Chapter One
Boone
I’m elbow-deep in an engine when the noise starts.
Not the good kind—the steady, predictable hum of metal and torque—but chaos. A crash. A clatter. A string of muttered curses followed by a laugh so bright it cuts through my workshop like a flare.
I freeze.
Wrench in one hand. Rag in the other. Spine locked.
The workshop has been my bunker since the explosion. Concrete walls. Oil-stained floors. Tools exactly where I leave them. Silence I can control. No surprises. No sudden sounds that make my shoulder seize or my pulse jump.
Then the door bangs open.
Light spills in first. Actual, blinding light, reflecting off snow outside and bouncing off the chrome of my workbench. And then she barrels in like a fucking wrecking ball—paint-splattered, hair half up and half everywhere, cheeks flushed, eyes bright.
She trips over a bucket.
Catches herself.
Smears blue paint across her jaw with the back of her hand.
And grins at me like she just found buried treasure.
“Hi!” she says, breathless and cheerful and completely out of place. “Sorry—door stuck. I think it hates me.”
I stare.
She’s got paint streaked across her fingers, wrists, the hem of her sweater. There’s red in her hair like she forgot it was there. Yellow on her nose. She smells like cold air and citrus soap and something faintly sweet underneath.
Color and chaos.
Everything I’m not.
“Can I help you?” My voice comes out flat. Rusted. Like it hasn’t been used for anything but short answers in a while.
She looks around my shop like she’s stepped into a museum exhibit titledAngry Man Lives Here.Eyes lingering on the engines. The tool racks. The scorch mark on the far wall I never bothered to paint over.
“Oh. Wow.” She nods, impressed. “This is… intense.”
“Still waiting on the part where that’s my problem.”
Her grin widens instead of faltering. That’s the first warning sign.
“I’m Ember,” she says, sticking out a hand without thinking twice. “Ember Price. I just bought the house next door. Mostly for the great studio space. I’m an artist.”
I don’t take her hand.
I don’t even look at it.
“More like trouble,” I mutter, going back to the engine and pretending she didn’t just blow a hole through my afternoon.
She laughs. Full-bodied. Unapologetic.
“I get that a lot.”
“Not a compliment.”
