Page 100 of The Do-Over

He looked over at me as I held my hands in front of his truck’sheater vents on the way home, and he said, “Do you ever dress warm enough?”

“I don’t like to cover up a good outfit with a bulky coat,” I said, grinning as he looked at me like I was a silly child.

“Well, here,” he said, reaching a hand into the back seat while he drove. “You can wear E’s jacket again. It still smells like your perfume from the DONC.”

He held out the coat to me, and it was like looking at an old friend. “I didn’t know this was your brother’s coat.” I took it gently and laid it over my lap, running my hands over the fabric.

“That’s because you acted like it belonged to you,” he teased.

“True,” I agreed, thinking about all the times I’d worn it that he didn’t even know about. So many crashes on repeat, so many wearings of that jacket.

Although.

I looked down at the army-green coat. Now that I was thinking about it, I’d worn it on the very first Valentine’s Day. The one that’d started it all.

Valentine’s Day.

The anniversary of his brother’s death.

But I never fell asleep in it—until the DONC. The last Valentine’s Day.

Dragging me out of my thoughts, Nick found my hand and interlaced it with his. He gave me a look that made butterflies go wild inside me, and then he said, “By the way, I never thanked you for making me go along with your DONC day. I had a great time with you—”

“Of course you did,” I teased, which made him give me a funny grin.

“But the stuff in the afternoon?” He looked over at me with superserious eyes. “E would’ve loved it.”

“Yeah?” I looked down at the jacket.

“Yeah,” he said, merging onto the freeway. “I’m not going to act all trippy-universe-hippie shit, but swear to God, if you knew him, he would’ve thought it was the perfect day.”

Whoa. I leaned back against the seat and buried my hands in the pockets of that coat. Eric’s idea of a perfect day—the day I forgot to give back the coat—was the day the time loop ended.

“Why are you smiling like that?”

I hadn’t even realized I was smiling. I glanced over at Nick and asked, “Like what?”

He kind of laughed, his eyes crinkling in the happy way that I adored, and said, “You’re scary-grinning.”

“I’m not scary-grinning.”

“You seriously were.” He shook his head and said through a big smile, “Like some creeper who likes watching televised parades and dressing cats in sweaters.”

He was quoting himself, from one of the forgotten Valentine’s Days, and he had no idea. I fell hard into his teasing laughter, the warm rumble of happiness that should’ve always been his sound, and I felt incredibly grateful.

Thank you, Eric.

“I’m not a creeper.” I scooted closer to him on that old truck’sbench seat. “I’m just a girl who is incandescently happy at the moment.”

His eyes met mine, his grin mischievous, and he said, “Any girl willing to rip off Austen to express her happiness is totally my kind of creeper.”

And I was.

I was absolutely Nick Stark’s kind of creeper.

I glanced down at my arm and smiled. I couldn’t see the tattoo through the sweater and jacket, but I could almost feel it buzzing. Its words were like an electrical current burned into my skin.

Everything in my lifehadchanged, but I had zero regrets.

I had a marvelous time ruining everything