“God, I do not need this today.” I groaned, staring at the stream of smoke trickling from beneath my hood. Without a word, Manson popped the hood and lifted it, taking a look around before he suddenly dropped to his knees and looked underneath the car.

When he got to his feet, he was shaking his head as if the underside of the car had personally insulted him. He held up a ragged chunk of something covered in oil, looking at me as if I should have known what it was.

I didn’t.

“Is that…bad?” I said.

His mouth twitched. “This is part of your engine block, Jess. Trust me, it’s bad.”

18

18

Jason

I’d decided to work on the couch for the day, my pajama-clad legs propped up on the coffee table as I stared at endless lines of code that blurred in front of my tired eyeballs. Haribo was squished against my side, snorting in his sleep, but he jerked awake when my phone rang.

It was Manson.

“What’s up?” I put the call on speakerphone and set it on the armrest beside me. Usually I took the weekends off, but after last night, I had way too much restless energy and needed to put it into something substantial. Doing any work on the car was useless until we heard back from insurance, so getting this client’s website work finished up was my goal for the day.

“Jess’s car broke down,” he said. His voice was low, and I could hear the tension in it. “Her fucking engine blew the minute she turned the damn thing on.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I do love to see karma at work. You leave her there to figure it out?”

A long silence followed my question.

“Shit, Manson.” I leaned back on the couch, now fully invested as I picked up the phone. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Waiting with her for Ted to get here,” he said. Ted was also known as Mr. Teddy Tow, owner and operator of Wickeston’s resident towing business. Most of our clients arrived on the back of his truck. “We’ll haul her beamer back to the shop and…”

“And what?”

I turned, looking toward the hall. Lucas was standing there, wiping his greasy hands on a towel. He was frowning so deep it looked permanently etched into his face.

“What the hell are you towing her back here for?” he said, talking loudly so Manson could hear him.

“Don’t give me shit for this,” Manson said. “You know you’d do the exact same thing if you were in my position.”

“I fucking would not,” Lucas said. “I’d laugh at some well-deserved justice and flip her off as I drove away. So why the hell aren’t you doing that?”