The following morning, after he’d spent another night in my bed with me, neither one of us brought up any piece of our admissions… or commented about sharing the mattress again, except this time I had used my pillow instead of his shoulder like I had that first night.

Unfortunately, in the days since the break-in, Jason forgot he was on strike two, or he’d decided he didn’t give a crap about his job and had taken being an obnoxious jerk to a totally different level. He’d been even more moody and snarky than before, and I could barely handle him when he simmered with it. He’d started disappearing for long periods of time during the day, and when I asked him about it, he’d claimed having diarrhea as to why he would disappear for twenty minutes at a time every hour.

I had timed it: twenty freaking minutes. That’s how on edge he had me that I would time his poops to have as evidence if it ever came down to it. A part of me couldn’t help but genuinely hope that, sometime soon, karma would come back and bite him in the ass in the form of him actually getting really terrible diarrhea for being a big, fat liar.

Jerk.

So on that Friday, the last day before he was supposed to go on vacation for a week, a day I’d been counting down from what felt like the day I’d been born, I wasn’t surprised when he showed up in a rotten mood. I could tell just by looking at his face that he was about to unleash a jackpot of bitch faces, sighs, and under-his-breath comments.

That alone had put me on edge.

I wasn’t completely surprised when we hadn’t even made it to noon before we got into it over him not agitating some paint I’d asked him to prep for me while I’d peeled the tape off a hood that I’d done matching, thick white stripes on—Shelby stripes.

“I was ordering paint for you,” he’d tried to claim when I came out of the booth and found the paint sitting in the same spot it’d been in before.

I knew he was full of it instantly. “So you ordered it for me?”

His blank stare confirmed my answer. “They put me on hold and I hung up.”

Patience. Patience.

I touched the charm bracelet on my left wrist and asked, “Who put you on hold?”

“Somebody.”

“Man or a woman?”

The expression he shot me made me think he thought it was a trick question, but it wasn’t. “Man.”

“What was his name?”

Jason rolled his eyes and shook his head. “How the hell should I remember what his name was?”

“If he put you on hold, I want to know who did it. We do a lot of business with them, they shouldn’t be putting you on hold,” I lied. Of course sometimes even Hector put me on hold when I called in an order, but that was beside the point. My gut said he was lying. “What was his name?”

“I don’t know,” the asshole replied.

“Think about it. Was it Andy? Larry? Hector? Clarence?”

“I don’t know. Clarence, I guess? I didn’t ask him for his last name and where he lives or what his blood type is, if you’re gonna ask that next.”

Nobody named Clarence worked at the paint store. Nobody named Andy or Larry worked there either. And as much as I told myself to be patient with him, that patience was wearing out real quick with that tone. This was the wrong period in my life to come at me with this crap.

As much as I wanted to be a good person, and as much as I tried to have people, if not like me, then at least respect me, I recognized the signs when they pointed at a pointless endeavor.

Jason was just that.

“And you just hung up after being on hold?” I asked him slowly, still trying to cling on to being better to him than he was to me by not being rude in return.

The flick of eyebrows he gave me had to be a yes.

This lying little shit.

I took a breath through my nose and told myself to be patient, to let it go. But it was hard. It was so hard I was honestly tempted to go tell Mr. Cooper about how dishonest he was right in that instant.

But somehow I managed not to. Instead, I figured I would give him another subtle warning, even though I realized it was more than likely going to be in vain. “Jason, I don’t like liars, and neither does Mr. Cooper.”

Something flashed across his face—annoyance.

He didn’t like getting called out, but I didn’t like being lied to and played even more.

“Please don’t lie to me ever again and definitely don’t lie to him either,” I finished, giving him a blank expression that would hopefully hide how frustrated he made me. “I don’t need to tell you how Rip feels about liars either.”

That had him flushing. “I’m not lying!”

I didn’t hold back my own eye roll then. “Look, I’m not arguing with you. All I’m telling you is that you shouldn’t lie to anyone here. None of us appreciate it, especially not me.”

“I’m not lying!”

I almost told him to lower his voice but managed not to. “You’re lying to me right now, and you were lying to me about making a call.” He opened his mouth, but I kept right on going. “Don’t bother, I know you were. There are only two employees who answer the phone at the store, and none of them are named any of the names I told you.”

“You tricked me?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, and I didn’t like it, but you made me. I just wanted the truth. I asked you to do something and you didn’t. That’s not okay, and that’s the point. I’m not trying to get you in trouble or get you fired. I don’t want you to lose your job, so I’m trying to help you right now by telling you what not to do in the future. Regardless of whether you called or not, you should have done what I asked you to do. I’m not your boss, but I am trying to teach you because they asked me to.”

“But I’m not fucking lying!” he shouted.

Patience and kindness, Luna. Patience and kindness.

I swallowed and reminded myself again. Don’t let him get to me. “All right. If you aren’t lying, I’m so sorry for accusing you. So, do you want me to hit the redial button on the phone or do you want to help me carry the hood out of the booth?”

It was his turn to press his lips together. Lying sack of runny crap. What the hell was there to think about? He knew he was lying. I knew he was lying. He was just not going to admit it. Not ever.

When a few seconds passed and he didn’t say another word, I said, “Help me carry the hood out, and then you can put the paint to agitate while I go to the bathroom.”

In my life, I’d had plenty of people give me looks that might have killed me if they had that kind of power behind them, but the one Jason gave me right then… it was honestly one of the worst. And all it did was piss me off. I wasn’t trying to have a contest with him. I really wasn’t. If I wanted to get him in trouble, I had more than enough beef with him—and could scrounge up proof—to do just that.

But I didn’t.

I just wanted him to do a decent job and treat me with a little bit of respect.

And I wanted him to not act like a prick.

Apparently, that was asking for too much.

If I had been raised by different people, I might have been devastated at the facial expression he gave me, but I’d survived meaner looks from people who actually mattered in my life, so this twerp wasn’t going to even get a frown in return.

Not even a blink.

He didn’t know who he was messing with.

“Come on,” I said, sounding almost as stony and tough as Rip. I didn’t give him an option to tell me that he wouldn’t follow.

I had learned over the years that if you wanted something, you didn’t make it a question. If you made it into a question, sometimes the other person would take it that they had an opportunity to voice an opinion to. You were basically giving them an opening to say no.

The fact was, the last thing I wanted was for this idiot to back talk me more than he already had.

It only took about ten seconds before Jason’s nostrils flared and he jerked his chin down in agreement… angrily.

What a sweet, lovely man-child, said no one ever.

Trying to keep my body loose and my mouth closed, I led the way to the booth. I’d already opened the double doors when I’d gone in to take the tape off, so I walked right in and stopped by the hood. Walking slower than a freaking zombie with one leg and intestines hanging out of his belly, Jason went around to the other side and stopped.