If she wasn’t so dead serious, I might have laughed again. I reached for the belt and snapped it into place. I attempted something that was meant to be a Happy? expression, but given my face probably looked like a team of plastic surgeons had gone to town on me, I don’t know what I managed. It made Josie smile. So fuck the rest. Making her smile, that was my new life calling because really, what else mattered?

“Thank you.” Shifting the truck into drive, she peered over at me. “Buttercup.”

I snorted. “After taking that beating from the Masons, I feel like a damn buttercup.” God damn, where was a morphine drip when I needed one?

“I’m sorry, Garth. I should have seen that coming. I shouldn’t have been so stupid. I know what those boys can be like when they get together. Then mix alcohol . . . and you into the tornado, and that’s like the perfect storm right there.” Josie pulled out onto the highway slowly, carefully. The last time she’d driven slowly was when she was never. She really was worried fate was about to deal us an unfair hand.

“Don’t apologize for them. If you spend your whole life apologizing for other people’s actions, you’re going to wake up and realize you didn’t get to do anything on your own to apologize for. Live your life. Don’t waste it apologizing for others.”

Josie glanced at me from the corners of her eyes, keeping both hands firmly on the ten and two position on the steering wheel. It was kind of cute how careful she was being. Concerned. There was that word again. “You just took a few hits to the head, and you’re capable of that kind of profoundness?”

“Was that profound?” One of the few serious questions I’d asked in twenty-one years.

“Deeply.”

“For me, right? Deeply profound for Garth Black, who is known for being so deep he dries up the instant the temperature rises above eighty.”

Josie rested her hand above my knee. Gently. “Deeply profound for anyone. I know you want to deny it, but I know there’s a whole lot more to you than a big, black hat and an even bigger ego.”

“I don’t know, Joze.” I covered my hand with hers, but when I noticed it was caked with both dried and fresh blood, I pulled it back. I’d made a big enough mess already.

“But I do.”

“Yeah, you sure do,” I whispered, twisting in my seat to stare at her. My eyes were swollen, my body wrecked, my brain weary, but in that moment, I needed to do only one thing. One thing I needed to say. I knew that even if I wanted to keep it back, I couldn’t. Besides, I’d been holding it back for long enough. “Josie?” I cleared my throat and reached for her hand again. Yes, I might cover it in blood, but I’d clean it for her later. I’d fix my mess.

“Yeah?” she asked, her eyes focusing on something in the distance. I was opening my mouth to finish what I’d been meaning to say for years when she groaned. “Ah, crap. The lights are all still on.” She looked at me. “My parents are up.”

The disappointment of biting back what had literally just been on the tip of my tongue was painful, but how could I follow My parents are up with what I needed to say? Yeah, I couldn’t. I had to close my eyes to focus and shift gears. Josie’s parents. Up. Late. Me. Her. Blood. “Do you want me to sneak in or something? I could just wait outside until you all go to bed and then sneak in.”

“What? No. Way.” She snapped her head back and forth, slowing the truck a bit as she headed up the driveway. “I’ve got to get you inside, cleaned up, fixed up, pain reliever’ed up, and to bed. That’s the priority, not evading my parents and their questions.”

I took a breath. I hadn’t been planning on explaining any of the night to the Gibsons. The drive-in earlier or the gas station parking lot later. “What do you want to tell them?”

Josie’s hand reached for mine. “The truth.”

I smiled right before I frowned. “I’m not sure telling your parents that you and I are together right after I walk through the door looking like a herd of cattle ran me over is the best timing.”

“I want to tell them. I’m sure now.” As we approached the Gibsons’, she parked right outside the front door to give the newest member of the gimp club a break.

“You’re sure of me now?”

“I’m sure of us now.”

That right there was all the fix I needed. Josie looking me in the eyes and admitting she trusted me enough to give us a chance. I’d been waiting for that moment for a while. It left me speechless. Josie opened her door and rushed over to help me get out, but I clenched my jaw and slid out on my own. I didn’t want the minute before Josie told her parents that I was her man to involve her having to wait hand and foot on me because I’d taken a serious beating.

Instead of draping my arm around Josie for support, I grabbed her hand. “Let’s not tell them it was the Masons. Let’s just tell them I got jumped and go with that.”

“What? Why in the heck don’t you want to tell them it was the Masons?”

“Because I don’t want anyone getting in trouble. At least not the sheriff kind of trouble.” Me on the other hand? I would be happy to show them plenty of trouble for a long, long time.

Josie gave me a look, knowing there was something else. “And?”

I sighed. Might as well go with the theme of our crazy-ass night. “And even if I did tell them the truth, do you really think they’ll believe me? Do you really think they’ll believe that their precious, perfect Masons would do this? They’re not going to believe the truth, so I might as well give them a watered-down version of it.”

“They better believe it when the same story comes from their daughter’s mouth because so help me—”

I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Gibson peeking through the lace curtains in the living room. “I don’t want them thinking I’ve influenced or corrupted you so much that you’d lie with me. If we go in there with the whole truth, that’s what they’ll think. That I’ve manipulated and ruined their daughter.”

“Garth . . .”

“Please, Josie. Please.” We started up the stairs, one step at a time. She didn’t have a chance to reply because the door flew open when we were climbing the last step.

Mrs. Gibson’s face blanched. “Oh, dear sweet Jesus, what happened?” Tilting her head back, she hollered, “Harold! Harold! Get in here now!”

Super idea. Why don’t we just wake a sleeping bear? Rousing Mr. Gibson in the middle of the night almost worried me more than Clay when he jolted awake at night.

“Mom, it’s okay. Calm down. Don’t wake Dad up if he’s already in bed,” Josie said, helping me through the door.

Mrs. Gibson scooted back, staring at me with wide eyes. I hadn’t seen what I looked like, but I didn’t need to. The way I felt told the story. Mrs. Gibson looked between the two of us. “Josie—”

“What the hell happened?” Mr. Gibson finished his wife’s sentence as he lumbered down the hall. Given Mr. Gibson was a big guy and had one hell of a grumpy expression, we really had woken a sleeping bear. “Well?”

Josie peered at me, then answered, “Garth was attacked.”

They must have been so preoccupied with gaping at the train wreck I was that when Mrs. Gibson finally glanced at her daughter, she gasped. “Josie, your face.” Mrs. Gibson rushed toward her, examining it more closely, before covering her mouth and shaking her head. “My poor baby. He drug you into this, too?”

At first I thought she was talking about Colt—since he and his brood were the ones responsible—but when I saw her eyes look my way with accusation, I knew she was talking about me. As expected.

“No, I drug myself into this when I got in the way of a fist,” Josie replied in a heated voice. “Garth did everything in his power to keep me out of it and safe.”

Mrs. Gibson didn’t need to say it, her eyes bled it—Sure, he did with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “Let’s get some ice on that, baby.”