Page 21 of Twins for Three Bad Boys

We come together, hard and fast, screaming and losing ourselves in a hot, sticky mess. It’s burning, it’s beautiful, it’s glorious…

It’s never been like this before.

CHAPTER FOUR

Fletcher

I like the garage best before it fully wakes up.

Before engines bark, radios argue, and people start needing things fixed now. Early morning, it’s just steel cooling in the dark, the river out back moving patiently, and the familiar smell of oil and metal that settles into your bones if you let it.

I hum under my breath as I roll my cart out, same tune as always. Couldn’t tell you where it came from. Just know my hands fall into rhythm faster when it’s there.

I line up my tools. Wrenches first. Sockets by size. Torch checks last. Left to right. Biggest to smallest. Order matters.

I’m halfway through laying everything out when I hear movement in Bay Two.

That makes me pause.

Wayne’s not usually here this early. He claims sleep deprivation as a personality trait, but even he has limits.

I step around the corner and find him bent over an engine bay, sleeves rolled up, already deep in it.

“You’re early,” I say.

He doesn’t look up. “You’re later than usual.”

I glance at the clock. “It’s six. You’re never here at this time.”

“Broken things don’t wait.”

I snort quietly. Of course, they don’t. They also don’t ask permission, don’t care about schedules, don’t care if the owner’s not coming back for a week.

“What’s wrong with it?” I ask, leaning against the bench.

“Everything that could be,” Wayne says. “Nothing that should be.”

“Owner coming today?”

“Nope.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Next week.”

I shake my head. “You’re impossible. Always having to fix things right now.”

He finally looks up, gray eyes flat with focus. “Car needs me.”

Fair enough.

I go back to my station, humming again as I pull on my gloves. We fall into the comfortable kind of silence. The one you earn by working beside someone long enough to trust them not to fill the air just to hear themselves talk.

Wayne breaks it first. “You finish the brackets for Bear’s bike?”

“Yesterday.”

“They hold?”