But my pulse won’t slow. No matter how much I scream warnings at it, because the last man I kissed, the last man who held me with muscular, all-consuming arms was a Marine too — my ex, the one who swore he’d protect me right before he started breaking things to prove he could.
Then he moved from breaking things to breaking me.
The memory crashes through me like ice water, dousing the fire, making my breath catch for all the wrong reasons. I see his face — not Breaker's, buthis;the way his smile would twist into something horrible whenever I said something wrong; the way his hands felt when they stopped being gentle.
Breaker must see something change in my expression because his grip on my shoulder loosens, becoming something softer.
"Hey." His voice drops, loses that rough edge. "Where'd you go?"
I blink, and I'm back in the garage.
"Nowhere good," I whisper.
He doesn't push. Doesn't demand answers. Instead, he takes a small step back, giving me space I didn't ask for but desperately need. The loss of his touch feels like an open wound.
Breaker isn’t him. He can’t be him; there's something tender beneath the heat in his eyes.
A quaking smile comes to my face, a tremor I can’t quite control, and I step closer to him, drawn by that look in his eyes. The world narrows to a tunnel: the humming fluorescent tubes overhead, the tang of gasoline and apple pie, and the wayBreaker’s gaze pins me in place — invitation and warning all at once. Each inch closer is another inch surrendered to the gravity between us. I’m so close now I can see the shadow of stubble along his jaw, and the faintest hint of lip gloss I left on his lips.
He lifts a hand, tentative, almost reverent, and brushes his knuckles along my jaw. The touch is soft, but it detonates inside me and leaves my hands shaking at my sides. My breath catches, and I look up at him, really look, and see the war raging behind his eyes — the need to keep me at arm’s length fighting the even deeper need to pull me closer.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he murmurs, voice a low rasp. It’s not a line. It’s a lifeline, thrown out to save us both from whatever this is about to become.
“Maybe not,” I whisper, the words tumbling out before I can snatch them back. “But I want to find out where this goes.”
He makes a sound, half plea, half curse, and for a second I think he’ll pull away — that he’ll do the right thing, the smart thing. But he doesn’t. Maybe he can’t. Maybe I’m not the only one whose body has been rewired to crave danger in the shape of another.
I lean in, breathless. I’m right there — lips barely a breath away from his, so close I can feel the shape of his next exhale on my face. The rest of the world falls away: the whine of a ratchet somewhere deep in the garage, the distant clatter of pool balls from the bar, the driving pulse of my heart pounding in my ears.
The door to the garage swings open with a bang, and a voice — all volume and redheaded chaos — cuts through the moment like a bandsaw.
“Hey!”
We both jerk apart, scrambling for composure like middle schoolers caught behind the bleachers. I nearly trip over my own feet, backpedaling until my ass hits the edge of the battered steel workbench. Breaker steps away so fast you’d think I burned him.
Standing in the doorway, hands on hips, is Molly. Her curls are even wilder than usual, cheeks flushed from the cold, an unrepentant grin spreading like wildfire across her face. She takes in the scene — the space between us, the raw red of my lips, the way Breaker is conspicuously wiping his hands on a rag — and her eyebrows shoot straight up into her hairline.
“I was wondering where you were, Riley,” she hollers, making no effort to lower her voice. “Your shift starts in ten.”
“I —” The word sticks in my throat, and I fumble for something, anything, to make this look less like what it is. I brush a hand through my hair, which is probably still tangled from where Breaker’s fingers had been a minute ago. “I was just…”
“Letting Breaker eat your pie,” she says deadpan. Only Molly could make a statement that filthy sound so casual. She leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, one eyebrow cocked in satisfaction. Breaker snorts. His shoulders are tense, but when he glances over at Molly, there’s a glimmer of mischief behind his scowl. Molly gives me a look. “Uh-huh. Well, Riley, I need you back in the bar. You can flirt on your own time.”
I grab my apron off the hook, cheeks burning so hot I’m sure I look like I’ve had a bucket of scarlet paint dumped on my head. “Right. Sorry.”
As I shuffle past, Molly doesn’t move to let me by. Instead, she leans in, her voice pitched low enough to be private. “Careful, honey,” she says, all the jesting gone from her tone. “That man’s heart’s got jagged edges and you’re liable to cut yourself.” Then, without skipping a beat, she straightens and calls over my shoulder — loud enough for the whole garage, if not the entire block, to hear — “And you… if you know what’s good for you, Breaker, you’ll keep your hands to yourself and stop trying to fuck my staff.”
He grunts in response, but when I risk a glance back at him, he’s not glaring at Molly. He’s looking at me, and that look is enough to set the whole garage on fire.
I follow Molly back to the bar, the echo of Breaker’s fingertips still warm on my jaw, the promise of something dangerous and consuming lingering in the air behind me. I tie my apron and try to disappear into the rhythm of opening the place up: stacking chairs, slicing lemons, refilling the beer taps. But every time I pause, even for a second, my thoughts circle back to the garage, to the moment just before the door opened, to the taste of whiskey and apples and longing.
It’s a slow start to the day. For the longest time it’s just me, Molly, a scattered rotation of Devils, and the hum of the cooler. I keep my hands busy, force myself to breathe through the tangle of nerves and want.
But it’s useless.
Every time I glance up from the register, I’m scanning the doorway. Every voice from the other room makes me tense, expecting him to walk in with that rolling, powerful stride. I know I should keep my distance. I know, on some bone-deep, cellular level, that this is the kind of man who could bend my world around his knuckles if I let him.
But I also know what he’s hiding behind all that anger and armor. I saw it, if only for a second. The way he softened, the way he looked at me like he wanted to tell me everything he’d ever survived and then pull me close enough to survive it with him.
