His actions were punishing, but hard as he tried to hide it, the pain creasing his forehead was unmistakable. Bludgeoned by malice and weighted with guilt, she sagged. “Of course. The key is upstairs.”

“I’ll be in the car.”

Half blind, she gathered the materials for the Midsummer Ball and climbed the stairs to her room. The little, warped box sat on her dresser top where she placed it just nights—and a lifetime—before. The cardboard was brittle and the color of dried blood. She lifted it as if it might disintegrate in her fingers and, balancing it atop the files, went outside.

With a low hum, the tinted glass slid into the door. An air-conditioned breeze wafted through the open window.

She handed over first the file folders and binders and then, finally, the box. “I’m so sorry.”

Stone-faced, he chucked everything into the passenger seat, shoved on his sunglasses, and started the engine.

“Richard, we should talk.”

With one press of a button, the window closed.

She knocked on the glass. “Richard.”

The engine revved, and he drove away without a backward glance.

Breaking up with Richard after he gave her a whole house was perhaps the meanest thing she’d ever done. Yet, somehow, returning the key felt even worse. With a taste of curdled milk on her tongue, she retreated to the garage in a daze.

Jonas dropped a hammer into his toolbox and slung it onto the workbench. He unplugged the fan and whipped the cord around its base. The sun vanished behind thickening clouds, and the garage grew dim.

She sank onto the cooler and tugged her ponytail. “I’ve never seen Richard so angry.”

A handful of nails rattled into a metal coffee can. He snapped on the lid and jammed it in the toolbox.

“Are you mad at me, too?”

Wood scraps tumbled into the garbage, spewing a dusty cloud. He fanned it away and wheeled to the bench.

She waited, the ball of her right foot driving into the floor, her right knee bouncing. “Say something, please.”

He hung the dustpan and brush on the pegboard and switched off the work light. “Perhaps he is entitled to be angry.”

Her stomach churned. “Why?”

He fixed her in his gaze. “Because you never spoke to him.”

First Richard accused her of impropriety and now Jonas? Disbelief flared in her chest, singeing her lungs. “What was I supposed to say? That I had a crush on you? That we sat on my front porch during a thunderstorm? I had nothing to tell.”

He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. “Nothing to tell.”

“Not until yesterday.” She searched his face. His expression was a mask of inscrutable, infuriating composure.