Chapter One
The socket wrench hit the concrete before Gabe even realized his hand had let it go. The sharpclangcracked through the garage like a rifle shot, ricocheting up his spine.
He jerked, breath locking in his chest.
For one split second he wasn’t in a quiet auto shop after closing. He was back in the sand, back in the place where anything dropped could mean someone didn’t make it home.
He dragged in a breath. Oil, cold metal, the faint sweetness of old grease—none of it grounded him like it normally did.
The garage was still. Too still. Bay three stood empty. The Ford he’d finished tuning sat outside next to his own truck, waiting for pickup tomorrow. Even the radio, turned low to some late-night country ballad, sounded miles away.
All he could do was wait for the tightness to ease. It didn’t.
He braced both hands on the workbench, head ducked, muscles vibrating under his skin. A twelve-hour day should’ve satisfied him. Should’ve left him tired in that good way he’d been chasing for months.
Instead, the agitation pressed at him—relentless.
His T-shirt clung to him. His skin felt wrong. The air felt wrong.
Hefelt wrong.
He’d been trying so damn hard—holding down this job at his brother-in-law’s garage, showing up for family dinners, learning the rhythm of this new town where everyone called himGabe-the-mechaniclike it was a neat, simple thing. Like a title couldreplace the man who used to wear a uniform and sleep with one ear open.
Routine and stability, a new life built from the ground up, was supposed to help. That’s what therapy taught him, anyway.
But none of it fit. Not the apartment his sister helped him find. Not the carefully built schedule. Not the borrowed sense of belonging he’d been trying to talk himself into.
The buzzing under his ribs ratcheted up, sharp enough to make him push away from the bench.
He needed air. Movement. Distance.
He neededout.
Not the memory of sand in his boots and war in his bones.
He stooped and grabbed the wrench. When he set it on the worktop, the small clang of the object finding its place should have soothed him. But the itch didn’t ease.
“Lock up.” His voice was a low echo in the empty garage. Orders, even ones he gave to himself, were easier than feelings, so he shut the bay doors and checked the locks twice. He flipped the deadbolt at the front, then checked it twice.
The small neon OPEN sign he’d switched off bled color across the dark window. He stared at his reflection—shadowed eyes, jaw rough because he forgot to shave. He wasn’t a mess. Far from the man he’d been when he flew back to the States and attempted to fit in with civilian life again.
He was just…not right.
In the quiet, the buzz under his skin only got louder. He turned into a hornet’s nest of thoughts he couldn’t outrun.
He tossed his jacket on, grabbed his keys and hit the parking lot without looking back. Early spring held the kind of cold that bit through denim. The sky was a flat canvas of slate. His breath fogged out before the warmth of the interior of the truck swallowed it.
He didn’t think. He started the engine, listening to the crank and catch of the old engine he’d tuned himself.
His fingers settled on the wheel like they already had a destination in mind. Good thing, because his mind didn’t.
He pulled out, his headlights panning white across the empty street, and aimed for the highway.
He told himself he was just clearing his head with a short drive. He told himself he’d put a few miles under his tires and let the wind scrape some of the static from his head, then loop back before midnight.
He told himself a lot of things he didn’t listen to.
The road unspooled like a dark ribbon with the edges gnawed by frost. The farther he went, the easier he breathed. City lights fell away in the rearview. The radio station turned to fuzz, then new notes trickled out when he found another one.
