He lay back down on the creeper, slid under the rattletrap he kept patching together for a customer, and got to work removing the useless muffler.

He’d nearly completed installing the new one when his phone signaled. He banged his knuckles, swore at the welling blood on the scrape, then fought his phone back out of his pocket.

He swore again when he realized it was a text.

It sounds nice, but I can’t get away tonight. We’re jammed right up to Thanksgiving. It’ll be nice to see your face, and your mother, then. PB

“PB? WHAT KIND OF BULLSHIT IS THAT?”

“You brushed him off in a text? That’s cold.” Laurel sat back. “Kudos.”

“I didn’t brush him off. We had a full consult scheduled.” Which, she thought, was finished now and very well. So she could relax and have a glass of wine with her friends.

“From what you told us, he was just trying to deal with a difficult situation.” Sympathy shimmered in Emma’s big brown eyes. “Some people need to go inside awhile when they’re dealing.”

“Yes, they do. So I’m giving him time, and the space he so clearly demanded, to do that.”

“And just because he’s finished doesn’t mean he’s finished. Besides,” Mac pointed out, “you’re pissed.”

“Not really. Or only slightly,” Parker amended.“I’d rather he—or anyone—vent and spew, even if I get hit by some shrapnel, than shut down and close in. But he doesn’t want to accept sincere support, honest understanding. And that pisses me off. Slightly.”

“Okay, here’s what I have to say.” Mac drew a deep breath.“My mother rarely laid a hand on me, so I don’t have that sort of abuse to lay on her. But she used, belittled, and slapped at me emotionally.” Mac gave Emma a grateful smile when her friend rubbed her leg in comfort.“I had the three of you to talk to, but even with you, sometimes I went under—or in. And sometimes, even with you, with Mrs. G, with Carter right there with me, I need to go inside, or I’m just used to going, so I do.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Emma put in.

“I know you do, and because I know it, I add a little guilt to the brood. I’ve got a pretty good sense of what Mal’s dealing with. My father didn’t die, but he left, and since, he’s never been there when I really wanted or needed him.And I was left with someone who, a lot less violently than Asshole Artie, made me feel diminished.”

She picked up water to soothe her throat. “And sometimes, even knowing better, this shit comes down on me, and I look at Em, with her incredible family; at Laurel, who can just say ‘fuck them’ and mean it; at Parker, who’s so damn together, and just feel you don’t know. How the hell can you know? And that adds defensiveness to the guilt and the brood. So sometimes I don’t want to talk about the shit that came down because, well, it’s my shit.”

“Such a way with words.” Laurel toasted her. “We, however, have ways of making you talk.”

“Yeah, and I’m always better after. You all not only know which buttons to push to open me up again, but I end up opening because I know you love me, and you’ll accept all the shit that comes with me because you love me.”

“Not me.” Laurel smiled. “I just feel sorry for you due to my bottomless well of compassion.”

Mac nodded. “Mother Teresa was a stone bitch compared to you.”

“I told him I loved him,” Parker muttered, and Laurel’s head snapped around.

“What? Talk about burying the lead.When?”

“When I was more than slightly pissed. When he told me I didn’t understand and it had nothing to do with me. I told him he was an idiot, and it did have to do with me because I loved him. Then I came back in to work the event, which I should’ve been doing all along.”

“What did he say?” Emma demanded, a hand already pressed to her heart. “What did he do?”

“He didn’t say or do anything. He was too busy staring at me as if I’d kicked him in the balls. Which would’ve been the better option.”

“On Friday? You told him on Friday.” Emma waved her hands in the air. “We’ve been working together all weekend, and you didn’t tell us?”

“She didn’t tell us because it’s her shit.”

Parker shifted her gaze to Mac.“If we have to continue in that theme, yes, I guess that’s true enough. I needed to think about it for a while. And because none of this, just none of it is going the way I always thought it would, always planned it should. I’m supposed to fall in love with a sensible yet brilliant man with a droll sense of humor and a keen appreciation of art. And I know you’re rolling your eyes at me, Laurel, so just knock it off.”

“It was the droll sense of humor.”

“Whatever. This is my long-term plan, carefully constructed over more than a decade.”

“Seriously?”

“Shut up, Mac.” But Parker’s lips curved, just a little. “This sensible yet brilliant man and I would date casually for some months, getting to know each other, to appreciate each other before we go on a short, romantic trip—location optional. It could be a wonderful suite in a hotel in New York, a cottage at the beach, a B and B in the country.We’d have a long candlelight dinner, or maybe a picnic. After, the sex would be lovely.”

“Would it include banging in the utility room?” Laurel wondered.

“You shut up, too, or you don’t get to hear the rest of the plan.”

Looking a bit pained, Laurel mimed zipping her lips.

“So.” Satisfied, Parker slipped off her shoes, tucked her legs up. “We’d be lovers, and we’d travel now and then as our schedules allowed.We’d argue occasionally, of course, but we’d always talk it out—reasonably, rationally.”

Her gaze snapped to Emma. “You’re keeping quiet, but I can hear you’re thinking boring. However, you’ll like this next part. He’d tell me he loved me.Take my hands, look in my eyes, and tell me. And one day, we’d go back to that wonderful suite or that cottage or B and B, and during our candlelight dinner, he’d tell me again that he loved me, that I was everything he’d ever wanted. And he’d ask me to marry him. I’d say yes, and that’s how you build a happy ever after.”