would care a lot if you were gone. I would miss you for the rest of my life.”

The hand he had over his face shifted, and he peeked a glassy, red- rimmed eye at me.

So I kept going. “And I think Rip would care too. I was there while we waited for the ambulance, and I was there most of the time while we waited to hear what happened to you. He was worried, Mr. C. I don’t know if that will ever mean anything, but if he really hated you, he wouldn’t have sat there for hours to hear from your doctor.”

“He was probably making sure I really died.”

“Or you have a relationship with him that no one will ever understand.” I sighed. “Mr. C, I can tell you that if my dad had a heart attack, I would not have waited around at the hospital to hear how he was doing. I wouldn’t go visit period. And when the day comes and he passes away, I won’t be at his funeral. They could offer me a million dollars to go, and it wouldn’t be enough. Maybe Rip isn’t your biggest fan, and he doesn’t know how to forgive you for whatever it was that he blames you for, but it could be worse between the two of you. If things were that bad, he wouldn’t have come back, and he wouldn’t be able to look at you every day.”

My boss’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he nodded. His chest went up and back down. He sniffled and followed it up with another choke that made my heart hurt.

I didn’t know what happened with his wife. I didn’t know what happened with Rip. I didn’t know what happened to them.

But I cared about Mr. Cooper, and even though I told myself that I wasn’t going to care about Rip the same way I had, a part of me still did and would.

I wanted the best for both of them.

I was just the wrong person to say anything about family relationships, and that was the truth.

He sniffed, and his sniff hit me right smack in the chest. “You know how to make an old man feel a little less like the scum of the earth, little moon.”

“You could never be the scum of the earth. And I know how to tell you the truth most of the time, and in this case, I didn’t have to lie. I saw Rip’s face.” Then I lowered my voice and added, “And if it makes you feel any better, he doesn’t like me much either.”

That had him wiping his face with his forearm. “I highly doubt that, honey.”

I smirked to myself, but he must have seen it because he kept talking. “He doesn’t, Luna. I don’t know Rip—” He sucked in a breath. “— my son as well as I should, but I know you’re the last person he would

dislike.”

Well. “We can agree to disagree, huh?” I asked and stood up. “I’m getting a glass of water. Do you want anything from the kitchen?”

His expression was wobbly as he dropped his other arm and showed me his pink, puffy face that was pulled into a partial smile. “How about a bag of chips?”

“How about some fruit?”

Mr. Cooper groaned as I made my way around the couch and headed toward the kitchen, directly beside the living room.

And it was right then, as I turned, that I almost bit my tongue.

Because standing in the hallway that led from the front door to the living room and kitchen was a person.

Just. Standing there. Quietly. Not moving.

And that someone was Rip who took up most of the width of that hallway.

Rip who was standing there watching me with heavy eyes and a jaw that was tighter than ever.

“Lu, what—” Mr. Cooper started to say before he cut himself off, head turned toward the doorway. “Rip.”

Ripley’s eyes slid to his… dad… for a moment. His voice was gruff, and his question was the last thing I would have expected. “You all right?”

Mr. Cooper didn’t hesitate nodding. “Yeah.”

Yeah? That was it? I mean, I guess I shouldn’t expect him to tell him that no, he wasn’t okay because he’d just been talking about how his own son hated him.

“Any news from the doctor?” Rip asked.

I bit the inside of my cheek and headed into the kitchen. I listened to Rip’s low voice and Mr. Cooper’s slightly louder one as I pulled a glass out of the cabinet and filled it with water from the fridge.

“I don’t want you to die,” Rip said, so quietly I could barely hear him.

The answering pause said everything, I thought, and it made me flinch.

“Shit’s not ever gonna be the same, but I don’t hate you either, old man,” he kept going, gruffly. “Can’t stand you but I don’t hate you. Got it?”

There was a sniff and a “got it” right back. Well. Okay. All right.

It was just as I pulled a bag of grapes from the fridge that the two men’s voices cut off.

By the time I finished rinsing and setting the grapes into a coffee cup, they still hadn’t continued speaking, but I figured that was okay. Peeking over the counter that led into the living room, I found Mr. Cooper in the same spot, and Rip was nowhere to be found.

“Here are your grapes.” I handed the cup of fruit over to Mr. Cooper. He wrinkled his nose as he took it. “Thank you?”

I couldn’t help but grin at him. “Do you have medication or anything you need to take, Mr. C?”

“No, ma’am,” he responded dryly.

Just as I opened my mouth, another voice cut across the air. “Talk to me outside for a minute, baby girl.”

I froze there and only moved my eyes over to the man who had reappeared in the same place I had last seen him. I kept my face nice and even. “I’m supposed to stay with Mr. Cooper until Lydia gets back.” That was the truth, and it was believable, wasn’t it?

“I can be alone for a minute,” Mr. Cooper threw in the second I finished my argument.

I closed my mouth.

By the time I had moved my gaze back over to Rip, he had his hand out.

Toward me.

And he’d taken steps closer so that he was within reaching distance. So that I could take his hand.

He was just trying to make up for being so ugly to me weeks ago. Maybe he’d gotten tired of having to get his own coffee. Maybe he’d overheard what I had told Mr. Cooper. Hadn’t I already learned that he was capable of feeling guilt?

“Come with me,” he said in that slow, soft voice, fingers still reaching for me.

Hurt tightened my chest, but I stood up anyway. And I took his hand. Maybe I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t just learned that Rip had issues with Mr. Cooper over his beloved mom who had died, over how he had remarried so soon after her death, but I would never know.

But what I did know from experience was what it was like to take a leap and have no one there to catch you. Or at least break your fall. And that was why I took it.

Because who knew when the last time he had reached out to anyone had been?

Gently, he tugged at my hand and led me toward the front door, closing the door behind us the second we were outside. I watched as he took a step forward, his free hand going up to the top of his head and smoothing down the back of it. He still hadn’t let go of my hand.

Crickets chirped in the evening grass on Mr. Cooper’s front lawn. I didn’t need to look around to know we were surrounded by shrubs and flower bushes. I also didn’t need to glance up to know Lucas Ripley was looking down at me when I tried to pull my hand out of his, and his grip tightened instead of loosening.

So I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t hesitate, his voice strong and sure, as this man said, “Don’t be fucking mad at me anymore.”

I bit the inside of my cheek and forced myself to look up into that face I had memorized. Dark brown hair shot through with strands of silver, deep-set eyes, broad, flat cheekbones, and that jaw that would have been a work of art if anyone were smart enough to recreate it, faced me. His eyes focused down on me, intent and unflinching.

Leave me alone, he had said.

“I didn’t mean all that shit I said, and you know it,” he told me, tugging at the hand he hadn’t let go of.

I took a deep breath and kept my voice even. “Mr. Ripley—”

He didn’t let me get further than that before he snapped, “Cut it out.” “Cut what out?”

That throat of his bobbed as he dipped his chin in close. “You know what, Luna.”

I looked at him, keeping my face blank.

“That Mister Ripley bullshit,” he finally growled out. “But that’s your name.”

He made a noise in his throat. “You’re my boss,” I reminded him.

The fingers around mine jerked. “I’m more than your boss.”

That had me trying to pull my hand out of his. “No, Rip. That’s what you are, and I just happened to forget that.”

He cursed. Rip cursed under his breath, his fingers tightening. “No, baby girl, there was nothing for you to forget.”

Leave me alone.

I clung on to those words with both my hands and held on tight. He was my boss. Today, tomorrow, the day after that. He didn’t want what I had to offer, and I wasn’t going to be naïve enough to believe people changed.

Rip had lost his mind for a little while before deciding what it was that he wanted.

And that wasn’t me or my friendship or my problems. He felt guilty and that was it.

I tipped my chin up, reminding myself I had been through worse and been through things more hurtful than words said out of anger. And I told him what he deep down wanted to make sure. “I’ve already told you I’m not going to quit, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I swallowed and fisted my free hand, keeping my voice calm. “I get offers every few months from other businesses, but I don’t think twice about them. I love working at CCC, even if you don’t like me—”

This huge man reared back and blinked, his hand getting tight and his voice going hoarse. “Not like you?”

Be strong. You can handle anything, Luna.

I nodded. “We can call it whatever you want. I’m fine with it, Mr. Ripley. You’re not the first person to dislike me or not want me around. It’s fine.”

He let go of my hand so quickly I didn’t have time to react before the man in front of me cut the distance between us so much there was no distance.

That big hand that had been right by my face moved like lightning, his palm cradling the back of my head. Before I could finish my sentence, before I could even suck in a breath, Lucas Ripley dipped his face close to mine. “I don’t dislike a single fucking bone in your body, Luna.”

And cue my mouth shutting and probably my eyes bugging out too. “You drive me fucking nuts—”

“That’s not very nice,” I said before I could stop myself.

I didn’t miss the way his eyebrows shot up. “Let me finish, yeah?” I shut my mouth.

“But I miss the fuck out of you, messing with me all the damn time, provoking me way too much, always fucking laughing and smiling and being a pain in my fucking ass.” What had to be his little finger grazed the nape of my neck as I stood there. “I said some mean shit to the one person in this fucking world that—”

He stopped, and if it wouldn’t have been for his Adam’s apple bobbing, I wouldn’t have realized he was struggling with his words. Struggling with whatever he was trying to tell me. Confusing the freaking hell out of me.

“You. I would never want to hurt you,” he breathed, beaming me with that intense gaze. “Not for nothing. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I knew your family, but I didn’t exactly want you to know how or why I did either. You get me?”

Just as I opened my mouth, his hand moved around and his thumb landed over my lips, shutting me up.

“I swear to Jesus Christ if you say something about work or about how you won’t fucking quit, I’ll close your mouth my own goddamn self in another way,” Rip told me.

That had me shutting my mouth.

That had my heart going whack, whack, whack, what the hell is happening?

“What?” was all I could crow.

“I don’t give a single fuck how many other companies offer you jobs, or how happy you are at the shop. Me and the old man wouldn’t let you go anywhere,” he said, his gaze intent.

“I just said I don’t want to go anywhere in the first place…,” I muttered, trying my best to ignore how fast my heart was going because

of the way he was looking at me.

At the way he was even just talking to me.

Rip’s cheeks twitched, and his voice was even lower as he whispered, “Good.” The pinky he had on the back of my neck moved across the skin there lightly, just grazing it. “I don’t want you leaving me alone. I was pissed and you were there, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I don’t want to hurt you. You hear me?”

I did and I didn’t.

I was there and, like always, I was an easy target. That was nothing new.

But I knew words held an edge of truth to them always.

I also knew that I had been right in thinking that I had wasted my time mooning over this man who would never be more than my boss. He did feel bad, and that was nice, but that was it. That was all. I had given him the tools he used to hurt me.

And I really was tired of hurting, but that was on me. I just wanted to move past this.

Warm, sweet breath washed over my face as he leaned in even closer to me. Bringing him so close I had to hold my breath. “You forgive me for fucking up?”

Did I?

I only had to pause for a moment before I knew my answer. “Sure.” “Sure?”

I nodded and that got me a slow, wary blink. “We good?”

I nodded again.

The finger on my neck was light as his eyes moved from one of mine to the other and back again. I could still feel his breath on my face. I could feel his entire palm on the back of my head.

“We over this ‘Mr. Ripley’ bullshit?”

I didn’t say a word in response to that, mostly because I did forgive him—Rip was shades of black and gray and white, and so was his relationship with Mr. C—but that didn’t change my own reality. My own truth.

Plus, I didn’t want to lie.

I wasn’t sure I was done with the “Mr. Ripley” bullshit. It would help me cope. It would remind me of my hard-earned lesson.

And something about that had his face clouding over. His eyes narrowing, moving from one of mine to the other like he knew—knew—

what I was thinking. “I don’t dislike you. Not a little, not at all. How many times do I gotta say that to get it through your head?”

My chest ached as I looked up into that handsome, handsome face. But I remembered.

I would remember what he said for a very, very long time.

“I forgive you, Rip, I really do. I can’t imagine the stress you were under, and I appreciate that you feel bad for what you said. You had no idea I couldn’t care less that you knew what I did before I told you. But I never thought you would tell me to leave you alone. That you would push me away, and that’s what hurt me. Because I grew up being told to leave people alone. I want you to be happy, and I want to be happy too. And none of this lately has been doing that. It just makes me sad. So I think we’re better off just keeping things the way they always should have been. Like you’re my boss, and I paint your cars for you, and that’s it.”