Luna and the Lie Page 4

  I wasn’t sure what exactly had snapped together for me at the last second just as I had started to crouch down to keep moving the gun across the surface of the quarter panel I was in the middle of painting. But something had just clicked as I stood in front of the section of the car between the rear door and the trunk. That click had said Luna, wait a minute.

  Wait a minute.

  “Shit.” I pulled the hood of my coveralls down, raised my goggles to rest at the top of my head, and tugged my respirator to my chin, trying to think as I stared at the panel in front of me.

  But the color on the car didn’t change without the goggles.

  It was still a silvery blue.

  It was still Silver Mink.

  I left the work order for you at the top of your desk, Rip had said during lunch.

  I had picked up the work order on the desk. I knew it. Silver Mink, it had said. I knew it. I wouldn’t have screwed up reading it.

  But… Silver Mink…. Something about the color, about the name, didn’t sit well.

  Silver Mink, Silver Mink, Silver Mink….

  Wasn’t Silver Mink the original color he had requested?

  Had I read the wrong order?

  Heart freaking instantly pounding, I swallowed and tried to think about what I’d done. I had picked up the invoice, read through it three times, and gone to get the paint. I knew that for sure. I knew it.

  But…

  I ran back to my desk and went through the invoices sitting on it. About a minute into looking, I found it—them more like it. I freaking found them.

  It only took a second to look up the work order on my computer to confirm my suspicions.

  I had started painting the car a different freaking color.

  Holy crap.

  Not Brittany Blue.

  Not Brittany Blue like one of the invoices requested. The right invoice.

  Why hadn’t I double-checked? I always did. Always.

  “Shit.” I blinked down at the sheet, the urge to throw up getting strong and stronger. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  I wanted to punch the wall. Punch myself more like it. But the fact was, I remembered that I’d been thinking about the phone call Mr. Cooper had mentioned and my sister bailing on me, and being frustrated with my coworker for screwing me over. I’d gone back downstairs after lunch, still thinking about things that I couldn’t change even if I wanted to, gone to my room, spent another four hours sanding down the car then priming it. I let it bake while I picked up the first file I found for the Thunderbird, read it, and finally pulled the paint from the locker where we kept all the extra unused supplies.

  The rest was history. I grabbed the paint, prepared everything, Miguel helped me move the cars around. Then I got in the booth and started spraying, my head going back to the text and the phone call despite the headphones I had on blasting the Wicked soundtrack into my ears. Then, then, it had clicked.

  Holy freaking shit, I had read the wrong work order.

  Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

  “Fucking shit,” I whispered to myself, panic filling up my stomach, making me nauseous instantly. Instantly.

  For one microsecond, I asked myself how I could fix this without involving anyone. But just as quickly as I wondered that, I reminded myself that there was no way. What was I going to do? Hide the car and do everything all over again? The primer alone needed a day to dry.

  I wasn’t sure I believed in miracles, and I wasn’t about to start now.

  My hands went up to my hair on their own, smoothing over the chin-length hair I had bobby-pinned back behind my ears to keep it out of my face. I tugged on the ends, hard. But the color didn’t change and the words on the work order didn’t magically disappear, and I was still in deep shit.

  There was only one thing I could do.

  Suck it up, sugar tits, my sister would say.

  What if you get fired? My brain tried to ask the rest of me.

  I had messed up once before, but it had been wheels I had screwed up, and only two of them.

  I rarely called out. I was never late. I couldn’t remember ever complaining. Sure, Mr. Cooper was the closest thing I’d ever had to what a real dad was supposed to be like. But this was going to be hundreds of dollars’ worth of work that was going to need to be redone because of me. That money being mostly what they paid me hourly for labor and the paint I’d just wasted. All because I hadn’t taken the time to find both orders and look at the stupid freaking dates.

  I was going to be sick.

  What if I got fired? It could happen. It was a white day for Rip.

  And he’d fired people for less on white days.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  There’s only one thing to do, Luna, the voice of reason in my head told me.

  Letting go of my hair, I took a deep breath that wasn’t deep at all and sounded more like I had asthma. I wasn’t going to be even more of an asshole and pretend like nothing had happened.

  I had messed up.

  I took ownership of my actions.

  I didn’t run away from my problems, even if I sometimes ignored them.

  I was better than that. I was better than that. I wouldn’t be that person.

  I might have prayed a couple of Hail Marys I had learned from the Coopers under my breath as I headed toward the main floor. I considered calling Mr. Cooper to tell him because I didn’t think he was capable of yelling at me.

  I couldn’t though.

  It was a white day, and Rip had already blatantly ignored him. He’d be at home by now, and Mr. Cooper didn’t deserve to get chewed out for something I did, because that would be what inevitably happened if I used him as a buffer between me and the person who had actually given me the orders for the project I had screwed up.

  I tried to tell myself that there was nothing to be worried about. What was Rip going to do? Yell at me? It wouldn’t be the first time someone had done it. I’d mastered getting yelled at as a kid. It wasn’t like he would hit me or call me stupid or hint that my entire existence was a mistake. He would make a face, use that condescending tone he used on everyone regularly, maybe he’d be grumpy for a few days, and then…

  He’d decide to fire me.

  No big deal.

  I could find another job. I had job offers pop up every few months. Sure, none of them were in Houston, and sure I didn’t want to change jobs and start over again around people who didn’t know me and didn’t care about me, but….

  Don’t you dare get upset, Luna, my brain warned me. Don’t you even think about it.

  I took another deep breath, but it went in jagged and crooked. I’d own up to my mistakes, I had sworn to myself a long time ago. I’d take responsibility for my actions.

  Don’t overreact, I told myself as I placed one foot in front of the other, heading to the main floor of the shop and looking around at the eight different cars parked inside at the moment. There were four “lanes.” Each lane had two cars on it. Three lanes were usually reserved for cars that were getting mechanical work done, usually a car involved in a collision. One lane was always set aside for whatever car or cars Ripley happened to be restoring.

  Sure enough, most of the mechanics for CCC had left for the day, but I still spotted two heads on the floor that weren’t Rip’s brown and silver mix.

  At the lane furthest from where I stood, I could see him taking the seats out of a GTO that I hadn’t seen before lunch.

  Why? Why had I screwed up today? Crap, crap, crap.

  I had done it. There was no hiding it. I couldn’t go back in time and change my mistake, as much as I would have wanted to.

  Own it. I had to own it. Lying was bad—most of the time. Pretending to be stupid was worse.

  I repeated all those things to myself as I crossed between the cars, purposely ignoring the glances I got from the two guys still working as I made my way toward Rip. It wasn’t unusual for me to come out on the floor, but it wasn’t that normal either.

  Maybe I coul
d get him to talk to me in his office or in my room.

  How could I have screwed up like this? Realistically, I knew that people made mistakes. The man who had taught me everything he knew had messed up all the time.

  Okay, it had never happened while Rip had been at CCC, and it had never been a mistake of this size. When the old lead painter had messed up, it was picking out the wrong color tone or not noticing that something had needed an extra coat of clear. It wasn’t a chunk of a car being the wrong color.

  You will not cry, Luna. You will not cry. He’s not going to hit you, and if he yells at you, you can take it better than anyone else here. If you get fired, it’s your own fault. You can’t blame anyone else but yourself. You’ll be fine. Thea, Kyra, and Lily are almost all self-supportive. One day you’ll be able to laugh about the day you screwed up big-time. It might just take a decade to get there. You’re a decent person and you try to do what’s right, even if it sucks.

  It was with that thought that I marched my butt toward the man who had ducked back into the car. I couldn’t see his head or his body as I got closer. I could handle it, I promised myself.

  Then I made it.

  Rip was taking the bolts off the driver side seat like I had expected, so I walked around to that side and stood there, watching him on his knees, half of his upper body inside the car, the other half kneeling on a dirty towel on the concrete floor.

  He didn’t see or hear me.

  Knowing him, he might just be pretending he didn’t.

  So I said, loud, “Hey, Rip.” He was going to know something was wrong, I just knew it.

  He didn’t stop working, and if he rolled his eyes, I had no idea, but I caught his reply of “What?”

  What? Not what do you want or what do you need. It was a white day. What did I expect?

  “Can I talk to you?”

  “Talk,” was his simple reply.

  I could do it.

  “Can we talk in the office or in my room?” I practically croaked, wincing and hoping he’d miss it.

  Only then did I see his arm stop moving, but I heard his voice clearly as he rasped, “Busy, Luna. What’s up?”

  What’s up? Okay. That was a decent sign.

  But I still couldn’t manage to say anything more than, “Did I tell you that your hair looks nice today?” The way he had it parted did look extra nice today. I wasn’t lying.

  Just stalling.

  “Talk, Luna,” he clearly grumbled, aware I was full of it. “I don’t got all day. I need to get this car stripped. What’s up?” my boss, the same boss I had been planning on baking a cake for this weekend, the same boss who had already lost this patience with me when I didn’t give him an answer at seven in the morning when he asked what favor I wanted from him, and then again when he’d caught me with my eyes closed during a meeting, asked, not giving me a second to think of what I could say to get out of this.

  Why? Why couldn’t have I screwed up with something Mr. Cooper had ordered me to do? He’d be disappointed in me, but at least he wouldn’t give me the death glare. He wouldn’t get rid of me.

  On the other side of the Eclipse parked next to me, I spotted my two coworkers looking over at me, being nosey as shit. Owen and Miguel weren’t even trying to hide that they were eavesdropping. I wasn’t even sure what Miguel was doing here so late, much less why he was helping Owen, but oh well.

  I forced myself not to curse Jason’s name. It was kind of his fault that this was even happening. If he had done his job, I would have already started painting the car by the time Rip had come to find me in the break room.

  But at the end of the day, I could still only blame myself for not double-checking the work order.

  I waved at my coworkers. “Owen, tell your daughter I said happy birthday!” I called out.

  They both grinned, but it was Owen who gave me a thumbs-up. But they didn’t look away. Whoever had spread the rumor that women were worst gossips than men had never worked with a group of men on a regular basis before.

  “Luna, what the fuck is up?” Rip asked, his tone finally genuinely taking on an impatient streak to it.

  Now or never.

  “Umm,” I trailed off some more, forcing myself to look away from Miguel and Owen and look down at the hint of an elbow that had started moving again inside the GTO.

  “You gonna say something or not? This needs to get done,” he kept going, sounding even more aggravated and impatient.

  I could do it. I had to.

  “Luna,” Rip drew out my name, any and all ease finally gone from his voice.

  “Rip,” I started, closing both my eyes for a moment. “I screwed up.”

  There was a pause, and then he asked, slowly, so, so slowly I wasn’t a fool enough to assume he hadn’t heard me. “What’s that?”

  He was going to make me do this. Of course he was. “I screwed up,” I repeated. I didn’t deserve to wince. This really was my fault. And Jason’s. “I picked up the wrong work order for the Thunderbird. Instead of the Brittany Blue, I did the Silver Mink that had been on the original form, and I already started before it hit me.” I did it. I had freaking done it. I knew it was pointless and didn’t mean a thing, but I still threw in, “I’m really, really sorry.”

  At some point, his elbow stopped moving. Hell, I was pretty sure he even stopped breathing because the two inches of his upper half that weren’t hidden inside the car weren’t moving either. Oh, hell.

  “It’s my fault. I just… I spaced. I should have double-checked the system and I didn’t. I’m so sorry.”

  Still, he said nothing.

  Crap.

  “I can stay late tonight to start fixing it. Monday I can do the primer, and if I stay late, I can get all caught up again….”

  He’d stopped listening. I could tell. So I stopped talking.

  His body had started to move as I had blabbed on. First I noticed more of his abs, then his upper chest, followed by his neck, and finally his head came out from inside the car he was gutting. Those intense eyes zeroed in on me from a carefully blank face I had seen before, usually from a distance. Usually as an observer and not the focus of it.

  And I knew. I freaking knew…

  He was going to ream me.

  Lucas Ripley didn’t let me down. His voice was calm and almost cold as he said, “I specifically asked you if you needed to write that shit down. ’Member that?”

  Oh, man. It was going to go bad.

  What else could I do but nod?

  Those almost green-blue eyes didn’t even flicker. “I asked you if you needed me to write it down and you said no,” he kept going, staring at me with that furious face that was so roughly handsome, I didn’t want to look at it, not then. His voice got even cooler, if that was even possible, and I swear I could feel the skin on my back prickling. “And I’m gonna have to pay you overtime for work that was already done?” He narrowed those intense eyes. “I have to pay you to fix a mistake you did?”

  All I could do was stand there.

  I had messed up. There was no escaping that. “Rip, I’m sorry. I’ve never made a mistake like this before—”

  That giant hand speckled in some kind of oil or grease sliced across the center of his body. “That’s not the fucking point, Luna,” he snapped, looking up at me. “It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of money. It’s a waste of fucking paint.” Rip shook that dark brown head of hair that had just a few lines of silver through it, just in time for his birthday that upcoming Monday.

  He was laying it on real thick, and I was taking it all in, feeling worse and worse by the second. He was right. He would have gotten mad at anyone who made the same mistake; that only microscopically made me feel better. “I’m sorry. I’ll stay late, and you don’t have to pay me. I know it’s my fault,” I replied, hoping Owen and Miguel couldn’t hear how pitchy my voice had gotten. I had to clench my fists when the urge to crack my knuckles got bad.

  My boss raised his thick, dark eyebrows in a way th
at confirmed I wasn’t going to get out of anything, and I definitely wasn’t going to get absolved of a freaking thing. “Now you’re gonna try and give me a goddamn guilt trip for telling you shit any boss would?” His eyebrows lowered, and that mouth I thought was pretty sexy on good days stayed in a scowl. “You’re not gonna make me feel bad, Luna. You fucked up and that’s the end of the story.”

  I had fucked up. I wasn’t trying to make it seem any other way. I nodded at him, making sure to avoid glancing over at where I had last seen my coworkers standing. “I know, Rip. I’m not trying to. I’m sorry,” I told him.

  He shook his head. Shook me off. The man pulled out a clean-ish rag from inside his coveralls and swept it over his face as he muttered, “Sorry doesn’t fix shit.”

  Of course it didn’t. I’d learned that lesson long before he’d come into my life.

  “I know that. I’ll do everything myself. I’ll get started on it—”

  His face was still covered as he breathed out, “Don’t bother.”

  What did that mean?

  “But I can do it. I know it’s my fault—”

  “No.” He moved the cloth away from his face and zeroed in on mine instantly. His jaw was set, and if I’d had any doubts he was pissed, I would have gotten a confirmation then. There were more lines at his forehead than I had ever seen before. “Keep the paint the same goddamn color you already did,” he grumbled, dragging the rag roughly over his hands as his eyes pretty much burned a hateful hole straight into the middle of my features. “For the record, it’s fucking bullshit.”

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured, ignoring the fact that I was pretty sure my coworkers had started creeping closer to us to hear better.

  Rip shook his head again. “Sorry doesn’t fix your mistake. Go paint the car the color you already started.”

  “But—”

  “I don’t want to talk about this shit anymore, Luna.” He glanced up at the ceiling before saying in a crystal-clear voice, “And this is going down in your file.”

  In my file? As in strike one? Strike one of three that would get me fired? Was that how these things worked? I hadn’t even known that was a thing.

  I stared at him, pressed my lips together, and then I sucked in a breath through my nose. I wasn’t going to get upset over getting in trouble. I wasn’t.