“Yeah—about that…” I slammed my first shot.

He sat forward, frowning. “What’s up?”

“A buncha shit, so let me get it all out first.” When he nodded I said, “First, my parents weren’t divorced. Long story short—I own nothing. The trailer, the money and the garage—all hers.”

“Shit,” he said.

“Second, Pearl moved in with me.” His eyes popped wide and I could see the questions forming, but I held up a hand and he shifted in his seat, silent. “She decided not to go to med school. She’s staying here to study marine biology instead, and her mom was none too happy.”

“Jesus—they kicked her out?”

I nodded. “More or less.”

“So you gave her a place to live.”

“Everything was fine until my mom came back to town last week and moved into the trailer. Now I’m sleeping on the fucking sofa, Pearl and me are sharing my closet, and all three of us are sharing one bathroom and one thousand square feet of space.”

“What the hell, Wynn? You’ve been working there since I’ve known you and running the whole place for what, two years? All that time under the justified belief that you’d inherit it… and now you’re working for your mom?”

“Yes and no. I assumed the garage would be mine, and I was dead fucking wrong. It is what it is, and I can’t change it. That said, I don’t intend to stick around long-term to get dicked over by another parent. But Pearl needs a place to live, here, until mid-August. She has to spend the first two semesters in Austin, so she’s working at the inn to save for a deposit and rent on a nine-month lease there.”

“That I think I can help with. Hang on.” Maxfield pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed. “Hey, Cindy … Yeah, everything’s great. Listen—a friend of mine from high school—my class valedictorian? She’s starting the graduate program in marine biology here, and they spend the first year on the main campus there. She needs somewhere safe and cheap to live. Do you think—”

He broke off and I held my breath.

“Yes. Exactly.” He nodded to me, one thumb up. “Great. Let me know and I’ll have her call you. Her name’s Pearl Frank … Thanks, Cindy. Bye.” He hung up and grinned. “She’s checking with Charles, but that’s a formality. I lived in the apartment over their garage for four years—just vacated it two days ago. It’s quiet, private, cheap, and close to campus. She’ll love it.”

“Goddamn, Maxfield. I don’t know what to say.”

“Pearl was my friend too—I wouldn’t have made it through high school without her help. So… how about you tell me what’s really going on? I know she was a challenge for you in high school—the one girl you wanted who wouldn’t give you the time of day—”

“That’s not exactly true.”

He lifted a brow.

So I spilled it. Not all of it, because some things are meant to be private. But I told him about the day I saved her life and how she saved mine by being the one perfect thing in my nearly twenty-three years, and I admitted that she’d ruined me for any other woman the summer before she left for college.

“Wynn—she’s living with you. Have you told her how you feel? What you want?”

Not unless taking her to my bed counts. “I’ve got nothing to offer her. Not now.”

He sat back and rolled the bottle back and forth in his hands, stabbing me with the icy look that’d scared people shitless in high school. Came in handy when the two of us were collecting overdue weed payments for Rick Thompson. I was grateful on more than one occasion that I’d made a friend of him because he’d had a side of crazy even I wouldn’t go to. People saw my wrath coming if I was gunning for ’em. Maxfield’s just fucking exploded out of nowhere.

“Whatever happened to I’m Boyce Fucking Wynn?” he asked. “That guy wouldn’t let anything get between him and something he wanted this bad.”

I barked a laugh. Ah, damn. Boyce Fucking Wynn. My high school motto. “I’m not that idiot anymore, man.”

Glancing around the overcrowded bar, he bit the spot where that lip ring used to be. I’d learned it to be his one tell—fucking with that thing with his teeth or tongue or a finger. I waited for whatever blunt truth he was about to shell out, set to be kicked in the gut by it, considering his hesitation to spit it out.

“Here’s what I’m hearing. Ownership of that garage made you feel worthy of her. For the first time, maybe.” He signaled Brit’s coworker for another round as my heart pounded slow and hard. He leaned up, eyes locked on mine. “I worship the ground Jacqueline walks on, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I love her, man. If that’s how you feel, all I can say is don’t give up. Don’t fucking give up.”

Pearl

Boyce’s kitchen wasn’t as welcoming since it had become Ruthanne Wynn’s kitchen. It felt off-limits to me unless he was there too. She didn’t say anything to that effect, but the hostile weight of her silence when we were alone in that small space said it all.

At first I attempted to study in Boyce’s bedroom, but the lighting wasn’t ideal. Two of the windows were inches from the brick wall of the garage, and the third was shaded by a crepe myrtle that hadn’t been pruned in years. He and his brother had grown up on an island just as I had, but no one would have ever have known that from their dimly lit, barely ventilated bedroom.

I began studying on campus after morning classes and lab research—either in the library or the glassed group-study area between the offices, labs and classrooms. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I had evening shifts at the inn, I didn’t bother to come home between school and work. Days I wasn’t scheduled to work at all, I came home after six when Boyce closed down the garage for the day.

Though Ruthanne and I didn’t have conversations—our exchanges were limited to the barest need for words—I got the feeling she thought I was working some angle to take what was hers and encouraging her son in that direction. Admittedly, if I could have conceived a strategy for him to regain what he’d worked so hard to build, I’d have suggested it to him. My motives would have surpassed her comprehension, though, as they had nothing to do with taking from her and everything to do with giving back to him. I’d always believed mothers sacrificed for their children to keep them safe and happy. Ruthanne’s mothering heart—if it beat in her chest at all—seemed to lack that impulse.