I’m nervous about seeing her again.

Me.

Conner Gilroy.

The guy who’ll take off his clothes at the slightest provocation and has on more than one occasion, is nervous.

I’d just pulled into a parking space at the store when my phone went off. Sure it was my mom, texting to remind me about her potatoes, I shut and lock my door before digging my phone out of my pocket.

Henley: Your mother invited me

to dinner. Tell me now if you

don’t want me to accept.

She thinks I don’t want to see her. Or maybe she doesn’t want to see me and is looking for an excuse to decline my mom’s invitation. I can’t blame her for that one. I wouldn’t want to see me either after what I did. What I said.

Me: I know. See you

when you get there.

Too bad. I’m not taking the easy way out and neither is she. Tess needs her. My mom has missed her like crazy. My dad has fucking stars in his eyes every time he sees her. She’s paling around with Declan and Cap’n like they’re the Three Musketeers or some shit.

I’m not going to be the reason she disappears again. I’m not going to be why she bounces out of here without a backward glance when she’s finished slumming.

Besides, the hard part is over. Now that she knows what a goddamned mess I am, she won’t want anything to do with me. Staying away from her is going to be easy because she won’t want me anymore.

Problem solved.

Thirty minutes later, I pull into my parent’s driveway. Grabbing the bag of potatoes from the backseat and the silly Halloween-themed bouquet of flowers I bought for my mom on impulse, I walk up the driveway to the backyard. Up the steps to the backdoor, stomping the mud off my boots before pushing it open.

The plan is to deliver my mom’s potatoes and give her the flowers as quickly as possible, so I can go to the garage and bury myself under the hood of her Bronco. If I can get a wrench in my hand, maybe I can calm the fuck down a little before Henley shows up.

“Hey, Ma,” I say, stepping over the threshold, a grin on my face because I smell cookies. Oatmeal butterscotch. My favorite. “They didn’t have the white potatoes you like so I—”

My mom is bent over, retrieving a baking sheet from the oven and Henley is standing about three feet away from me, scooping and dropping cookie dough onto another one to take its place. She’s wearing one of my mother’s aprons over the same jeans and T-shirt she had on at the game. Her hat is gone but her auburn hair is still pulled back into a ponytail, little wisps of hair frizzing at her temples. I can see her face, the warm flush that spreads across her cheeks when she hears my voice, under the riot of freckles that dapple her skin. She’s not looking at me. Instead she’s scooping and dropping balls of oatmeal cookie dough on the tray in front of her like her life depends on it.

What the fuck is wrong with you? Stop staring. She doesn’t want you anymore, you pathetic shitsack, so stop making every goddamned thing so fucking weird.

“I was starting to wonder if you got lost,” my mom says, her teasing punctuated by the squeak of the oven door as she closes it. “What kind did you get me?” She’s closer this time and I rip my gaze from Henley’s profile to look down at her.

“Yukons.” I lift the bag and show her. “I hope they’re an acceptable substitute.”

“Even better.” She smiles back. “Means I don’t have to peel them,” she says, raising herself onto her tiptoes to plant a kiss on my cheek. “Well, don’t just stand there like a dope—give your girl her flowers and then go change my oil.”

I didn’t buy the flowers for Henley. I bought them for my mom. Because buying flowers for Henley would’ve been inappropriate. Even I know that. Because Henley is not my girl. She isn’t my anything. After everything that happened, I’m lucky she hasn’t taken out a restraining order on me.

But I don’t say any of that. I just cross the space between Henley and me and hold them out to her.

She goes still, her hand hovering above the bowl of dough for a moment, her throat bobbing nervously for a moment before she finally drops the spoon and wipes her fingers clean on the front of her apron to turn toward me.

And finally looks at me.

“Thank you, Conner.” She reaches out and takes the cellophane-wrapped bundle from me, the crackle of it being transferred from my hand to hers sounds like firecrackers going off between us. She looks down at what I handed her and laughs. Looking up at me again, her laughter subsides. “They’re lovely.”

They’re not lovely. They’re a bunch of spider mums with red and black googly eyes hot-glued onto them so they look like actual spiders and I feel like an asshole for even thinking they were funny in the first place.

Before I can tell her, she doesn’t have to pretend to like them, she lifts herself onto the balls of her feet and kisses me.

Right in front of my mother.