I shouldn’t take it personally.

I could see his hands flex on the steering wheel, but it took a minute for the next round of words to come out of his mouth. “Say, think of something else you want.”

My body froze, instantly choosing that to focus on instead of… before. Because, we were back to this? Again? “Rip,” I almost groaned. “No, we’re done. We’re even. We’re fine, whatever you want to call it.” I almost started to say we were good, but that felt like a little bit of an exaggeration. In a few days, we’d be good. Right now, we were just fine.

He didn’t look at me though. “We’re not.”

“But we are.”

“Nah, Luna, we’re not. Choose something else,” he insisted, still focused ahead.

Was he being serious? He’d spent fifteen hours in my company, including the time he slept in a room down the hall from mine. If that didn’t count as a massive favor, a favor that should make us totally even for all intents and purposes, I wasn’t sure what else would.

Unless….

Did he really feel that bad about getting mad at me?

“Rip, it counted. Just because—” My sister kicked me out, I thought but didn’t say. “—we didn’t end up having to stay or do anything, doesn’t mean it doesn’t count. You went with me. That’s more than enough.” I just wanted to… move on.

He had other ideas though.

“Too fucking bad.” Those blue-green eyes slid back to me for a split second, and I could see the tightness at his jaw. “Figure it out and let me know what you want.”

“Nothing. I promise. There’s not a single other thing you need to do.” Because there wasn’t. There really wasn’t.

Those long fingers tapped along the steering wheel, and his jaw did that tightening thing again. “Yeah, there is. The other one doesn’t count. All we did was take a fucking ride and eat a late dinner. Figure it out, Luna. I don’t wanna be sixty when you decide.”

I pressed my lips together.

Don’t do it, Luna. Everything is not fine and dandy. Don’t do it. Don’t—

Let it go. Let it—

I didn’t.

“So I have… two years… before then?” I whispered, grimacing at the joke that I shouldn’t have made so that we could focus on the serious topic of our conversation. So I could hold on to the distance I was supposed to put between us because he was my boss.

What I got was silence.

Freaking silence.

The sigh that came out of him reminded me of what I figured a hot air balloon would sound like if it deflated. “I should’ve fired you the other day.”

I sucked in a breath, and my entire upper body turned to him.

He was smirking.

He thought he was being funny.

He was… joking.

These mocking, laughing eyes I had never seen before slid over to me, and the second they spotted my expression, they changed. My name came out a grumble. “I was playing.”

Sure, he’d been.

His mouth went so tight, it was edged in white. “I was messing with you,” he insisted, seriously.

He was messing with me.

Those long fingers flexed again. “You that mad at me?” he asked.

“I’m not mad at you.”

“Upset with me?”

I didn’t look at him as I said, “No.” I wasn’t. I wasn’t. “I just…” What could I say? “You don’t ever joke around with me. I’m just surprised.” I started to crack my knuckles but stopped. “Okay, maybe I am a little upset with you, but I’m almost over it.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him glance at me again, and I could barely hear his voice when he spoke again. “I joke around outside of work,” he said softly.

I wasn’t going to overthink it.

Did that come out defensively, or was it my imagination? “That’s good.” I was such a sucker. I really was. He was trying, and I didn’t have it in me to brush him off. “You can joke around with me whenever you want,” I replied just as softly as he had. “I wouldn’t tell anybody. I know it doesn’t mean anything, and I’m really good at keeping secrets. It can be another one of ours.”

I doubted I would ever forget the way he turned his head to look at me, slowly, so slowly, those eyes like hot freaking coals, raking me over. Seeing me. His eyebrows were knit, like he was deep in thought, and he just—

“RIP!” I shouted the second I spotted the car pulling out in front of us all of a sudden.

The brakes he slammed were instant. So instant, so unexpected, so forceful, I barely had time to suck in a breath and throw my arms up over my face. I closed my eyes just as the seat belt jerked across my chest, and I felt something slap me right between my breasts as someone’s brakes screamed in the background. But I knew I hadn’t made a peep.

I couldn’t have.

My entire brain just… shut down.

My upper body went forward…

And the truck made contact.

I wouldn’t be able to describe the sound of metal meeting metal. Of the truck careening into the car that had pulled out of what I would figure out later was a gas station. Even if someone had played me samples of crashes, I wouldn’t have been able to pick out what I had heard. It had just been noise.

But I felt my body jerk. Felt the seat belt dig into my shoulder. Felt what I didn’t know until seconds later was a big palm right in the middle of my collarbones.

Later, I would feel the painful fucking ache across my neck and shoulders.

And just like that, it was over.

The truck had stopped moving, the brakes had stopped squealing, and nothing but panting filled my ears.

My panting.

It was mine.

“Rip?” I sucked in a breath as I opened my eyes and found a totally intact windshield in front of me.

The weight across my collarbones moved, making me look down to see it had been a hand—his hand—there. Holding me back. There. Just there.

Dragging my eyes up his wrist, to his elbow, to his shoulder and then his face, I noticed his cheeks were flushed. That not-thin but not-full mouth was parted. But it was the thin red slice across his upper eyebrow that held my gaze.

“Are you okay?” I panted, not sure if I’d even be able to hear him above the roaring of blood and adrenaline and who the hell knew what flooding my ear canals as my brain registered that the danger was over and I was pretty sure we were okay.

Rip blinked. Those curly black eyelashes just dropped, once and then twice to cover his eyes briefly. His nostrils flared.

“You okay?” I asked again, the hand closest to him—which I’d tucked into my body by reflex—reached out. I set my palms and fingers on his forearm, only briefly feeling the goose bumps under them. “You all right?”

He let out a sharp exhale and then nodded.

I squeezed his arm again, just barely noticing that it was shaking. “They just pulled out of nowhere.” I sucked in a breath, trying to slow down my heartbeat. “I didn’t see them until it was almost too late,” I admitted, hearing that shaking in my voice as my brain refused to slow down and instead said you were in a car wreck in case you didn’t know.

We had been in a car wreck.

Shit.

I sucked in a breath through my mouth and let my head fall back against the headrest, moving my eyes forward again to see that the truck’s front end was smashed up against the driver and rear side doors of a late model BMW. I’d detailed them enough over the years to recognize the body frame.

“Holy shit,” I hissed, everything about me starting to tremble. We had been in a freaking car wreck. My heart was going to beat right out of my damn chest, it felt like. “Holy fuck.”

I swallowed. Tried to take a deep breath. Then I swallowed again.

I was fine.

Rip was fine.

That was all that mattered.

Glancing down at the seat belt across my chest and waist… it hadn’t clicked until right then that Rip had done some restomodding, which meant he’d modified his truck. Which meant he’d added safer seat belts since his truck had been made before the age of airbags. And based on the screeching, he’d updated the brake system too. If he hadn’t….