A pause.
Owen: Be there in 5.
I stared at the message, waiting for more. A question, maybe. A suggestion that I call someone else. A reminder that we were supposed to be keeping our distance.
Nothing.
Just be there in 5, like it was the most natural thing in the world, and he hadn’t told me a week ago that we needed to stay away from each other.
I tucked my phone into my pocket and climbed out of the car, leaning against the driver’s door with my arms crossed over my chest. The cold seeped through my hoodie, but I didn’t care. The discomfort was almost welcome, something to focus on besides the impending awkwardness. Something to keep me awake for five more minutes.
True to his word, headlights swept across the parking lot exactly four minutes later. Owen’s car pulled up beside mine.
He climbed out, andfuck, he was still in his practice gear. A compression shirt that clung to every line of muscle, athletic shorts despite the cold, hair damp and pushed back from his forehead. He looked like he had stepped out of a sports ad.
And suddenly, all those hours of studying anatomy felt very relevant.
“Hey.” He stopped a few feet away, hands shoved in his pockets. Cautious. Like I was a feral cat, he didn’t want to spook.
“Hey.” I hugged myself tighter, trying to suppress a yawn. “Thanks for coming.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. It just... died. No sound, no clicking, nothing.”
He nodded once, already moving toward my car. “Pop the hood.”
“It won’t... oh.” I realized what he meant and leaned through the open door to pull the release. The mechanism clicked, and Owen lifted the hood, propping it open and peering into the engine compartment like he knew what he was looking at.
“When’s the last time you drove it?”
“This morning. It was fine then.”
He hummed, reaching down to touch something I couldn’t see. His forearms flexed with the movement, and I absolutely did not notice. I was too tired to care about forearms or the muscles that comprised them at this point in my life.
“Did you leave anything on? Headlights? Interior light?”
“No. I don’t think so.” I paused, a horrible realization dawning. “Wait. My phone charger. I left my phone charging while I was in the library.”
Owen’s head emerged from under the hood, one eyebrow raised. “For how long?”
“...Six hours.”
His lips twitched. Not quite a smile, but close. “Yeah, that’ll do it. Your battery’s dead.”
“Dead dead? Or mostly dead?”
“Mostly dead.” He was definitely fighting a smile now. “I can jump it. You got cables?”
“I have absolutely no idea what’s in my trunk. It could be cables. It could be a body. I stopped checking months ago.”
That got an actual laugh out of him, and something warm flickered in my chest, but I stomped it down ruthlessly.
He walked to his car and came back with jumper cables, the heavy-duty kind that looked like they could restart a dead spaceship. Within minutes, he had everything hooked up, his car idling, and was gesturing for me to try the ignition.
I slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key.
My car roared to life like nothing had ever been wrong.
