This was going to be perfect.
“Excellent. I’ll get them towed immediately. Let me drive you back to the shop.”
He seemed hesitant again, but then nodded once. “Sure, thanks.”
Fishing my keys out of my pocket, I helped Brandon yank the garage doors down and locked them behind us. Excitementbubbled up in my chest. Despite Ted’s shitty news, my feelings for Brandon’s acceptance of the project were quickly trumping that.
However long it took for him to work on them—I didn’t care. I’d fund the next five years if I had to.
As long as I got to have him back in my life, no matter how temporary, I’d do anything.
CHAPTER 6
Avery
The next morning,I found myself up bright and early with my coffee in hand and a list of towing companies pulled up on my laptop.
After the first two of them had declined service with some bullshit excuse about not having enough trucks available,Pete’s Towingcame through as my Hail Mary. They only took two hours to get enough trucks in the area with towing capacity, and with called-in permission from me to the guard down at the garage site, my father’s cars would be showing up at Brandon’s shop come noon.
Since dropping him off yesterday, I couldn’t get the zinging thrill of excitement out of my veins.
I wasn’t going to be around much for when Brandon would be working on the cars, however, it gave me plenty of excuses to drop by and spend time with him while under the guise of checking in on the progress.
I tried not to think negatively over his hesitance, chalking his reaction up to being the jitters of rekindling a long lostfriendship. After all, it wasn’t like Brandon was known to be the type of person to jump headfirst into things.
He was cautious by nature, even while wearing his heart on his sleeve at times.
That was what was always so charming about him and what drew people in wherever he went. I doubted that personality trait had been wiped from him, despite the years passing by.
But that was something I could work with—having to earn back our friendship. Being forced to leave abruptly and then us losing contact that same year had more than likely soured him toward me in an understandable way.
Blowing back into town and into his life so suddenly probably wasn’t doing me many favors, either.
In the grand scheme of things, what I hoped for was another chance at this friendship. To show Brandon that us being apart had hurt me just as much as it had him. I’d had to fill the void left in my heart with too many things to count at this point, all of which paled in comparison.
We could never go back to the way things were—us as innocent kids trying to navigate this big scary world with nothing but each other to rely on—but I could damn well try and get us back to somewhere close.
Next to my arm, my phone went off. I lifted it from its spot on the arm of the couch, expecting the towing company’s number to flash across the screen.
Instead, it was someone else entirely—their contact ID being the last one I ever expected to see come scrolling across my phone’s screen.
Well, well. Look who it is...
“Long time no talk,” I said after clicking the round green button.
The man on the other end of the line chuckled. “Oh, come on. Give me a break. I’ve been busy.”
Funny he could say that while in the past, my same excuses would get me a disappointed sigh and a guilt trip that would end in me paying for an entire bar tab after a night out.
I could already feel the damn hangover settling at the base of my skull just thinking back to those times. Didn’t miss them one bit—the hangover or the ridiculous partying I’d inevitably been dragged into. Though, I supposed that’s what I got for befriending two fucking extroverts who took joy in seeing me suffer.
“Too busy to call me back, I see,” I quipped. “Don’t tell me you’ve got another houseman distracting you from picking up the phone every once in a while.”
“Funny. And I like to call them wait staff, you privileged ass.”
Smirking, I said. “Spoken like true new money, Knight.”
“Oh, fuck off, McAllister. You seem to have gotten that silver spoon stuck too far up your ass.”
