“Do I?” His anger grew as a sense of betrayal fueled it. “We’re supposed to be friends. There is nothing I care about in this life more than my daughter. You have Coop. I thought you’d get it. But you didn’t. How can I ever trust you again?”

Tears filled Ellen’s eyes. “Don’t say that. Please. I wanted to tell you.”

“Did you? Because it’s hard to tell that from your actions.”

She reached for him. He sidestepped her touch and watched her arm fall to her side.

“I want to explain.”

“Now you want to talk.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you did this, Ellen. It’s unforgivable.”

With that, he walked onto the bus, closed the door in her face and drove away. The last thing he saw was Ellen standing alone in the parking lot, tears streaming down her face, her and Coop’s luggage piled at her feet.

Ellen stood in the hot parking lot, not sure how her life had gone from amazing to sucky in a single conversation, but it had. Desperate sobs clawed at her, making it hard to breathe. She’d screwed up—she got that—but the punishment didn’t seem to fit the crime.

About five minutes after the bus had pulled out, literally leaving her in the dust, Unity drove up in Ellen’s Subaru. Her friend got out, took one look at her and held open her arms. Ellen ran to her.

“Everything went wrong,” she said, crying harder, knowing she was a mess and not sure how to make it better.

“We can fix it,” Unity told her, hanging on tight.

“You don’t know that.”

“I bought wine.”

“Then I guess we’ll be okay.”

Ellen stood back and wiped her nose. They collected all the luggage and threw it in the back of her car, then Unity drove them to Ellen’s place. Within a few minutes, the suitcases were unloaded. Ellen tossed Coop’s into his room and set hers by her closet. By the time she got to the kitchen, she saw Unity had already piled the mail she’d collected on the counter and had set out food for dinner. There were four different deli sandwiches, a couple of salads, a pitcher of ice water and an open bottle of red wine. The table was set and there was a box of tissues in the center.

Ellen looked from the table to her friend and fought against yet more tears.

“I screwed up so bad,” she admitted.

“I doubt that.”

“Keith hates me.”

Unity smiled. “I doubt that even more. You’ve been having the sex.”

Ellen thought about how wonderful things had been, how she’d loved being with Keith, how he made everything fun and sexy and right and now he was mad at her.

Tears returned, as did Unity’s warm hug.

“Come sit down and tell me everything. There’s a second bottle of wine right here and I don’t have anywhere to be. Not until I go hunt down your kid.”