“Except for you. You’re priceless,” Cooper murmured, turning to scratch Boogie, who purred briefly and then immediately regretted it, jerking away from him sulkily. She definitely blamed him for her favorite roommate’s unusual absence.

“He’ll be back tomorrow,” Cooper said ostensibly to Boogie, but hell, he needed to hear it himself. Park was coming home tomorrow after a week of successful negotiations that helped secure their future, and Cooper couldn’t even settle on a season to get married in.

He opened his laptop, determined to get something done. Start with who you want to be there, Dean had said. Well, okay, he could do that.

Twenty minutes later, Cooper had listed his family; his old boss, Santiago; his current boss, Cola; his preteen cat sitter, Ava...and had drawn a blank. If that wasn’t the bleakest dance card, he didn’t know what was.

A loner to his core, Cooper had always been bad at maintaining friendships. But starting work for a top-secret agency dedicated to an entire world he couldn’t talk about directly after experiencing a violent attack he wouldn’t talk about had pretty effectively withered any lingering relationships. What he now understood to be PTSD-related drops into depression hadn’t exactly helped either.

Seems like a lot of people spend a lot of time bending over backward to make you happy.

Dean’s words had immediately rubbed Cooper the wrong way, because of how long he’d been on his own, looking after himself. But things were different now. Park was determined to make him happy. Perhaps even too much so. Cooper wanted to get married, so they were getting married. Cooper suggested a compromise on the house décor, so they were compromising on the house decor. It’s not that he was hoping for drama, but in moments like this, he wondered if they were supposed to be this compatible. If perhaps things were a little too easy...

Cooper glanced uneasily at the cupboard across the room where he’d shoved the research he’d stolen from Maudit Falls. Did it count as stealing if the research was performed on him and Park without their knowledge? Or was it just taking back something that they’d never agreed to give?