“I…know.” I say, swallowing. “Talk to me. Tell me what you need.”
“I need everything to slow down, just for a little while. I need to let my body heal and get back to work.” She holds her hand up, stopping the words about to come from my mouth. “I know I don’t have to rush it. But Becca is taking so much on right now. As soon as the doctor says it’s ok, I’m going back. I like working, Micah. I like being in the garage. I feel…needed there.”
“Ok,” I give in, knowing it doesn’t matter if she’s here or at the garage. I’ll be right there next to her, making sure she doesn’t overdo it. “When the doctor says it’s ok. We’ll go back.”
She smiles. It’s wobbly, but there. “You know, Becca’s always telling us in our self-defense classes to find our balance, our center.”
“So you’re prepared to defend against an attack.”
“Yeah. And I’m realizing that I’ve never felt like I had balance. I was always being pushed around. By my parents, my church, then by Brent. And then when I got away? I was still at the mercy of the shelters, the landlords, and my bosses. Did you know the outlets at my apartment sparked?” She scowls, throwing her hands up. “I reported it to the super and the rental company so many times. They did nothing. And my building burned down! Do you know what it’s like to not have any control over your life, Micah?” Her eyes are full of fire, but I know that fire is directed at the world, not just at me.
“Been…long…time.” I say. “My whole childhood was one of chaos. I was at the mercy of my father’s temper. Then at the mercy of the social workers. It wasn’t until Ransom brought us all together that I started to feel like I had my place. Even then I still felt…chaotic.”
“Chaotic how?”
“We’d made a name for ourselves, but I still felt like I was…defective.”Her soft sound of denial is a balm, soothing the hurt caused by decades of feeling less than.
“I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t order food at a fucking drive thru. The only thing I had to contribute was this.”I lift my balled up fist, turning it so she can see the white webbing of scars that crisscross it. “I was so angry, I was nearly unstoppable when push came to shove. Between Colt and I, anyone who fucked with us ended up in the hospital. It was the only thing I had to offer. I can’t talk my way out of situations like Maverick and Nick. So I fought. And I intimidated everyone.”Holly leans forward, reaching for my hand. I let her take it and give me a squeeze before pulling away with a grunt of frustration. “I can’t even have a fucking conversation while holding your hand.”
“Put your foot up here.” She says, slapping the couch.
I cock an eyebrow, but when she pats the cushion next to her hip again, I lift my leg up, so it’s running down the outside of her body. She wiggles to resettle herself, then rests her hand on the top of my bare foot, mirroring the way I’m touching her. She looks down and starts to giggle. “Your feet are so big,” she says between snorts. “Look.” She spreads her fingers wide, still only managing to cover a third.
I let myself soak in her touch. Her laughter. When I was sitting next to her hospital bed, this is everything I wished for. Her smile is fucking everything.
“Tell me when things changed,” she prompts, shaking my foot.
“When we got the garage. Suddenly, we had to figure out how to fix cars. Ransom knew a bunch, but the rest of us just had to figure shit out. Jonas brought us all these books from the library, and videos on automotive repair. I loved reading, and I picked up a lot of it pretty quickly. Ransom got his hands on some junkers, and we fixed them up then sold them. Then we bought more junkers. By then, word was getting out that we actually might know what we’re doing, so people around the neighborhood started coming to us for repairs.”I shrug. “Words…not…needed.”
“So, how did you start doing the custom stuff? I’ve seen the invoices for some of those cars you fix up.” She says, eyes wide. “They’re more than the rest of the garage makes in a month.”
“Ransom…won…bet.” Laughing, I explain. “He was always hustling. Coming home with random shit. He won this old, beat up GTO and he brought it to me. Asked me to see if I could figure out how to restore it. He figured if we could get it to a car show, we might be able to make a name for ourselves.”
“It worked,” she says with a smile.
“Nope.” I say, chuckling at her crestfallen expression. “That would have been a good story, though. We did everything wrong on that first car. We paid too much for parts, did a weird mix of restoration and customization, and it flopped. We barely got our money out of it. But I did a fuck of a lot better on the next car, then the next. Took me a full year to win one.”
She wrinkles her adorable little nose. “You’re wrong, you know.”
“Me?… Never.”
She laughs, nudging me with her foot. “It’s a better story the way it really happened. You worked hard for it. If it had come too easy, who knows where you’d be now?”
“Maybe.” She’s probably right. Nobody handed us a damn thing. We scraped and fought our way out of the gutter. We became unstoppable because we had to be. No ivy league pissant who’s been handed everything by Mommy and Daddy would have been able to build this.
“You…need…time.” I say, steering her back on topic. I want her to finish.
“Yes, I do.” She wets her lips again, eyes darting around my face. “I’ve been thinking about the empty apartments all day.”
Pain shoots through my chest, like I just took a fucking punch to the solar plexus. The last thing I want is her gone. Christ, I’d rather move out and leave her here, in my space. Having her here has made it feel more like home than any place I’ve lived before.
I can’t sit anymore, rising to pace the space between the coffee table and bookshelves. I run my fingers through my hair, trying to think of the right argument, the right words to make her stay. But that’s the fucking problem, isn’t it? Men overriding what she wants. It’s what her husband did to her, over and over. No way will I ever let myself be like him.
I stop and face her. “Do you want to move out?”I sign, then hold my breath while I wait for her answer.
“It might be the smart thing to do. We went from hating each other to living together. It’s fast.”
“Never…hate…you. Never.” If she believes nothing else, please let her believe that. “Never.”
