We all had to start somewhere. We all screwed up. I could keep it together. I could give him another chance.

It was just going to be hard when every time I looked at him, I thought about all the times in the past that I was pretty sure he’d tried screwing me over.

“Once it dries, I’ll help you do some of the sanding if I have time, and you can try doing the primer again,” I told him.

He gawked. “Help me do some of the sanding?”

“Yes.” I glanced at him to find him making a face at me… and not doing anything with that face even afterward. “I’ll help you. I can’t fall behind now because of this. If I get a chance, I’ll help you, and I probably can.”

My coworker blinked, and the man who had to be twenty—too old to be such a crybaby—practically squawked. “But that’ll take hours!”

Duh. I gave him the same shrug he’d given me. It was his fault he either hadn’t read the instructions or had decided to ignore them. What was that saying? Measure twice, cut once?

“Mr. Cooper said I’m supposed to help you in the booth,” Jason started, his voice already outraged and surprised.

Here we go.

I nodded. “This is part of it.”

“But what about the body guys? Why can’t they do it?” he tried to ask.

“Because they already have their own work to do.” Which he knew. “They already worked on this. You can ask them if they’ll help if they get a chance, but usually they’re busier than I am, and I’m not going to ask for you. If I was the one who messed up, I wouldn’t want anyone to know. I would do it all myself, but it’s up to you what you want to do.”

Maybe mentioning that I would be embarrassed if I were him wasn’t the nicest thing in the world to bring up, but…

This guy had gotten another girl pregnant while dating my eighteen-year-old sister. In the time he’d worked here, I had never heard anything about him having a son or daughter. But that was none of my business.

I couldn’t find it in me to scrape up any sympathy for him. The other girl, sure. But Jason? Not even a little bit.

“But…,” he started to choke.

I really wasn’t anywhere near being in the mood to deal with him. “Look, Jason, go tell Mr. Cooper or Rip about it if you don’t want to do it. I have too many things to do, to do it for you. I already screwed up this month and had to own up to it. I left instructions and they weren’t followed. I’m not doing it for you. Period.” Sorry not sorry, buddy.

Jason, who was about three inches taller than me at five ten and in decent shape, gulped. I saw the fury in his eyes, and I didn’t like it. I never had. That was why I gave him about as much of a berth as possible.

But… Mr. Cooper, who never asked for anything, wanted me to work with him. I could do it for him. I would.

“I’m not trying to be a jerk. I can’t be okay with you skipping two important steps. I would be furious if I paid thousands of dollars for a paint job that wasn’t done correctly. Mr. Cooper wouldn’t be okay with it either. We have a reputation, and I’m not going to let that come back on me. I’m sorry, but you have to do it again.”

He was still giving me an angry expression and those beady, mean eyes.

Mr. Cooper, Mr. Cooper, Mr. Cooper. I could do this for Mr. Cooper.

“I’ve messed up before too. It happens,” I added, trying to make him feel better. “It’s fine. It can be fixed. It isn’t a big deal.” We didn’t have to tell Rip, so he should be grateful for that.

He wasn’t. “It’s a lot of fuckin’ work for a little bitty—”

All right, maybe Mr. C was going to end up owing me if I survived this.

“It isn’t a little bitty mistake. It’s a big one. I don’t want to argue about it anymore,” I told him, trying to keep my voice calm and my expression light and not like I’d just kicked him in the balls twenty-one times in my head. “Let’s roll it out of here and into the room so you can get started on it, and I can keep going. I need to finish that hood sooner than later, and I still have to tape the lines.”

He didn’t move, and he didn’t respond. All he did was keep giving me that ugly look I had seen too many times by people a lot better at doing it.

Oh freaking well. I pointed toward the wheels. “Let’s do it now.”

His jaw clenched, but he nodded after a moment, and it was only because of that, that I turned my back to head toward the big double doors that took up nearly an entire wall of the booth. They had to be big enough for entire cars to go inside easily.

And it was the second that I turned my back that I heard a mumbled, “Fuckin’ bitch.”

Maybe if he had been a teenager, I could have let it go.

If he wasn’t always a douchebag to me, I could have let it go.

If I hadn’t known he was a liar and a cheat, I could have let it go.

But that wasn’t the case.

I turned around slowly, deciding whether or not I was going to tell Mr. Cooper afterward, when the door connecting my room to the rest of the facility opened. Appearing there was the handsome face that had been pretty freaking nice to me less than twenty-four hours ago.

…and one more person who had a small idea of the mess I had come from. But he would never say anything to anyone. He wouldn’t tell the rest of the guys at the shop who my dad was or that he’d been in jail.

But no one knew that had happened because of me.

Rip held the heavy door open with a shoulder, his coveralls buttoned all the way to the top. His face didn’t reflect that he thought any differently of me. “Luna, you mind staying tonight and helping me with that GTO we found at the auction?” he asked in the same way he’d asked two hundred other times in the past.

I should have said no. After dealing with Jason, I just wanted to go home. I wanted to purge myself of how frustrated he’d already made me. Plus, I really did have things I needed to buy for tomorrow.

But… I still nodded.

That’s what twenty-four-hour stores were for.

“I only need you for a couple hours. I wanna get it flipped as soon as possible,” he went on, his gaze slid to Jason and rested there for a moment.

I wondered if he could sense the lazy-pain-in-the-butt vibe coming off him too, but Jason had worked on the floor long enough that I bet he did just enough for it to not be noticeable. Otherwise… well, otherwise, I figured Rip would have fired him.

“Sure,” I replied.

“’Kay,” he answered. His gaze stayed on the other man, but I could tell that notch between his eyebrows had formed. Maybe he really could sense it too. “Everything good?”

No, but I said, “Yeah.”

Rip swung that gaze back to me.

I gave him a smile that, if he knew me even a little well, he would have seen right through.

“Let me know if anything’s up,” Rip said in a voice that was too calm.

Let him know if anything was up? Could he tell I was seconds away from putting this person on my permanent shit list? I had just literally been thinking about ratting Jason out to Mr. Cooper, but even for me, telling on him to Rip seemed a little harsh.

I wasn’t in that bad of a mood.

I waited until Rip was out of the room before turning my attention back to the imbecile I was going to be stuck with for the near future.

I loved my job. I loved the people here. I was super lucky.

But I still couldn’t stand this human hemorrhoid. “Well, let’s get the wheels out there so you can get started.”

* * *

“Rip?” I called out later that day as I looked at a small part of a panel of the GTO. There was lead on it, but I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to burn it out—which I didn’t want to do—or if he’d do it.

I got no response.

“Rip?”

Nothing.

Where was he?

I’d swear I had just seen him not even ten minutes ago; his cell phone had beeped, but I hadn’t seen him walk off. I didn’t need to look at the digital clock on the wall to know it was almost eight o’clock. I wanted to get home. Everything hurt today. I was tired. Exhausted, honestly.