"Couldn't sleep." He crossed the concrete floor, footsteps quiet, and held out one of the cups. "Figured you might be here."
I took the coffee. It was hot, strong, made the way I liked it—black, no sugar, the kind of brew that could strip paint if you let it sit too long. Which meant he'd been paying attention, or he'd asked someone.
"Thanks."
Tyler nodded and settled onto the same overturned crate he'd used yesterday, wrapping both hands around his own cup like he needed the warmth. The morning was cool, but not that cool. Something else was keeping him cold.
We sat in silence for a few minutes, the only sounds the occasional clink of my tools and the slow brightening of the sky outside. It should have been awkward—two men who barely knew each other, sharing space without speaking—but it wasn't. Tyler had a way of being present without demanding anything, and I found I didn't mind the company.
"I've been thinking about what you said." His voice broke the silence, quiet but steady. "About the Shovelhead. The rebuild."
"What about it?"
"You said I should learn. About engines." He paused, took a sip of coffee, and I watched his throat work as he swallowed. "Did you mean it?"
I turned back to the transmission, giving my hands something to do. "Wouldn't have said it if I didn't."
"Then I'd like to take you up on it." Another pause. "If the offer's still open."
It was. "Pull up a crate. I'll show you what I'm working on."
He did. And for the next hour, I walked him through the basics of a four-speed transmission—how the gears engaged, why synchronization mattered, what happened when you forced a shift instead of letting it find its own rhythm. He listened with that focused attention I was starting to recognize, asking questions that showed he was actually processing the information instead of just nodding along.
The sun rose while we worked, spilling through the open bay doors and painting the garage floor inlong golden rectangles. Dust motes drifted through the light like lazy thoughts. Somewhere in the clubhouse, a door opened and closed—Irish, probably, stumbling toward the coffee maker with the single-minded determination of the recently awakened.
"This is different than I expected." Tyler set down his empty cup, his voice thoughtful.
"What is?"
"This." He gestured vaguely at the garage, the bike, me. "Sitting here, learning about transmissions. It feels..." He searched for the word. "Normal. Like something a person would just do."
"Is that bad?"
"No. It's—" He stopped, shook his head. "I spent eight months pretending to be someone else. Before that, four years undercover with Cross. Normal stopped meaning anything a long time ago." He looked at the transmission, then at me. "I forgot what it felt like. To just be somewhere, doing something, without calculating every angle."
Words weren't my strong suit. Never had been. So I just handed him a socket wrench and pointed at the bolt that needed tightening.
He took it. His fingers brushed mine in the exchange, brief and incidental, and neither of us acknowledged it.
"You know what would help?" The words came out before I'd fully decided to say them.
"What?"
"Learning to ride."
Tyler's hands stilled on the wrench. He lookedup, something unreadable flickering through his expression. "You'd teach me?"
"You're going to be around the club. Makes sense you should know how to handle a bike." The reasoning was practical. Sound. "Can't always rely on a cage to get where you're going."
"I've never—" He stopped, started again. "I don't even know where to begin."
"You begin as a passenger. Learn how the bike moves before you try to control it." I wiped my hands on a rag, already calculating logistics. "We'll go out this morning. You'll ride behind me, get a feel for the balance, the lean. Tomorrow, I'll put you on the training Sportster and we'll work on basics."
Tyler was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful, controlled, like he was handling something fragile. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why would you do this for me?"
