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“What?”

“We’re meeting them at Cal’s apartment, not Greg’s place.” Of course I’d known Cal would be with Greg. But I’d pretty much avoided acknowledging that we’d actually have totalkwith Cal.

“Shit. I’d been kind of hoping Cal would be at work or something.” Good, it wasn’t just me.

“Yep.”

Ellis rubbed his mouth. “We apologized on Discord. He’ll be nice to us. Right?”

“Fuck, I hope so.”

Ellis and I had been a little... overenthusiastic when we’d tried to meet Cal to see if he was our future mate. In our defense, there wasn’t exactly a guidebook for that sort of thing. But Cal had reacted poorly to having two strangers try to force him to hold our hands.

Which, in hindsight, was completely understandable.

Ellis walked me through entering our new destination in the car’s maps app. We were twenty minutes away.

My phone rang, and this time it was Ricky. I closed my eyes for a second, then I answered. “Yes, Ricky?”

“Where are you?”

I suppressed a hiss of outrage. “You approved me to take two days off, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But I mean, where are you right now?”

“I’m out of town.” No good would come of giving him my exact location.

“Well, I need you to come back.” He said this as if it were a perfectly reasonable demand.

I clenched my fist and struggled to keep my voice calm and even. “I’m sorry, I can’t. What’s going on?”

“We have a new client. They need a plan drawn up by tomorrow.”

I pulled the phone away from my face and stared at the screen for a few seconds. “Ricky, even if I were in town, I wouldn’t be able to do a full landscape design by tomorrow.I’d have to walk the site, get measurements, look at the soil, and everything before I could even start.”

Ricky made a dismissive noise. “You can use one of your other ones as a starting point.”

“I’m sorry, Ricky, but I can’t come back before Wednesday.” Ellis was throwing me concerned glances from the driver’s seat.

“Well, Shane, that decision could have long-term repercussions on your tenure with this company. My father took you in and gave you a job when you were a teenager, and this is how you repay us?”

I cringed. It was true. Mr. Fredericks had given me my first job almost twenty years ago now.

Ellis patted my fist where it lay on my thigh. I looked up into his commiserating eyes and found the balls to stay firm. “I’m sorry, Ricky, but it’s my time off and I have things I need to do.”

“What am I supposed to tell the client? If we lose this account, it’ll be your fault!” He hung up.

I sighed. It was just like Ricky to promise an unrealistic turnaround time. I’d spent more than one night at the office trying to meet his deadlines.

“That sounded rough,” Ellis said.

I shook my head. “It’s nothing I’m not used to.”

I stared out the window in silence, stewing over my job. I knew I needed to find a new one, but change was hard, and it wasn’t like I was a licensed landscape architect or anything where I could make big bucks. I hadn’t even been to college. I supervised yard crews and drew up landscape designs whenthey were needed. As Ricky constantly told me, anyone could do it.

We reached Bent Oak, and after about ten minutes Ellis slowed the SUV and turned into the parking lot of an apartment building.

He parked and turned off the car.