SEVEN YEARS AGO…
I’d never been happier to slide into the back bay behind the Iron Vultures clubhouse than the day after Wade’s arrest.
Grease up to my elbows.
The smell of oil-soaked concrete and rubber filling my head. Heaven on earth.
Nothing mattered except the carburetor Hawk had pointed out this morning. “Fix it.” That was all he’d said. That was enough. I’d nodded, rolled up my sleeves, literally, and bent to the task.
Three weeks of grunt work under their close supervision as I went on fuel runs, parts pickups, and emergency roadside fixes had given me a chance to work the garage.
The actual clubhouse remained off limits until I’d proven myself.
Today might be that day.
It might not.
Didn’t matter.
It got me out of the stinking trailer and away from Mom’s crying.
I needed those miles between me and Wade’s empty bedroom and the notebook still wrapped in rubber bands in the bottom of my duffel.
No one would touch my stuff here.
I’d found that out the first day when a jackoff named Kurt had thought it would be funny to take my wrench.
Hawk put him in his place in a heartbeat, clocking Kurt with a right hook that knocked him flat on his ass.
That was all it took for Kurt to hand me the wrench and apologize.
I’d taken it as a sign and gotten a wrench tattooed below my right ear to commemorate the day.
The carburetor was a disaster, which told me everything I needed to know about who owned the bike and how seriously he took maintenance. “Someone needs to gouge this motherfucker in the eye.” I muttered under my breath and worked my fingers deeper into the space. The prospect in question stood near the open bay door, arms crossed and a sneer twisting his lips. He’d been that way since I walked in, but other than giving me a once over that made my skin crawl, he kept his distance.
“You say something?” Dylan, the oh-so-helpful prospect assigned to ‘help’ me, leaned across my spine.
The pressure created a claustrophobic tightness in my chest. I shrugged and rolled my shoulders back, using the shift to push him away. “You’re holding the light wrong. Move it six inches to the left. Better yet, hang it on the fucking hook like I told you the first time.”
“Hawk told me to help.” Dylan shifted the light a full two inches…in the wrong direction.
I pinched my lips together and took a breath before I exploded.
I could do better than this.
None of them had the right to rattle me. “Your other left.”
“Sorry.” He bent closer, close enough the stench of cheap hair product cut through the smell of grease and turned my stomach. “You sure you know what you’re doing? I can call Diesel.”
“You call Diesel, and he’ll tell you to let me finish.” I set the nut on the cloth beside me and blew a strand of hair out of my face. “Then he’ll stand there and watch me finish, and we’ll be in this bay an extra thirty minutes because you had doubts.”
Dylan went silent as the grave and almost as pale as a corpse. He held up his empty hand and adjusted the light again.
I grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand around so the light hit where I wanted. “Don’t move from that spot.”
He almost smiled but the expression turned sour when the prospect who’d almost ruined this bike sauntered over. “You going to take orders from someone like her?”
“Yeah?” Dylan almost shrugged but stopped when the light wavered. “She fixed Blaze’s bike in the dark. In like ten minutes. The fucking thing was coughing smoke in the middle of nowhere.” Dylan almost sounded awed by the reminder of what I could do. Almost.
