“Do you have any sisters or brothers?”
“Nope, only child.” He looked out the side window, his face away from mine so that I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of it as I drove. “At least that I know of. I suppose my mom could have a whole different family out there somewhere.”
“You never tried to find out?”
I saw the gentle shake of his head, his hair a tangled mess in the back. Did the guy even own a comb? And, okay, yes, it was sexy as hell all tousled and resting against the grey cotton hoodie, but still. Guy could run a brush through it every now and then.
“Nah. She didn’t want me, I didn’t want her.” It sounded so matter of fact, but I was getting to know him a little bit now, and I called bullshit on his tough-guy words. But I kept my mouth shut.
“So, you were, like, the only one there for him that year? Or had he remarried?”
That got a genuine bark of laughter out of him. “God, no. He’d never take his head out from under the hood of a car long enough to even get a date, let alone get married again. It’s a wonder he was even with my mom long enough to create me. She must have shown up at the garage or something.” There was a tenderness, almost a jokiness in his voice as he said the last, and it made me smile. I was happy he was still turned to the window so he wouldn’t see.
“Maybe she got on one of those wheeling thingies and slid under the car beside him,” I said, playing along.
He laughed, an honest, pure, deep sound that made me bite down on my Life Saver, spreading peppermint coolness throughout my mouth.
“There’s a dipstick joke in there somewhere, but it’s not coming to me,” he said, humor still in his voice.
It felt good. It seemed that we were always either scrapping with each other, or having an awkward silence as we’d had so far today.
This joking—witheach other instead ofateach other—was an odd change, but it felt good.
“So,youwere nurse? No lady friend to do it?”
“Right. Just me. His best friend tried to run the garage for him with my help, but after a while I didn’t want to leave him alone for very long, and then Icouldn’tleave him alone, so I didn’t go into the garage.”
The humor was gone now, and I knew the rest of the story was not good. Well, I mean, obviously his father dying after a prolonged cancer battle wasn’t good to begin with. But there was something…more.
“The garage,” I said, almost to myself, like I’d found the missing piece to the puzzle.
“Yeah. It was losing money with my dad not being there. When he got an offer for it—a shitty, lowball offer—he said no at first. But the medical bills were piling up, there was no way we could pay them, even if Dad and I could both work full-time, which we couldn’t.”
“Of course not.”
“So, when the offer came a second time—still just as shitty—he had to take it. It’s almost a good thing he was dying. Giving up that place would have killed him anyway.”
“Was it enough? For the bills? For his…treatment?”
“Not hardly. It helped. It made a dent. But it wasn’t enough. And with no income from the garage coming in…”
“That’s when you started stealing cars,” I said, finishing what he probably wouldn’t have said.
“Something like that.” Denying to the end, but he was nodding. “See? Criminal with a heart of gold. Don’t you feel bad now, always crawling up my ass about my lowlife-edness?”
“But you didn’t stop after your dad died,” I pointed out.
He waved a hand, but it fell to his lap without much oomph behind it. “Details.”
Yeah, but a big detail. Stick liked the money even after his desperate need for it had been buried. Or the adrenaline. Or the power. Or the stealing-from-the-rich aspect. Whatever. He was still a car thief.
Okay, retired car thief.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “About your father passing, I mean.” I didn’t want him to think I had any sympathy for him turning to crime. That was on him.
Probably every townie had a sob story. I supposed that was why they became townies instead of college students.
He waved a hand of dismissal at my “sorry,” and then motioned to the road in front of us—well out of Chesney, out on the country road and well past all the traffic lights behind us.
