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Holly’s stool.

“Nothin’. Just working.”

He cocks his head at me. “Don’t bullshit me, Ty. You’ve been moping for days.”

“Shouldn’t you be at the shop? Or at your own house?”

“I took a few days off.” He pulls a knife from his ankle sheath and starts to clean his nails with the tip. “Darcy won’t answer my calls or texts. She doesn’t want me in the house.”

Frowning, I glance up from the belt buckle I’m polishing, and he’s got a dead-serious look on his face. Tanner has been with his wife forever, and I’ve never seen them fight, or even raise their voices at each other. I guess while I’ve been hiding, a lot has changed.

“What happened?” I ask.

“I fucked up. Bad. And I have no idea how I’m going to fix it.”

“I’m sure you’ll work it out. She loves you.”

He scrapes the knife along his nail. “I don’t deserve her love right now.” He blows out a deep breath. “I don’t want to talkabout it. You havin’ a problem with that little cutie with the blanket? She’s a fuckin’ doll, Ty.”

I shoot him a warning glare and he grins back at me. “I know who she is, Ty. I wasn’t born yesterday. I think it’s cool. Maybe now you’ll get your head out of your ass.”

“It ain’t gonna last. She’s moving.”

“Moving? To where?”

“To New York with her brother and his girl.”

He grimaces. “Why the hell would she want to live in New York?”

“To get away from everyone in this town who knows what happened to her. She goes through the same shit I do. Assholes staring and asking questions. She wants to go somewhere where nobody recognizes her. Her parents treat her like crap.”

“That’s a lame reason to move, isn’t it?”

“You don’t know what it’s like, Tanner. It sucks.”

“How do you feel about her moving?”

“How do you think I feel? I love her. I don’t want her to move. But I’m not gonna ask her to stay here just for me.”

He flips his knife up into the air and catches the handle. Someday, I know he’s going to slice his fingers off doing that. “Did you tell her you don’t want her to go?”

I sigh. “Not exactly.”

“Why the hell not? You’re gonna let some beautiful chick that believes in magic blankets just walk out of your life?”

I shake my head at him, growing annoyed with this conversation. “Because I want her to be free to make her own choices. Because for eleven years she had no choices at all. That’s why. It’s the right thing to do. We haven’t even been together that long. I have no right to ask her to stay, no matter how I feel about her.”

“Has it occurred to your dumb ass that maybe her choice is you,and she just wants you to man up and tell her what you want? Maybe she needs to hear it. Did you forget that Mom and Pop got hitched just a month after they met? So don’t give me that time bullshit.”

“This is different.”

“It’s not. Trust me on this; women want to hear what you want. They want to be swept off their feet a little. I learned that the hard way. She doesn’t have to move all the way to New fucking York to get away from this town, Ty. As Pop used to say, use your head. And for the love of fuck, tell her how you feel.” He shoves his knife back into its sheath and stands up. “I’m gonna go crash on your couch. Don’t screw this up, Ty. You finally have a chance to be happy.”

As he walks out, Poppy comes running in and sits at my feet, wagging his tail expectantly.

“All right, all right,” I mutter.

I spend the next week putting a plan together with Tanner’s help. He seemed to need the distraction just as much as I needed the help.