"She's going to be a doctor," I say, not quite to Seb, not quite to myself.
"You said that last night."
"I know." I tighten a bolt and move on to the next one. "I just need to keep saying it until it's the first thing I think instead of the second."
Seb is quiet for a moment. Then he says, "What's the first thing you think?"
I don't answer that.
He doesn't push it.
We stay there in the warm bay for a while longer, him leaning against the wall and me on my back under the Sportster, and the radio plays a song I don't know the words to and outside I can hear brothers arriving for the afternoon, bikes pulling in, voices calling across the yard. The ordinary sounds of a place that's becoming mine.
"When she comes back," Seb says eventually, casually, like he's talking about the weather. "After she's finished all her studying, she comes back here with her degree and her practice. She will come back. I know the type."
"Seb."
"I'm just saying."
"Don't."
"I'm just noting that you've got a few years to become someone worth coming back to." He stands and finishes his water. "Which, full disclosure, I think you already are. But maybe work on the staging-dramatic-scenes-to-push-women-away strategy. That one's got flaws."
He drops the empty bottle in the recycling crate by the door and walks back into the yard, and I listen to his footsteps fade and Istare up at the underside of the Sportster's engine and I think, he's not wrong about any of it.
A few years.
I get back to work.
I've been staringat the same carburetor for twenty minutes and I haven't done a damn thing to it.
Brick walks past the lift, glances down at where I'm crouched on the floor of the garage, and keeps walking. Then he stops, backs up, and looks again. "You planning on fixing that thing or just making friends with it?"
"Give me a minute."
"You've had forty of them." He crouches down next to me, forearms on his knees, and picks up the carburetor from where I've set it on the mat. He turns it over once, twice, and then sets it back down. "You're thinking about her."
It's not a question so I don't answer it.
Brick exhales through his nose and stands. "She's gone, Austin. And you made sure of that. So, either be proud of what you did or regret it. But pick one and get back to work, because that bike is due back this afternoon and I'm not taking the hit for it."
He walks away before I can say anything, and maybe that's the point. He knows I don't have an answer that doesn't sound like self-pity, and he's got no patience for self-pity. That's been the one consistent thing about being Brick's nephew in this club: he holds me to the same standard as everyone else, maybe harder.He's not going to let me sulk over a woman when there's an engine that needs fixing.
I pick up the carburetor and get to work.
It takes me another hour to sort the bike out and by the time I wheel it back into the storage bay, my hands are black to the wrists, and my back is complaining from being bent over so long. I wash up at the sink in the corner and try not to think about the fact that Savannah has been gone for exactly three days. Not that I'm counting.
I'm counting.
Cam is behind the bar when I walk through the main room, and she has that look on her face, the one where she's deciding whether to say something or not. I drop onto a stool, and she puts a bottle of water in front of me before I've asked for it.
"What?" I say.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
She leans on the bar. "You did the right thing, you know."
