She told their daughter, “If that’s how he shows he likes you, Cara, then that right there is a little turd boy who thinks the world owes him a girl who likes him back.” Cara wanted to move seats, and Betsy had shut that down, too. “You don’t move. He moves. I’ll go with you, but you have to talk to your teacher. We will sit down with her, and you will tell her what is happening. That boy has to learn that if he lays hands on a girl, there are consequences.”

Then she’d stopped talking, her eyes so angry. Not with him. With the world. She was mad that she’d lied to their daughter. They were both cops. They knew how often boys laid hands on girls, consequence-free. Only a few months later, a man who believed he had the right to beat his wife to death had taken Betsy from them.

He still thought she’d been right to say it. He never wanted his daughter to think love excused poor treatment. Worse, he was letting his lonely, bitter heart turn him into that kind of man. He didn’t want to be the guy who said bitchy things to a woman he was attracted to because he couldn’t have her. Not even a little.

His silly crush wasn’t Bree’s fault, or her problem. It was not her fault he was lurking around in the orchid house to escape party small talk. Not her fault she’d accidentally rammed into him.

“I really am sorry,” he said quietly.

“Fine.” She kept walking, fast, zooming across the green, weaving through the crowd.

He stuck with her. “No, really. I’ve had a couple, not that that’s a good excuse.” He’d never thought about how the ways he tried to keep his distance might read to her. “I’ve been shitty to you for a while, huh? Believe me, it’s not about you. I have some stuff to work out.” That was true enough.

Her anger seemed to be receding. She paused and put a hand on his arm to pause him and looked up into his face, serious.

“Forget about it. Okay? It’s fine. We’re fine.” She turned and hurried off again, clearly finished with the conversation.

Except . . .

She was drowning. He hadn’t seen it when she was cursing at him, angry. But in that single, soft forgiving glance, he knew. Even buzzed, he could feel his old invisible cop antennae quivering.

He’d seen drowning eyes like Bree’s before. A dozen-plus years back, when he was still in uniform and he and his partner took a routine noise-disturbance call. Someone had heard a scream inside a ground-floor apartment in a nice working-class neighborhood. He knocked, and a girl came to the door.