“No. Dad’s already on his way out.”

She muttered a string of swear words.

“We had a deal, Blair. I work on your car, you stop smoking, vaping, and getting drunk at parties. Remember?”

“I can’t believe you told Dad.”

“You broke our deal.”

“So . . . what? You won’t work on my car anymore?”

“No.” Disappointment tasted bitter in his mouth. Not just because she was such a selfish rebel without a cause. But because fixing her car had been his therapy. It was the first tangible thing he’d been able to do for his family. It was his way of apologizing, of communicating how he felt about them in a way that didn’t require words.

“The deal’s off,” he said.

This isn’t romantic, is it?” Ben asked Akira the next morning as they browsed the spring bazaar in Misty River’s central park. He leaned in close, looking at her seriously beneath his eyebrows.

She had to mentally restrain her arms from flinging themselves around his neck. “Not romantic in the least!”

“I’m trying to give off a Michael B. Jordan vibe.”

It was absolutely working. “Not a single flutter.”

Akira handed the woman at the fruit stand a selection of strawberries, peaches, and plums. Once she’d paid, Ben picked up the fruit bag. He was already carrying her bag containing honey and another sizable purchase of handmade soap.

“It’s also not romantic at all that you’re carrying my bags,” she said as they set into motion.

“Am I carrying bags for you right now? Their weight is so light and my muscles so large that I actually hadn’t noticed.”

She laughed. The weather was perfect. And Ben was beside her.

The more time they spent together, the more they understood each other, and the deeper their friendship grew. Ben was quickly becoming very important to her—which both thrilled and scared her.

What-ifs kept rumbling around in her head.

What if he met someone, and she had to watch him fall in love with another woman? She’d be crushed, and yet she’d have no right to feel that way. From the start, she’d specified that she and Ben were friends, and he’d been respectful of that boundary.

What if, miracle of miracles, it turned out that he wanted to date her? And she said yes (because, hello . . . she daydreamed about kissing him every spare moment), but then it didn’t go well, and she lost him? She’d lost boyfriends before, and it had been devastating. Somehow, though, the thought of losing Ben seemed even more horrific.

What if she and Ben started dating and it did go well? That prospect was, in some ways, the hardest of the three because it stirred in her a hope so sweet it was painful.

Akira, you’re friends! Be grateful for that, and don’t let premature dreams of happily-ever-after steal your common sense.