But as I leaned there, an image flashed behind my eyelids.
My dad, on an old leather stool, looking over his vintage bike. The one he hardly ever rode.
Shaking my head, I tried to stop the flood of images coming back to me.
The way he held my hand as we walked out to his own home garage, the way he’d laugh with his buddy back there. Some friend from high school, his business partner I think.
I rubbed my eyes, hoping to flush his face from my mind.
What happened to that bike? To that guy?
After he passed, my mother refused to talk about him. She wouldn’t confirm my memories, wouldn’t let him live on in my mind.
But I could still see the way he’d hold his arms open to me when he got back from work, his face weary from a long day. Then he’d set me on a stool of my own and let me watch him work far past my bedtime.
“You alright?” Spencer lifted her head from the bike, her arm resting on the seat as she watched my face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Nodding, I tried to catch my breath. I still had hope of holding this anxiety attack off.
“Yeah. Do you two mind if I walk around?”
Their heads whipped toward each other, some unspoken conversation passing between them as they considered my request.
Filled with concern, their eyes watched me closer before Spencer sighed. “Sure. Just don’t go too far, okay, Bunny?”
With a nod and a weak smile, I pushed off the doorframe and headed back to the driveway. The sun was high in the sky, warming the air around me. But I couldn’t shake the shiver in my bones.
I hadn’t thought about that garage in years, hadn’t been able to picture it since he passed.
Why was this place stirring so much? Was it the house or was it the two hunky mascs following me around?
24
SPENCER
The knotin my chest tightened as I watched Kiera walk off, breakable smile painted across her cheeks. I recognized that uneasy look, the pained shifting of her eyes — it was an expression I’d seen far too often on my sister’s face growing up. On my own, too.
I kept my eyes trained on her curly red mane as she wandered into the field just beyond the driveway, letting her hands drift over the tall flowers that rose to meet her. Our wild girl had somehow found the least manicured part of the property and made herself at home.
Turning my head slightly, I let my voice carry back to Leo at the bike. “You think she’s okay?”
She sighed, swapping out the wrench in her hand for a smaller tool. “As okay as she can be, I’d guess. Rough couple of days, it’s probably starting to catch up with her. Might be thinking about the boyfriend.”
I sucked my teeth.Unlikely. She’s hardly mentioned him the whole time she’s been here. And when she had, it wasn’t pretty.
She was too good for him, anyway — didn’t need to know Kiera for long to know that. She was smart as a whip and funnyto boot. I never quite knew what to expect next with her. It was electrifying.
Plus she was fuckingpretty. In her pajamas shoveling down breakfast, in that little black number she’d been wearing the night we picked her up, and even now — barefoot, padding through the field like some ethereal spirit of the property — she was stunning.
How the fuck had that bozo landed a goddess like her?
Tearing my eyes away from her, I turned to Leo. “You buy that she’s straight?”
Leo scoffed as she pulled the carburetor from the bike, placing it delicately onto a metal tray for examination. “Straight girls don’t look at me like that.”
“Right?” I looked at Kiera again. If I were smart, I would at least try to extinguish the bubble of hope in my chest. Instead, I just took a seat on one of the spare stools, letting it drift across the shop. “Good thing a straight girl has never stopped us before.”
The shop fell silent as Doctor Leo got to work, just the gentle metallic clicks backtracking her intense focus. But after a minute, surprised me by speaking up, never lifting her eyes from the engine parts.
