I knew something was really wrong on Monday when I showed up
to work and found the lights in my room were already on.
There had only been one car in the parking lot when I’d showed up, and it had been one I knew well. The owner of it had never, in the years we had worked together, gone into my room that early in the morning for no reason. If I really thought about it, he had probably never gone into my room when I wasn’t in it, period. There was no reason he would start now.
Even after everything we had done together this past weekend after leaving Thea’s.
“Everything” being us going to the closest twenty-four-hour diner and eating burgers, fries, and a sundae each; then staying in a hotel close by. In different rooms. The ride back to Houston the next day hadn’t been awkward… but instead a nice, easygoing quiet with both of us humming along to the radio. It had been okay—more than okay, considering Friday had sliced me deeper than anything else had in a long time.
I hadn’t cried over Thea since then. Even if she hadn’t called me or bothered texting me to make sure I made it back to Houston safely. Even if I did ache a little still from it, kind of like a papercut that you knew wasn’t going to kill you, but it still stung like hell.
But I wasn’t going to linger over any of that longer than I needed to. I had better ways to spend my energy, and in that moment right then, it was trying to guess why the lights in my room were on.
Approaching the door, with the lights on through the square-shaped window at the top of the door, I balanced my tote bag, holding a container full of funky-looking stir-fry I had made to last the entire week. I couldn’t help but wonder why Rip would be in there. To help me? No way. He had enough things to do. Check something? Maybe.
I had left Jason with only a small project before I’d left on Friday for my gynecologist appointment, but he should have gotten it finished before he’d bounced. Chances were, Rip was double-checking his work. He had done that to mine from time to time when he’d first come to CCC, doubting I could do what I had assured him I could.
So even though my gut knew something was off, the rest of me tried to push that nagging feeling aside as I turned the knob and pushed the door open. There was no way I could be surprised when I found Rip inside, standing just outside the booth’s opened doors, looking in. I didn’t worry when I found him with his hands on his hips, doing that.
But when I said, “Good morning” as I came inside, my purse over one shoulder, tote in my hands, and he didn’t look at me… that’s when something in me confirmed that there was something wrong.
He didn’t look at me. He didn’t say anything. Okay.
Not like I had cried into his body after my sister had shot a freaking arrow into my heart and made me feel about three inches tall.
I hadn’t let myself think of how nice it had been to lean up against him and have him hold me.
I wasn’t about to start now. I knew he was my boss, and I knew he owed me a favor and that’s why he’d gone with me in the first place. Maybe comforting me hadn’t been part of it, but I knew he didn’t hate me. Maybe somewhere inside of him, he was a little fond of me.
But that was all there was.
He was a good enough person to be there for me when he didn’t need
to.
But none of that reflected on the face that was aimed at me. Any
bonding, any connection we might have made with each other, wasn’t reflected there. At all.
I watched him as I set my things down on top of the desk and didn’t bother putting my purse into the compartment where I usually left it. He still hadn’t moved. He was too busy looking at whatever was inside the booth.
The only thing in there should have been the parts Jason had finished days ago.
Oh, God. He’d messed something up, hadn’t he?
But how? What? I really hadn’t left much for him to screw up. “Rip?” I called out again, taking my time to approach him.
From where I was, he took a deep breath, and I saw the muscles on his forearms get tight. His attention did waver though as he said, “What the fuck is this?”
Fucking Jason. Fucking, fucking Jason. I knew it. I should have known it.
Hadn’t I learned to trust my gut? And hadn’t my freaking gut told me that Jason would find some way to screw things up?
Hell. Freaking hell.
I walked faster toward my boss, cutting the short distance between us until I stood a couple feet to the side of him. I held my breath as I took in the sight before me.
Before I’d left, I had finished up the last coat of primer on two quarter panels. Jason had promised to get them out of the booth so he could finish the four sets of wheels for another project. I’d had to get to my appointment, and I’d been trying to give that pain in the butt an olive branch; I’d given him something he could do to earn a tiny bit of loyalty. To show me that maybe I could trust him.
But as I looked into the booth, the panels were definitely still in there.
Panels to what I knew were a 2010 Ford Mustang. The same make and model of the car I had left on Friday. Only, it wasn’t the solid gray I had left it. And it wasn’t the so-dark-green-it-looked-black color that I had locked away to use this morning.
It was green. A spotty green that had been applied so badly, I could tell from the distance I was at. It was terrible.
Just… freaking… terrible.
“Crap,” I whispered to myself, stunned. Stunned.
“You do this?” he asked slowly like he couldn’t even believe he was asking me that question.
I reared back to look at him. “No!” I had screwed up recently, sure, but nothing like this. Not actually skill-wise.
He was still focused on the car inside when he let out a deep breath that made me think of the hug he’d given me outside of my sister’s apartment. “Then who did?” he asked, not sounding at all like we had overcome some barrier between us less than two days ago.
In fact, it sounded like before. Like worse than before. And I didn’t like the way it made my chest feel funny.
“I don’t know for sure,” I started to say, “but it had to have been Jason. I finished the primer before I left on Friday, and he was supposed
to stay and do the rims, not work on this.” After our Friday morning meeting, Mr. Cooper had told me to leave whenever it was time and let Jason finish whatever was needed.
“Where’s the order at?” The work order?
I looked around the room and tried to find the folder with all the order information for it. I didn’t see it on my desk. I’d left it there for sure that Friday, so Jason could have access to it if he needed. “Let me find it. I know I left it on my desk before I left, but he was only supposed to do the rims. I told him three times.”
I couldn’t stop looking at the freaking car I had spent hours on. I’d seen people’s DIY paint jobs look a hundred times better than this. Taking off the color was going to be a major pain, especially after I’d had to do the same thing so recently.
“You left him here alone?”
I kept going through my desk, knowing I was a little bit of a coward for not looking him in the eyes as I answered. “Yes.” Mr. Cooper had known. He’d been the one to tell me to go before he and Rip had gotten into that crappy argument.
Rip let out another deep breath that unsettled me.
And still, I couldn’t manage to look at him. “I didn’t do it, Rip,” I said, giving myself away. “I’ve started triple-checking orders to make sure I’m doing the right color after that other time a few weeks ago. And I’ve definitely never done that to any car, even when I was learning.”
He let out another breath, and I’d swear I heard his jaw crack.
Jesus Christ. This was… what? Three screwups in his eyes? In just a matter of weeks? Three times now that something had gone wrong?
And hadn’t he put down those times on my record or whatever it was called?
Fuck.
Calm down, Luna. Calm down and think.
Did I want to get Jason fired? No. But did I want to get fired when he’d specifically done something like this even after I had told him not to?
No.
I stopped looking through the desk and closed my eyes before rubbing at my forehead with the meaty part of my palm. “Jason’s been acting like a real prick lately,” I started to tell him, not letting myself feel bad for throwing him under the bus. “But I didn’t think he’d do
something like this. I told him all he had to do was work on the rims, not anything else.”
Rip’s hand went up to go over his forehead. Oh, no.
“I think he’s trying to get me fired. You can look at the cameras and see he stayed after I’d left. I didn’t come back into the building. I left for my appointment, and you know where I was the rest of the evening.”
He closed those blue-green eyes, and I could see the tension all over his upper body. Oh, man. I barely noticed right then it was a white compression shirt day.
“Rip, I didn’t do it. I swear,” I told him, opening my eyes and hoping I didn’t sound as desperate as I felt but getting nervous that it might be a good idea that I did. I didn’t want anyone’s pity, especially not Rip’s. Especially not after everything.
But if I did the math correctly in my head, this might be three strikes for me.
“I swear on my life I didn’t do it,” I rushed out, dropping my hand as more nerves shot straight through my chest.
“Stop talking, Luna,” he said in the quietest voice he had ever used on me before. “Just stop fucking talking.”
I did what he said, feeling nauseous the entire time. He couldn’t blame me for it… could he?
I shouldn’t have left Jason alone, okay. But I had. The same way the man who had the head paint position before me had left me alone countless times when he wanted to take off from work four hours early. There was no “I” in team. I’d had to go to my appointment….
I was just making excuses.
So, I didn’t want to get blamed, but I didn’t want to get fired more than that. I knew that for sure, accepted it for sure. Was a little bit of pride worth losing my job? A job I really did love?
No, it wasn’t.
“Rip,” I started up again before I could stop myself. “I’m so sorry. I can fix it.”
He stood there, still like a statue. Breathing in, breathing out. Still. Utterly, completely unmoving. Until, “What did I just say, Luna? I don’t want to fucking hear it right now,” he replied calmly, which just made it worse. He was furious. He didn’t need to yell at me for me to know that.
And the dread in my stomach just got worse. “We can fix it. It’ll just take—”
He finally turned that massive body toward me to explode. “I don’t give a shit if you can fix it or if we can fix it! I just want you to stop fucking talking for a second!” he hissed, just about the closest thing to yelling as he was capable of, I’d bet.
It was the loudest I had ever heard him talk before.
That had to be why I sucked in a breath; a breath that I didn’t let go. I felt the urge to make some sad sound form in my throat. Then in my heart. After a moment, I was blinking quickly without even meaning to.
Maybe it was my fault that I had left Jason alone, but it wasn’t my fault he had done this. It wasn’t my fault that Rip was in a bad mood and was now being mean.
What was my fault was how betrayed I felt right then. I hadn’t had enough time to build up any expectations between us, but this? This hurt. Just a little, but still.
“Please don’t fire me.” My voice cracked despite the fact I was basically whispering. “I’ll fix whatever needs to be fixed. It’s my fault. You don’t have to pay me, but please don’t fire me. I love working here,” I told my boss—the man who had hugged me and called me baby girl forty-eight hours ago—my voice shaky, keeping my eyes trained on the button of his coveralls that was directly in front of my face, somewhere in between his pectorals.
I was loved. I was fine. I wanted this job, and I didn’t want to lose it.
“Please, Rip,” I added, hearing the hoarseness in my voice and not letting it shame me.
The silence after those words were out of my mouth could have burned the skin and muscles off my bones it was so oppressing.
I wasn’t going to cry, but if it happened, I wasn’t going to be ashamed of it. I’d dealt with enough of that in the past, with my parents telling me to quit being a baby when they’d say something that upset me and then didn’t want to deal with the consequences.
A person gets to pick what constitutes their pride.
I had used to think that my parents stomping my ego to pieces as a kid had been a disgrace, but now… now I thought it had been a gift. I knew what I could take without breaking. Bending hurt. It was uncomfortable. It was terrible. But I knew that bending didn’t kill.
If the fact that it was Rip treating me like this was the reason why I was struggling with keeping it together…
I wasn’t going to think about it.
He was my boss, and I had forgotten that again. That was on me. No one else.
No. I wasn’t going to think about Rip being the cause, because I wasn’t going to feel this way longer than… five minutes. I’d do this for five minutes, and that was it.
That was it.
This ache in my throat… five minutes.
This BS sense of betrayal… five freaking minutes and that was it.
I’d been yelled at enough in my life. Rip was going to get to be just another person who succeeded in making me feel this way.
I didn’t want to start over. I had screwed up. Fine. But I hadn’t screwed up that badly.
“Please don’t fire me,” I repeated myself, hating myself for even being in this position in the first place.
A minute dragged by. Maybe even two minutes. Just as I started to accept that he wasn’t saying anything for a reason, I took a step backward, feeling… nearly as bad as I had Friday night. Then, finally, Rip spoke up. “I’m not firing you,” he claimed in a voice that was pretty damn close to a growl.
It didn’t seem like he wasn’t firing me. “I’m not,” he repeated himself.
The saliva in my mouth started to taste sweet as I stayed right where I was in every way. “Are you sure?” I forced myself to ask.
Rip’s voice was low as he murmured, “Yes.” Okay then.
He wasn’t firing me for someone else’s mistake.
Feeling the frustration—and the hurt—in the backs of my eyes, I sucked in a breath and nodded. I could feel my nostrils flaring as I took another step back. Then another.
I’d gotten what I wanted. I had no reason to be upset. Not because this was unfair. Not because he had just hurt my feelings by reminding me that he was my boss and that was all there was between us.
Not because he had held me while I cried over my sister shooing me out of her life.
“Luna,” came my name in that murmured, rough voice that I usually enjoyed, except in that moment.
I ignored it.
“Will you help me carry it out of here?” I asked him instead, my own voice low.
There was a beat of silence, and I had no idea if he was looking at me, doing the sign of the cross, or rolling his eyes. I wasn’t fired, and that was all that was going to matter then.
Lenny had rescheduled my date for that night, and even though I wasn’t super excited over it, it was something to look forward to. That could be the best part of my day, even if nothing came of it. Because at least I was trying to make my life better. Every day, I tried to make my life better, and that had to mean something. It would.
“Luna?”
My heart started beating faster, but I ignored that too and managed to ask, “Can we please do it so I can start?”
There was a pause and then a soft, “Sure.”
I swallowed and kept my gaze on that little button. “Okay. Let’s do
it.”
There was a deeper sigh. A longer one. Another “Luna…” that
reminded me of a shooting star with a long tail behind it. A dying meteor. That’s what it was in a way. I would forgive him. I would move on, but that Luna wouldn’t change what it really was.
A reminder that he was my boss first and foremost. A dying little dream that was burning itself out.
“It’s fine,” I told him, noticing how flat my tone sounded and getting frustrated over it. “If you wouldn’t mind helping me move it, please.”
Silence.
There was another sigh.
His gradual “All right” wasn’t what I expected. It was soft. So soft it slid right off me and onto the floor, lost forever.
And then we moved the panels.
