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“You can wait it out here. I don’t want you to leave yet, anyway.”

“But Dakota’s here, and I don’t think we should…”

“So, we’ll watch a movie or something.”

He hesitated. “Forecast calls for scattered showers all night. I might be able to catch a window between storms, but⁠—”

Thunder rumbled in the distance. He jumped.

Yeah, that wasn’t going to work.

“Joey, just stay the night, then.”

He blinked. “What?”

I slid my hands down his arms, gently clasping his hands and squeezing. “Come on. I should have some shorts you can wear to bed.”

I tugged him, and he followed me, though he looked bewildered by the turn of events. I took him into my bedroom and closed the door, then opened the third drawer in my mahogany dresser and handed him a pair of basketball shorts.

“If you want a shower, I’ve got an attached en-suite of my own. It’s small, but it gets the job done.”

“Okay.” He still looked uncertain, but he took the shorts and went into the bathroom. If that shower stall was any bigger, I’d be tempted to join him, but there really wasn’t room.

I dressed down for bed while he showered, then slipped into the bathroom to brush my teeth while he toweled off. “I’ve got a spare toothbrush if you want?”

“Okay.”

I rummaged through my bathroom drawers until I found it, then handed it over and retreated to the bed. Joey emerged a few minutes later, looking adorable in my shorts, which were a touch too big for him, sitting extra low on his hips and billowing around his thighs.

I flipped the blanket and sheet back, and he joined me in the bed. “Thanks for this, Kit. You really didn’t need to let me stay. I should just get over this weird anxiety.”

I turned toward him. I was curious—had been for a while now—and he’d given me the opening.

“Was it hard to start driving again? After…”

“I didn’t think it would be. I was in prison for five years. I thought I was fine, but when I tried to drive again…” He raised his hand, showing the way it trembled. He curled his fingers into a fist. “I did some counseling in prison, but I wasn’t in the right head space for it to help much.” He shrugged. “Then I tried to drive and had a panic attack.” He chuckled, though there wasn’t much humor in the sound. “I went back to therapy for a few months. Long enough to face driving. My parents chauffeured me as much as they could, but they have jobs. Besides, being at home all the time was suffocating me, so…I got through it. Except for um—” He gestured toward the window, which I took to mean the rain.

“Will you tell me about the accident?”

He looked down, fingers twisting in the blanket. “You know what happened.”

“I want to hear it from you,” I said. “I want to know how it happened.”

He was silent for a long moment. I thought he might refuse. He drew a breath. “Okay. But I don’t know if you’ll like what you hear.”

I should have known he wouldn’t refuse me anything. I drew him to rest his head against my chest. “Tell me, Joey.”

“I had been fighting with my dad.” He gave a frustrated noise in his throat. “We’ve never really understood each other, but it was even worse back then. I was…well, I was still in the closet, you know? I hadn’t dealt with my sexuality. I was in love with my best friend, Trevor, a total cliché, because he was straight.”

I tightened my arm around him. “Happens to the best of us.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “I’d pushed those feelings down though, because I knew he would never—” He sucked in a breath. “Then he started dating Rachel. I thought I was okay with it. I mean, it was high school. Big deal, right? He’d figure out she was all wrong for him. Except he didn’t. He started making plans to go to college where she went. He was planning a life with her.”

The hurt in his voice came through, even all these years later.

“Then he found out she was pregnant, and he started talking about marr—” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “Anyway, I was spiraling hard. I got into this awful fight with my dad and he kicked me out. I’d been crashing with friends anyway, so that was no big deal, but him making it official… I was just so angry and hurt. I wanted to escape everything. I wanted to punish him, maybe. So I broke into my parents’ garage when they weren’t home and took the car he never let me borrow—his pride and joy—and I went for a drive.”

He stopped there, seeming frozen.