I managed to clock in before the buzzer rang, signaling the start of the shift. I hadn’t had time to look for Masyn. My head was far too fucked up to try to interact with her, anyhow. She may want to forget everything that happened last night, but I’d done nothing other than agonize over every word she’d said, trying to make sense of it. None of it aligned with what Beau told me at the diner, and I had a hard time believing Masyn would twist things around to create reasons to talk to him when he was at school. That was the kind of shit every other girl in town would do, not Masyn Porter.

I had to remind myself over and over, I specifically asked if she was talking about Beau, and even through her rambling, she’d answered yes without hesitation. As much as my mind wanted to convince my heart that I’d misunderstood, there was no misconstruing her message—not even as tired as I’d been. My head pounded from all the noise in the shop, coupled with a lack of sleep, making it harder to work through everything blazing through my mind at the speed of light.

Twice I’d dropped parts, and when Farley called my name, I turned quickly. Not paying attention, or sleep deprived, or just in a shit mood, I nearly cut off my thumb to answer him.

“Fuck, Carter. Do you have any idea how many hours we had that were injury free?” Farley dropped his clipboard and came to my machine when the blood pooled in my hand.

Today was not the day to lash out at me. “Maybe if you weren’t screaming at people from across the shop, they wouldn’t fear for their life and respond in an unsafe manner.” Like I gave a shit for his safety record right now.

“There’s blood everywhere. Is your thumb even still attached to your hand?” His sympathetic irritation did nothing to calm me down.

“I’m fairly certain it’s not lying on the cement covered in blood, asshat.” Calling my boss names probably wasn’t the best idea.

He turned off the machine and picked up the metal that had nearly severed a digit from my body, and then he motioned toward the office. “Come on. Let’s go see how bad it is.”

I didn’t believe cleaning a wound in filth was the best idea Farley had ever had, but far be it from me to object. The office had a sink, yes, yet there were greasy handprints everywhere and crap thrown all over the place. It was less than sterile. “If I get gangrene, I’m suing your ass, Farley.”

“Just don’t touch anything.” He got the insinuation without me saying the place was a fucking pigsty. “The water out of the pipes is clean.”

Right, and they were probably made of lead as old as this place was. My hand throbbed with a pulse I could feel in my head—or maybe it was the throb of my headache in my hand. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. It hurt like a son of a bitch and only added to my already piss-poor mood.

“What’s up your ass today, Carter?” He turned the water on and held my hand under it.

My sharp intake of air whistled between my teeth. “You mean besides becoming a cripple on the job?” I stared at the red flowing down the drain and wondered how my broken heart could pump that much blood in its current condition.

“Yeah, besides that. You and Masyn break up?” He chuckled like something was funny.

If it hadn’t been my right hand under the faucet, I would have decked the smug grin off his chubby face. I groaned when he moved my fingers, yet somehow, he mistook it as a response to his question about Masyn.

“Seriously, didn’t mean anything by that. I’ve just watched you two dance around each other for years and wonder if you’re ever going to stop fucking around and tell the girl.”

Farley and I weren’t close. We went to school together. We’d known each other all our lives, but we never shared secrets. Bonfires, field parties, and cutting class at the lake didn’t make a friendship—it just made him another guy I’d known for decades and happened to work for.

“It’s not like that.”

“Yeah, you’ve been saying that for years. I just—”

“I appreciate your concern about my love life, but I have bigger issues to deal with right now.”

He stared at me like I was about to share the secrets of life with him. I raised my brow and tilted my head in the direction of my still gushing thumb. I hadn’t reached the point that I was light-headed, but if the blood didn’t stop exiting my body faster than my heart could pump it, he wouldn’t just have a mess on his hands, he’d have me on his floor. I seriously doubted that even Farley—who was a stout dude—could deadlift two hundred pounds of my weight.

“Shit.” The bone was clear as day with the water washing through the wound. “That’s going to need stitches.”

“You don’t think butterfly tape will get it?”

He grimaced before realizing I was being a smart-ass.

“Do you want me to drive, or do you want someone to take me?”

He raked his hand through what was left of his hair—a buzz cut didn’t leave much to mess with. “Let me go pull Masyn. She knows all your personal shit and can take care of the paperwork while the doctor deals with...this.”

I didn’t need Masyn pawing over me and making a big deal out of a cut. I wanted to be left alone. “I can drive myself.”

“Like hell. Something happens, I not only have workers’ comp to deal with, then I have an accident, too. No thanks.” He pulled a roll of sterile gauze from a pack in the first aid kit and began to wrap it around my thumb and hand. The blood came through almost as quickly as he could add layers. “Hold it above your heart to keep that shit from pumping out. I’ll go get Porter.”

There was no use in arguing. Farley would do whatever the hell he wanted to because his pop owned the place. And I’d do what he told me to because his pop owned the shop, and I needed the job.

He returned with Masyn a few minutes later, and the second she saw the blood, her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes went wide. “Oh my God, Lee. Are you okay?”

“I’m bleeding like a stuck hog, but I’m still breathing, if that’s what you mean.”

Farley didn’t let us linger and chitchat. “Take him down to North Hills Clinic. We have an account there. Make sure you tell them it happened at work so they send the bills to our insurance company.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Masyn still stood there like a deer in the headlights, staring at my hand. I waved it to get her attention. “You ready?”

“What?” Her warm-brown eyes lifted. “Oh, yeah. I need to grab my keys.”

“Don’t bother. Get mine. We can take the truck.”

She drove the damn thing all the time, anyhow. I wasn’t interested in getting stuck on the side of the road in her piece of shit that needed more work than it was worth. Jesus, I was in a foul mood.

She scurried off to the lockers, and I met her at the exit to the parking lot. My thumb hurt like a son of a bitch, and my head wasn’t far behind it. Without any sleep to speak of, I was a bear. And even though I knew it, if Masyn insisted on talking, I wasn’t going to be able to control barking at her.

We hadn’t been in the truck two minutes before she started in on her girly shit. It was the one time I wished she’d just change the damn radio station and turn it up loud enough to drown out my thoughts and pain.

“Lee, I’m really sorry about last night.”

Inhaling deeply, I counted to ten and then exhaled before speaking. “It’s not a big deal, Masyn. You cleared the air. I know where we stand. It’s all good.” I ground my teeth, trying to soften my tone.

“It seems like a big deal. You’re obviously upset. I just want to talk about it.”

“For God’s sake, Masyn, I nearly cut off my fucking thumb. It isn’t about you being in love with your best friend.” And not me.

I stared out the window waiting for her to come back at me, yell, tell me what an ass I was, yet it didn’t come. The minutes ticked by with not even a peep from the driver’s side of the vehicle. When I turned, a scowl lining my brow, Masyn stared out the windshield. Tears streamed down her cheeks and cut through the dust that lined them.

“Fuck. Don’t cry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to lash out at you.”

She sucked her lips between her teeth and nodded. Even when I grabbed her right hand with my left, she didn’t utter another word. Not even to chew me out for calling her a term of endearment she hated.

“Masyn…” I didn’t know what to say to soothe her without further damaging myself. “Please don’t be mad.”

I let her hand go when she pulled away to wipe her face. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you, but I didn’t think it would make you act like this toward me. I thought things might be awkward…I just…I’m sorry, Lee.” She pulled into the parking lot of the medical center and sat with the trucking idling.

“Are you coming in?”

“I wasn’t sure you’d want me to. I don’t mind waiting out here.”

“Sweetheart, I have no idea what’s going on inside that pretty little head of yours, but right now, I’m too tired and in too much pain to put a lot of thought into it. Regardless of what was said last night, you’re still my best friend”—until you’re sleeping with my other best friend—“and I want you with me.”

She frogged me in the arm with her knuckle. “Stop calling me sweetheart.” Her eyes glistened in the sun when she grinned. Masyn could tell me all day long she didn’t like it—and if she and Beau got together, I’d have to stop—but the gleam in her eyes told me that at least this one time, she loved hearing it.

Bleeding out wasn’t considered an emergency at North Hills. The portly woman at the window handed me a stack of forms to complete—hard to do since I was right-handed—and told us to have a seat. She wasn’t the least bit concerned with the blood that saturated the bandages around my hand or the trail running down my arm.

“Lee, you’re dripping.” Masyn pointed to the tiles on the floor by my chair.

“Tell that to Cruella de Vil up there.” I gestured with the pen she’d given me thirty minutes ago. Thank God my name was only three letters long because that was about all I’d managed to write with my left hand in the last half hour.

“Give me that. You’re such a baby.” Masyn snatched the pen and clipboard from my hand. “I’m going to find some paper towels, and then I’ll fill this out for you.”

“See if you can get an ETA from the Grinch while you’re at it.”

“She wasn’t that bad. You’re just in pain and acting like a brat.” Masyn grinned and went to the window again.

When Masyn drew the nurse’s attention to the floor where my blood currently coagulated in a pond big enough for a small child to swim in, and then at the crime scene attached to my wrist, the nurse suddenly seemed to see the urgency of my visit and called me back. Good thing since I was less than five minutes away from drawing a chalk outline on the tile and calling NCIS.

I walked through the door currently held open for me and called over my shoulder, “You comin’?”

“What about this mess?” Masyn’s concern was endearing—her house had looked like it had been burglarized last night and here she was worried about cleaning a clinic’s floor.

Cruella waved her off. “I’ll get housekeeping to clean it up. You can come back with your boyfriend.”

I didn’t correct her, and Masyn suddenly appeared sheepish. She trailed behind me as I followed the lady in front of me. The nurse had no sooner dropped me into an exam room than Robin Hood and his band of merry men came traipsing through the door. After informing us that the band of brothers to his side were students shadowing him, he proceeded to ignore me in favor of teaching them.

Masyn caught my glare and knew to stay out of the line of fire. She took the seat in the farthest corner to start on the paperwork. I probably should have worried that she knew my social security number, but since it kept me from trying to write like a kindergartener, I kept my mouth shut. If she were going to steal my identity, she would have done it years ago.

Robin—also known as Brad, according to his name tag—unwrapped the drenched gauze, tossed them in the trash, and proceeded to stick my hand into what looked like water and stung like alcohol.

“Jesus Christ, Brad.” I tensed from my shoulders down. “How about warn a guy before pouring salt in his wound?”

Brad rolled his eyes as he turned his head and made some cutesy joke about the beefy men being the biggest babies. Maybe Brad would like to experience what it felt like to have metal slice through to the bone. Before I could ask, he excused himself and his posse with a promise to return. Yippee.

Whatever he’d put my thumb in stopped the bleeding—well, mostly. There were globs of coagulated blood at the bottom of the cup that looked like a lava lamp, but the steady stream subsided. I had to admit, I let out a sigh of relief when a doctor came in to stitch my thumb. He was much more considerate of the level of throbbing pain in my hand and started with something to numb it before putting in two layers of stitches, for a total of twenty-seven that ran from the tip to the palm.

“You’ll probably lose that nail.” He pointed to my thumb. “It should grow back. But don’t pull on it. And don’t remove the stitches yourself. Come back in ten days and we’ll take them out for you.”

Unless an infection laid claim to my thumb, I’d pull the things out when they started to unravel. I was no stranger to stitches or removing them. Having me come back was another way to stick it to my employer or the insurance carrier with a hefty fee for an office visit. No thanks. Needle-nose pliers and a pair of scissors worked just fine.

My phone started ringing when we were checking out, and I leaned over so Masyn could grab it out of my pocket.

“It’s Beau,” she stated, holding the phone out to me.

I was busy trying to sign my name between two fingers, using my right hand without my thumb. “So answer it.”

I tuned her out while the lady in the office tried to make a follow-up appointment. When I informed her that I’d call to schedule one, she didn’t believe a word I said. I took the papers for work and then focused on Masyn.

“He wants to talk to you.” She took the papers in exchange for the phone.

I followed her out, yet she walked like her ass was on fire and we had somewhere to be in the next few minutes. “What’s up?”

“Why aren’t you home?”

“Well, Beau. I have a job. Starting Monday, you’ll understand that they don’t work on your timetable, you work on theirs. And when—”

“Yeah, jacksack, I’m aware of that. It’s almost five o’clock. You got off two hours ago. And when did you and Masyn make up?”

“I stopped by her house last night after I dropped you off.”

“Are you almost home? Peyton and I are sitting here waiting for you. Bring Masyn.”

I still had to go back to the shop so Masyn could get her car. And the last thing Masyn would want to see was Beau humping Peyton’s leg or peeing in a circle on the ground around her. “I’m going to pass tonight. You guys have fun.”

“What the hell? I’m only in town until Sunday. You can lay low next week.”

“I was up all night, I’ve had a shit day, and I want to go home.”

“Up all night at Masyn’s? Holy shit. Did you finally tell her?”

I’d reached the passenger side of the truck. As soon as I got inside, Masyn would be able to hear every word said by both of us. “Yeah. Look, it didn’t go as planned.”

“Then why are you two together now?”

“I cut my hand at work. She brought me up to the clinic to get stitches. So, if you don’t mind, you and Peyton have a great time tonight. Call Masyn if you want to include her. Personally, I’m going home, eating dinner, taking a shower, and crashing—although, not necessarily in that order. I’ll catch you two tomorrow.”

After I slid my cell back into my pocket, I opened the door and climbed up.

“Beau and Peyton going out tonight?” She tried to give off the air that she didn’t care.

“Yeah, and they asked if we wanted to go. I’m not up for it, but if you are, by all means, feel free.”

She gave me a half-hearted shrug. “Not really. I’ve felt like crap all day. I could go for some Chinese takeout and bad reality TV.” I didn’t know if she was suggesting a pity party because she felt bad and wanted to let me down easy, or if she was avoiding Peyton and Beau.

“I’m down, but I can’t promise how long I’ll stay awake.”

We went back to the shop, only to find everyone had long since gone home. Masyn got her car and said she would run by her house for work clothes and then she’d be over. I made a pit stop at ChinChin—Chinese fast food—on my way home. The two of us pulled up at the same time like we’d done so many times before. Every breath I took was harder than the last with the weight sitting on my chest. I wondered how many more of these nights I’d get. It was like I was living on borrowed time, and at any minute, Masyn would be whisked away on a white horse by her knight in a shiny Beamer, and I’d be left alone.