But he couldn’t let it go the entire damn day.
And he couldn’t take his eyes off me either.
For the full hour we’d worked out, he couldn’t seem to keep his little comments to himself. It felt like playground pigtail pulling, and I had no real idea what to think. I wasn’t used to strangers hating me on sight.
Getting behind the wheel, I shifted my stump against the seat, which had been cooking in the sun all morning. I was ready to get out of my head, work on my bike, and do anything except think about Sergeant Grumpy for the rest of the damn day.
I’d never been a mechanic. I’d grown up with money, so my parents had always paid people to do what they considered to be menial work. But there was something powerful about building something from the ground up. Or, in this case, rebuilding the bike that had been all but obliterated in the crash.
I’d wanted to junk it at first. The insurance company had totaled it, and I was ready to let it get crushed into a cube and sent to wherever busted-ass motorcycles go to die. But a few weeks after I was released from the hospital, I woke from a dream where I was riding again and realized I wasn’t ready to let go.
I called my insurance agent, who was even more clueless than me, but she gave me the number to the impound lot that had taken it in from the scene of the accident, and eventually, a tow truck driver had dumped it on my driveway.
It had sat there for weeks. Then—still in pieces—the movers had loaded it up on a trailer and transported it to the shed in the physical therapist’s back parking lot, where Kent kept his. I’d spent the next few weeks after that ignoring the heap of metal as I got used to my new life and all the adaptive shit I had to learn.
But eventually, I’d had to face it.
And like it was kismet, Kent had told me about his motorcycle group’s ride, and suddenly, I’d felt like there was a light at the end of the tunnel. The progress was slow going, though, considering I was just getting back to work and dealing with the wide-eyed stares of high school kids who were both fascinated and freaked out by my stump.
Learning to both coach and teach PE on one leg was an adventure in itself, and now that I had Mr. Roboto—as the kids had dubbed my current prosthesis—things were feeling a bit…better, maybe.
“I couldn’t balance on my board today,” I told Kent when I popped a squat next to him.
Kent blinked at me, and then his eyes went wide. “You went to the beach?”
I shrugged, my cheeks a little hot. Kent had been quietly encouraging me to get back to some of my old hobbies, especially with how much progress I was making in PT. “Kaleo came by and asked if I wanted to. But I couldn’t stay upright.” I let out a small laugh. “Bet Sergeant Grumpy would have loved that.”
Kent shook his head. “You’ve been thinking about him a lot, have you?”
“No. Shut up,” I said quickly. I passed a hand down my face before I picked up my toolbox and started working. My fingersached, but it felt good to be making progress. It was finally starting to look like a bike again. “He was just such a colossalassholeat the last session.”
“You weren’t exactly a paragon of welcoming,” Kent reminded me.
I flushed. Creek had gotten under my skin a little more than I’d expected him to. Then again, I hadn’t expected a total stranger to zero in on me and make it his mission to piss me off during our session either.
“I was just giving as good as I got. It’s not my fault he walked in with a fucking two-by-four shoved up his ass. No matter how good he looks, I’m not gonna let some guy walk all over me.”
Kent’s grin widened. “How good he looks?”
“Come on,” I said, dropping my wrench and folding my arms over my chest. “I have eyes. You and I both know he’s hot.”
Kent laughed and shook his head. “He’s not my type. But it seems like he might be yours.”
“Yeah, that’s a big hell no,” I said, though oddly, the words tasted a bit like a lie. “I prefer guys with a little more pep in their step…and a little more queer in their gear.”
Choking on a laugh, Kent passed a hand down his face. “You didn’t just say that.”
I shrugged. “It’s true. Super-straight Sergeant Grumpy is not my jam.”
“Says the guy who gave him a nickname,” Kent pointed out, but then his expression went a little softer, and he let out a quiet sigh. “He’s not really that bad, you know. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if you had a small crush.”
My gaze snapped up at him. “Bro. First of all, he’s not into dick. And second, heisa dick. I mean, he’s hotter than the sun, and if the circumstances were different, I actually might have tried to climb him like a tree, but he’s been horrible to me this whole time.”
“You know better than anyone what it’s like to face this kind of change,” Kent said softly. “And he lost a lot.”
I let out an incredulous laugh and gestured at my leg.
“I’m not saying we all haven’t,” Kent hurried to clarify. He stretched his leg out, showing off his stump, which sat a few inches below the hem of his shorts. “He hasn’t talked to me much about his career, but I’ve met guys like him before. Military is who they are at their core. And when you lose something like that…” He trailed off.
