The following morning, I didn’t drop my stuff on the floor when

I went into my room and found another flower sitting on my desk. This time, it was a purple rose—a pale lavender that was almost white but just barely not—with a lacy white ribbon tied around it. It was beautiful. Honestly, just freaking beautiful.

But was it there because of guilt?

Or was it because of the things he’d said last night? The things I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since we’d sat across from each other eating burgers and splitting an order of fries. The things he’d said that lit up a part of me that was scary. That gave me too much hope.

He wanted his Luna back. His.

In what way though?

And why did I want that more than anything even though I’d told myself before I had fallen asleep all alone in my bed last night that it was dangerous and stupid and way too risky… because it was. It really was all of those things.

Don’t be dumb, I tried to tell myself as I put my bag into the right drawer, still looking at the rose. It was perfect. There wasn’t a single blemish on any petal. The tips had a slightly darker shade of purple on them.

It was just as beautiful as the one from yesterday, sitting there alone in its jar.

My hand felt unsteady as I picked it up, took a whiff of it, tried my best to ignore the way my heart started speeding up, and then set it in the jar beside the orange one.

It was just a flower. The second of my life. Bought out of guilt or just because Rip had lost his mind and gone delusional, imagining things that he had no business sharing with me.

But…

You know what? If he wanted to keep buying me flowers, fine. I was still going to tell him he didn’t need to, because he didn’t.

With my lunch bag in hand, I knew exactly what I needed to do as I headed toward the main floor to have a conversation before starting the coffee so I could move on with my day.

Rip was looking through a manual beside an old Corvette I hadn’t seen before. He glanced over the second my footsteps started to get louder. He had the same face he’d had on the day before when I’d asked him about the orange flower. Calm, patient, serious.

“Mr. Ripley—” He smiled.

He full-out, outright smiled. Dimple and everything. At me.

“You mean Rip.”

I was going to ignore it. I held my head up, took a breath through my nose, and said as professionally as possible, “I told you, you don’t have to buy me anything if you feel bad—”

His eyebrows went up just slightly as he beamed that beautiful closed-mouth smile at me. “Told you I’m not doing it because I feel bad.”

Then why, Rip? Why are you doing it?

“You said nobody’s ever given you flowers before,” he went on, still too calm, still smiling.

I shut my freaking mouth. “You like it?”

Say no. Say no. Be a bish and say no.

The problem was, I wasn’t used to being one. At least not a real one. So I told him the freaking truth. “It’s beautiful.”

His smile wavered. “Good.”

And before I could open my mouth to remind him again he didn’t need to do the flowers or the donuts or going to bars where I had dates, he jerked his chin to the side, toward the wall of tool chests and said, “Made your coffee. Not sure if I got it right, but I think I did.”

He’d made my coffee?

What in the hell was happening? It genuinely felt like I’d gotten hit on the back of the head and was having delusions or something. It felt like… I didn’t know what it felt like. But not real.

Not even like a freaking fantasy. Not even close.

All I could do was stand there. Stand there feeling like this man had punched me as hard as he could in the solar plexus. Then as if that wasn’t enough, he’d kicked my legs out from under me.

Before he could say anything else, before I could remember how to speak or think about what I could or should say, his cell phone started to ring. His hand was pulling it out of his pocket when he said, his smile melting into a smaller, gentler one, “Used some of the decaf you have hidden too, in case you’re worried about your hands.”

And then he answered his call. Like I wasn’t there standing like a dum-dum as I figured out why he was taking this so far that he made me my coffee. I’d watched him. When he was lazy, he didn’t even make his own coffee the way he liked it.

But he’d made mine.

On the same day he’d brought me a purple flower that reminded me of my house.

The night after he’d kicked my date to the curb and taken me to eat burgers, fries, and an ice cream cone, while I’d mostly stared at him the whole time, thinking.

Sure enough, when I picked up my coffee mug as he spoke to what I figured was one of the companies CCC ordered parts from, I took a sip and… it tasted exactly how I made mine.

Exactly.

And like the chicken I was now, I headed back to my room before he got off the phone.

I needed to think. Well, I needed to do more than think, but….

I hadn’t told Lenny about the rose the day before because I hadn’t seen a point, but when I made it back to my room with my coffee burning a hole straight into my heart, I had to pull my phone out and type a message.

Me: He brought me a purple rose and made me coffee.

There was possibly a thirty-second delay before she responded.

Lenny: Who? Me: Rip Lenny: O.O Lenny: Why?

I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell her about anything that happened yesterday, and I sure hadn’t told her about him knowing about my family. All she knew was that he’d been a jerk at the hospital and we hadn’t been on speaking terms since.

Me: He bought me an orange rose yesterday and left it in my office too. So I went to tell him he didn’t have to make it up to me or anything… and he said that he wasn’t trying to make it up to me.

Lenny: And???

Me: You know how I had that date yesterday? He showed up at the bar and ran the guy off. Then he said he wanted his Luna and how he wanted to see my face first thing every morning, and then we went to eat burgers.

Me: I thought he was full of crap and just stringing me along so I wouldn’t get pissed off and quit, but now he’s making me coffee and bringing me roses and asking me if I like them, and telling me he listens to everything I say… and I don’t know what I’m doing.

Me: No one’s ever bought me flowers before, and he remembered that.

Me: What do I do?

Lenny: And why are you asking me what you should do? I don’t know. Lenny: He kind of deserves for you to tell him to fuck off, but I’m on my period and want to kill half the guys at the gym.

Lenny: I do have to say that’s pretty sweet though.

Lenny: The only men that have ever made me coffee are Grandpa Gus and Peter. Food for thought.

Me: You’re useless. Me: I’ll think about it. Lenny: Sorry

Me: I didn’t tell you he’s been coming by my room every day for no reason.

Lenny: Now you’re just rubbing it in.

Lenny: Tell me what happens. I need to live through you since it’s the only romance in my life.

Me: I don’t think it’s romance. I think he just feels bad.

Lenny: Bish, I’ve grown up with guys. Even if they feel bad about something, most of the time, they won’t even say they’re sorry. They’ll just act normal and hope you forget. They’re not going to get you flowers and make you coffee and say things like that to you. Not even if they want to get in your pants. Just saying.

Me: You just said you don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

Lenny: I don’t, but I know men and I know assholes, and neither one is going to be buying you flowers for no reason. Or telling you shit like they want you back.

Lenny: Want me to ask Grandpa Gus and see what he thinks? He’s been a man for seventy-two years now. Even if he doesn’t know, he’ll make something up.

I wasn’t crazy about her asking Grandpa Gus what I should do, but who else did I have to give me advice? Mr. Cooper? Miguel?

I rubbed my palm over my forehead and sighed as I replied.

Me: Okay. Ask him.

Lenny: You’re welcome.

Me: Thanks. Gotta get to work now.

Lenny: Some of us have already been at work…

Lenny: Kisses

I sighed again and set my phone into my back pocket as my eyes went back to the two flowers sitting in the jar, just… taunting me.

 

Lenny had texted me last night and said that Grandpa Gus had

told her that she was right: Rip wouldn’t have said that kind of thing unless he meant it, and that Len was right again. He wouldn’t be buying me flowers if he felt guilty either.

But…

What if that wasn’t the case? What if he changed his mind?

 

A WEEK WENT BY AND THE FLOWERS KEPT SHOWING UP ON MY DESK

every morning. Different shades of pink, red, orange, yellow, lilac, purple… All of them short-stemmed and without thorns, waiting for me.

And if that wasn’t enough, my cup of coffee was there every morning too. Sitting beside the coffee maker one day, beside the little jar of flowers on another day, and on three other occasions on whatever tool

chest was right beside him. And when I’d go to get it, he would shoot me a smile and ask if I liked the flower he’d left.

I wasn’t even going to think about how every afternoon there was a container in the refrigerator with my name on it.

Much less how I ate it instead of the lunch I brought myself, which wasn’t a tenth as good as what he made.

If none of that was enough, when I got to work one random morning, I found that my Ball jar had been replaced. In its place was a pretty globe-shaped vase with an icy blue and white lace ribbon wrapped around the fluted end. Pretty, it was so freaking pretty, I had almost been scared to touch it.

Rip didn’t go easy. It was like he set a bar he needed to go above and beyond.

He started coming over to my room for no reason. He came in every morning around ten without fault, and in the afternoon too, and would look at me through the window if I was in the booth, or just fart around looking at things he’d seen a dozen times in my room.

But he watched me, even when I purposely avoided looking at him. He watched me, and he was patient.

He kept that warm smile, or pretty close to it, on his face every time I looked at him, like he was purposely giving me time and space to… I wasn’t sure what.

I really wasn’t sure.

Every time I called him “Mr. Ripley,” he corrected me and then moved on with our conversation, even if it was mostly me responding in one-word answers and trying to be professional.

One week turned into two, and the next thing I knew, there were two vases on my desk, filled with the most beautiful, perfect roses. When one started to wilt, he took it out before I’d even gotten to work, but a new one was always sitting on my desk like he wanted me to see it and appreciate it.

Lenny: He’s trying. You’ve gotta give it to him.

Me: He doesn’t need to be trying. I don’t want him to try.

Lenny: Liar.

Lenny: You love it, and that’s okay.

Me: That’s what scares me. I’m tired of loving people who decide they’re done with me.

Lenny: You only miss all the shots you don’t take in life, Lu, you know that.

He was trying.

And Lenny did have a point. But…

But.

 

I WAS GOING TO BLAME SLEEPING LIKE SHIT THE NIGHT BEFORE ON WHY I

finally lost it the next morning.

I could blame the letter I’d found in the mail the night before on why I hadn’t been able to sleep. The letter I had read and reread a dozen times. Knowing I would end up reading it a dozen more. I had slept with it on the nightstand.

 

Dear Luna,

I want to tell you that I’m sorry, but that feels like a cop-out now. But I am sorry. I’m so, so sorry for everything. I’ve wanted to call you, but I don’t think I can handle hearing you being all decent after what a bitch I’ve been lately.

I didn’t mean for you to find out about Dad the way you did, okay? He called me right after he got out of jail and kept calling me every once in a while for years after that, and I never answered, until one day I finally did. I was having a bad day, and I answered intending to tell him off… I yelled at him, I asked him why he’d been such an asshole my entire life. I spent at least ten minutes screaming at him, and he took it all. He apologized, Luna. He told me how sorry he was, how unhappy he’d been and how much he regretted how things had worked out. He said he was sober and was trying to make amends for the things he’d done.

If it makes you feel better, I hung up on him that first day after all that. He called again a few days later, and I was a bitch then too. But he kept on calling, and I kept answering.

I know that’s not an excuse or really even an explanation, but that’s how it happened. Please don’t get more mad than you already are, but he isn’t so bad. He’s changed a lot. He asks about everyone. (Yes, including you.) (But mostly me, Kyra, and Lily, but I’m sure you already know that. I just don’t want to lie to you anymore.)

I’ve asked him not to call you again so you know. I know you won’t ever forgive him, and I get it, but I guess I was just worried you would make me choose between you or him. Kyra and I both thought the same thing. If it makes you feel any better, my boyfriend thinks I’m an idiot and says I deserve you shutting me out of your life now. But I hope you don’t. I hope one day you can forgive me.

If you’re still reading this, you should know how bad I still feel about the night you came over. I’m sorry doesn’t cut it, but I am. I’m sorry for so many things I don’t know where to start.

The other thing is… look… I haven’t known how to tell you this, and I still don’t, but… I’m not selling drugs or anything like that. Don’t freak out. I started stripping, okay? I didn’t tell anyone. I barely told Kyra a year ago. I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer. I make enough money to pay for most of my school expenses, and I only have to work a few hours a day. My roommate is a stripper too. I’m just doing it until I graduate.

I dated this older guy for a while, and he was the reason why I got the apartment I was at. We split up and things got weird, and… to make a long story short, it was him who got into my apartment that night. He was jealous over my new boyfriend, but I got a restraining order now and I’m moving out when my lease is over in January.

You always do the right thing, and I didn’t want you to get mad at me. By the time I knew I had to say something, it had been too long and I don’t know how to fix any of this anymore. Lies always spiral out of control, even if you don’t mean for them to, huh?

I love you, Luna. I’m sorry for fucking up so much and lying to you and just being a shitty sister, but I want you to know everything.

Please don’t be mad.

Love, Thea

P.S. You should know Rudy went to your house and job on his own. Dad didn’t send him there. He said that Rudy overheard me telling him about getting broken into and got the idea to try and get away with it. Dad had asked me to check with you that one day to make sure you were okay. He had a feeling Rudy would try to do something. I should have warned you, but now I have to live with that too if it makes you feel any better. I’m really glad you’re okay. Lily told me all about it. Not that it means much, but I’m sorry.

 

That’s what I’d gotten.

So I was going to blame my sister’s kind of passive-aggressive note on why I slept like shit.

I was still mad. Me. Who was rarely ever mad. But how could she think I would give a single crap about her stripping? I wouldn’t care what she did.

Why couldn’t she just call me? Why couldn’t she just tell me? I wasn’t scary. I understood, I guess to a certain point, but it still just felt like BS.

What I was, was mad.

And that was what I was going to blame as the reason why I lost it. Then again, maybe it was finding Ripley bent over the engine of a

Corvette he was restoring and getting a great view of his butt that might have been the icing on the cake.

Maybe it was the six red roses cut short and sitting in a glass bowl- like vase that were the icing on the cake. They were beautiful. But they

were too beautiful. And when I really took in the vase and saw that it was spotless, without a single fingerprint on the glass, and imagined Rip carrying something super delicate in his hands and then wiping it down with maybe his shirt or a rag before leaving it there for me to find it….

I lost it.

It was that simple.

I barely remembered dropping my bag and things on the floor and heading back out to the main floor to find the man who had left my gift there.

“Rip!” I called out, knowing exactly where he was.

There was no lapse in response. “Yeah?” he responded from the furthest end of the floor, still looking at something inside the Corvette.

My coffee was sitting in a mug with the poster of the Rocky Horror Picture Show on it.

That hadn’t existed in this building before. Had he bought it… for me?

I sucked in a breath, eyeing it until I was right beside him before I forced myself to look over and say, “Rip,” I started, not even realizing I’d forgotten the “mister” part, “you can stop now with the flowers, all right?”

He didn’t look up as he asked in that congenial, soft voice, “You didn’t like ’em?”

“It isn’t about whether I like them or not—”

He still didn’t glance over as he cut me off. “You liked them then?” “You know I do. They’re beautiful—”

“You don’t like them in your room anymore?” I blinked. “No, I like them there—”

“So…?” he asked, still busy doing whatever it was he was doing. I didn’t glance at his butt.

I didn’t.

“So then, you don’t have to keep buying them, okay? I told you already, I’m over what happened, if that’s why you’re doing it.”

Now that had him straightening, his head just barely missing the hood of the Corvette.

“You can stop. I get that you’re trying to make it up to me, but you’ve done enough. It’s just messing with my head and confusing me, and I would rather you stop now than stop a month from now or six months from now or a year from now when you decide you don’t want to do it anymore, okay?”

That had him turning around slowly to meet me. He waited until he was fully facing me, that giant body tuned into mine, as he said, “I’m not trying to make anything up to you. I told you that already.” He set down the wrench in his hand and took a deep breath, watching me closely. “I’m getting you flowers because I want to. Because you said nobody has ever given them to you, and I’m not about to let anyone else do it. This isn’t some boss shit, baby. This doesn’t have shit to do with Cooper’s. This is Luna and Rip. This is me trying to get you to give me a chance. Understand me?”

Oh hell. He was being serious. Luna and Rip.

He was trying to… what? Win me over? I wasn’t being delusional.

Just stubborn. And scared.

You only miss the shots you don’t take, Lenny had texted me. Was that what I was doing? Not wanting to take a shot because I didn’t want to miss? Was it so bad to want to protect myself from getting hurt?

I wasn’t sure, but some part of me must have been because I asked, “You’re not?”

His smile grew slowly. “No, baby, I’m sure as hell not.” “Why?” I asked him as slowly as his smile had grown. “Because.”

My heart was beating fast. When did it start beating so fast? Damn it. “You don’t get to just decide all of a sudden you want me to… to…” What was I going to say? Have a crush on him? I had no experience on how to talk to people, men specifically, without sounding worse than a teenager. “You don’t get to decide all of a sudden that you want me to like you—”

“This isn’t me wanting you to like me. That’s not what I want. That’s the smallest part of what I want, Luna.”

For some stupid reason, I took a step back and bumped into the car right beside the Corvette. “What do you want then?”

Rip took a step forward, and then his hand came up toward my face. The backs of his fingers grazed my cheek… and they stayed there, just touching my skin, just barely. “I want what I should’ve been taking from you from the moment you started being sugar sweet to me. From the first time you went out of your way to make me feel good… made me feel better than anyone has for the first time in a long fucking time.”

He licked his lips, and I watched every second of it as his hand stayed exactly where it was. On my cheek.

His fingers trailed down my jaw and lingered on the side of my neck. “You calm me. You know that? You do to me what all that jewelry you

wear does for you. Just looking at you makes me feel better. And not just fucking better but better. Different. Like you look right through me and my bullshit and you know what’s in there better than I do.”

I stood there with my mouth open, not knowing what to say. “Lady at the flower store said orange means admiration.”

My brain and nervous system decided all I was going to be capable of doing right then was blinking and, even then, that seemed almost like too much for me to handle.

Because… excuse me?

“Pink’s happiness… gratitude… appreciation. Those purples are desire… love at first sight… Yellow is affection. Red is love. I owe you a couple of white ones, but I was going to wait a while more because I know I fucked up.” He dropped his hand. “But I’m not going anywhere. Not today. Not tomorrow. I thought you were the most beautiful fucking girl I’d ever seen when you walked into that tiny-ass office three years ago being all cocky and shit. And I think about that girl every single night as I go to bed, Luna. I know I’ve walked away from some shit in my life, but the last thing I want… last thing I could handle is going through you not talking to me anymore. You spoiled me, Luna, and I know I’ve been a real piece of shit a lot. I know you deserve better than somebody like me. I’ve told myself that a thousand times but it hasn’t changed a single thing. I fucking miss you, and my greedy ass needs you around.”