Finding out about the baby was a huge blow. Because of the shot, we didn’t know what was going on for several weeks. She thought she had the flu, then that she was tired from staying up too late. I bought the test and stood over her while she peed on the stick. The sight of her astonished face as the two lines appeared is one of those moments seared into my memory.

We never bothered telling my parents about the baby, letting the town gossip handle it. I moved in with her and vowed never to let my father cast an eye on my son.

The new bracket wouldn’t align, so I shifted the jack up a notch, trying to find the sweet spot. I could call Mario over, get him to eyeball it while I worked the lever, but only if it took too long. I’d done it by myself before.

Clearly the work wasn’t occupying my mind well enough. I tried to shake off the past, how I worried about what sort of dad I could possibly be, having the worst possible example. When the baby was sick, and then when they told us he wouldn’t make it, I figured the score. The universe knew I wouldn’t do any better. The bad-father gene would end with me. After the funeral, I went to Mexico to make sure of it, even though I knew it meant I had to give up Corabelle.

Bud came out of the office. “How’s it coming?”

I walked around the side to check the screw mounts. They were aligned. “Just putting the last bolts in.”

“Good, ’cause the owner’s here to pick it up already, and I don’t think I can endure that woman one more minute.”

I chuckled. “Bud menaced by a woman. Never thought I’d see it.”

He looked under the hood as I locked in the bolts. “I don’t see anything damaged. She got lucky.”

The sockets were solid, so I backed away from the engine. “She should be good to go.”

“Start her up. Let’s take a listen.”

I hopped in the seat again and fired up the motor. The clunk was gone. Bud dropped the hood and came around. “She’s good. Pull it around.”

By the time I came back into the office, Bud was leading an old lady to the door. “And here’s the man who got her ready for you, Mrs. Peters.”

I handed her the keys. “Ma’am, you must live near some rough roads.”

“Oh, posh,” she said. “I live in La Jolla. I just hate speed bumps.”

Bud coughed to hide his laugh and I kept a poker face. “Well, I guess we’ll be seeing you again in about twenty thousand miles,” I said.

“Works for me!” She winked, the blue eye shadow over her eyes as bright as a peacock’s feather. “Maybe I’ll mess up something else just to come back and get another gander at you!”

Bud passed her a clipboard. “Sign here, Mrs. Peters.”

I turned to head back to the bays, but the woman grabbed me by the arm. “It wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of you if you didn’t see me to my car and make sure it is in good working order, now would it?”

Bud waved me on. “Start it up for her, Gavin.”

Mrs. Peters continued to hang on my elbow as I opened the door and led her out to the Camaro, all red and sparkling in the late afternoon sun. “What a grand day!” she said. “I don’t guess I can sneak you away for a drive!”

I pictured her wrecked and broken motor mount and imagined jumping creek beds with Mrs. Peters behind the wheel, her white hair flying. “I’m afraid I am much needed here.”

“Well, poo.” She waited by the car as I opened the door, then she slid inside. “Let’s see what she’s got.”

I handed her the keys and winced as she cranked the motor, stomping the gas so the engine revved loud enough to make people across the street turn to look. I leaned in the open door. “You might want to take it easy.”

“This car is going be around longer than I am!” she shouted over the roar. “Life is short. Go after what you love and ride it as hard as you can!”

I barely managed to close the door and jump out of the way before she shot backward across the parking lot, then slammed it into drive and careened past me again, heading for the exit.

That woman was going to kill someone. Still, I had to laugh as I headed back inside. Bud was stuffing her papers in a file folder. “She’ll be back. Drivers like her mean good money for us.” He turned around. “Let me guess, she gave you some sort of advice about life being short, and she was about to die?”

“Yeah.” Of course, that got me thinking about Corabelle. Hell, everything did.

“She’s been saying that for a decade. She’s going to outlive us all.” He glanced at the clock. “You can go ahead and head out. I’m sure whatever kept you all morning is still nagging at you now.”

I suppressed a smart-ass reply. “All right, Bud. See you tomorrow.” I wondered where Corabelle might be, at work still, or on campus. Maybe I could get that pink-haired girl to tell me where she lived.

I should leave her alone. I knew it. But something in me just couldn’t let it go. 

I crossed the quad, anxiety rising as the engineering building grew close. Gavin would be in there, just a few seats down. The two feelings for him warred inside me. Anger that he’d called me easy, when I hadn’t been with anyone but him. And an urgency to get him alone, to feel, if only for a little while, the way we had when we were young and innocent of all the ways life could fail us.

The stairwell echoed with my footsteps, and I couldn’t help but run my hand over the part of the rail where Gavin caught me trying to black out. I had to get control of that now. Gavin showing up again was the sign that my little fits of crazy had to end. I needed some other way to cope.

I thought I’d be able to sneak in close to the start of class and slip into my chair without having to talk to him. But Gavin was waiting outside the door, his lab assignment in his hand. He looked more amazing than ever. Every detail about him was seared into me, the blue T-shirt fitting across his chest and arms, the dark stubble on his jaw, the sideburn near his ear.

He held out the paper. “You turned this in for me?”

I nodded, grasping hard on the strap of my backpack.

“Why?”

“I felt bad that I upset you.” I drew in a deep breath. “By talking about Finn.”

It was so hard to say his name. And not easier on Gavin to hear it. I could see it in how his eyebrows drew together.

A couple other students cut between us to enter the door. “Thank you.” He hesitated. “Can I see you later?”

Panic rose from my belly. “No. I can’t. Please, Gavin. It’s too hard.”

He pressed his lips together. “This isn’t over.”

“It is. It has to be.”

He whipped around and went back in the room.

I leaned against the wall, eyes on the ceiling, trying to pull myself together. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t be with him. There was too much past, and I was barely holding it together before he showed up.

Unless maybe Austin really could help. He seemed so much easier to manage than Gavin, and my secrets had no power with him.

I pushed away from the wall and hurried to my seat, trying not to look Gavin’s way. While the professor talked about supernovas, I tapped out an e-mail to Austin on my iPad. “Are you on campus today? I get out of Jacobs Hall at 10. Corabelle.”

I could feel Gavin’s eyes on me as I took notes and tried to focus, already regretting involving an innocent boy to make life easier for me. I stole a guilty glance down the row. Gavin was still watching, intense and brooding. His eyes dropped to the strap of my tank top, and I knew he was remembering the moment at the coffee shop.

Fire licked through me again, and I focused back on the screen. Gavin always had that effect on me.

After that first kissing session in my closet, we were crazy with it. Every chance we got, we pressed against each other feverishly. When a movie or television show showed a couple clutching each other, we’d stop everything to pay attention, only to act the scene out later in my room.