“No, you didn’t.” My mom’s stress-induced cleaning fits and relentless insomnia could be particularly hard to cope with, but I didn’t kid myself into thinking that I’d had it worse than Milo. “But it’s not the suckitude Olympics either.”

“True. I…uh…picked up some doughnuts on my way to you.” He jerked his head in the direction of the back of the car, and I found a white bakery box right behind the console. As far as changes of subject went, that wasn’t a bad one.

“Lee’s?” Plenty of people in the area relied on chain places, but Lee’s was a Gracehaven institution, and a love of their doughnuts was one of the few things our dads had in common. When I was a kid, my dad often retrieved a box on Saturday mornings when Milo stayed over, and we’d bickered over our favorite flavors.

“Of course. Picked out a couple. One’s that chocolate-chocolate one you used to love.”

He’d remembered that little tidbit, too, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from beaming. It was a doughnut, not an engagement ring, and going out of his way to get them probably only meant he’d been hungry. “Thanks. You didn’t have to do that, but I’m not going to turn down chocolate-chocolate.”

“Eh. I needed coffee and didn’t want to wake Luther by rattling around the kitchen. He worked overnight.”

Poof. A lot of my good feelings toward Milo evaporated at the mention of his bully of a friend. Maybe Milo’s main sin was not speaking up, but Luther and James had been actively awful to me and my crowd in high school. Teasing. Pranks. Showboating. General assholery. Milo wanted me to believe he’d changed, but I wasn’t sure how to trust that when he was still associating with jerks and bullies.

“Luther has gainful employment? And let me guess, James lives there too?”

“Yeah. They both work for a janitorial company. And before you give me a lecture, I didn’t have a ton of housing options after my…accident. Their other roommate had recently moved out—”

“Probably wised up,” I grumbled. Outside the weather was equally bleak, with none of the sunny energy of my summer trip, and I again questioned the wisdom of trying to help Milo.

“Not gonna dispute that. They’re kind of shit roommates. But it was that or keep hogging my mom’s spare room. After Dad died, she found this little garden apartment over by the university. She can walk to work when the weather’s nice. It’s perfect. But small. She would have let me stay, but…”