Like an idiot, I asked, “What do you want back?”

“I want my goddamn Luna back,” he breathed, stealing the air from my lungs. “I don’t want you to leave me alone. I want you bugging my ass for random shit again. I wanna see your fucking face first thing in the morning, even if you don’t bring me my coffee anymore. I wanna make you something to eat so you don’t end up with Salmonella from that shit you try to cook,” he said in this strangely calm voice that seemed like the opposite of what someone using a jackhammer on my entire existence would have been.

And he told me carefully, too carefully, “Two fucking weeks and I want it back. You gave me these pieces of you I know you haven’t given to anybody else, and they’re mine. You can’t take ’em back. I need them more than you do, you hear me?”

I took a breath in through my nose, ignoring that thing bubbling and living under and inside of me. But as I stood there, watching him, the distrust running so fiercely through me as my brain called out liar, liar, freaking liar, something big and hard formed in my chest. This knot. This… prediction. I wasn’t sure what it was going to be of, but it was going to be something… something I wasn’t positive I was ready to handle after all.

The hands on my throat slid down to cup my shoulders, and it was his turn to let out a deep breath. “I know I fucked up, and I can tell you’re not gonna make this easy on me, and I get it. But I want you to eat a burger with me in the meantime, yeah? Get some ice cream with me. You promised the day of the wreck. Remember?”

Of course I remembered. How could I forget?

Rip took a step back, and I still didn’t say anything.

He took another step and, still, nothing.

Then another and another, until he stopped right before the door and gave me an intent look as he said, “Let’s go eat a fucking burger and some ice cream, baby girl. There’s nothing for you to be scared of. You can trust me.”

I wasn’t sure about all of that. I wasn’t even sure about part of it, especially the part of my head that needed to make rational decisions.

But I had never been one to hold grudges. That wasn’t what this had been about in the first place.

And… I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe him so bad it burned my throat and everything else south of the border. I wanted to trust myself even though I wasn’t sure I could.

But this need in me to try, to believe, burned the brightest flame in my chest. In all of me, really.

Trust him?

“I got you,” he said with so much conviction there was no way to ignore it.

When we went to go eat a burger and two ice cream cones a few minutes later, I wasn’t sure how I felt.

What I did know was him telling me to trust him was on repeat in my head the rest of the night.

Chapter 29

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.