Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 68716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
“Lock the doors,” I say. “Stay off the roads if it ices again. Raise hell about that heat. And Holley?”
“Yeah?”
“Stop sleeping in the car.”
Her throat tightens. “Okay.”
I release her slowly, fingers trailing down her arm until I have to let go. I pull my helmet on, strap it, then start the bike. The engine roars to life, a familiar vibration under me that has always felt like freedom.
Today it feels like leaving something important behind.
She stands there in the melt and slush, one hand wrapped around herself, the other lifted in a small wave.
I roll forward, then stop long enough to look back over my shoulder.
She’s still there. Watching. Waiting. Not asking me to stay. Not demanding anything I told her I can’t give.
Just trusting that this is not the last time.
I raise two fingers off the grip in a small salute.
“See you, Holley,” I say, even though she can’t hear me over the engine.
Then I ride.
The cold hits hard at first, knifing through my jeans, sneaking down my collar, turning my fingers numb even inside my gloves. The snowbanks blur past in dirty white streaks. The sky is bright, forcing me to squint. I lean into the road, into the familiar rhythm of the bike beneath me.
After a few miles, my mind quiets.
There’s still a knot in my chest, but it’s not panic. Not regret. Just… weight. The good kind, if that’s a thing. The kind you feel when you’ve picked up something you’re not putting down again, even if you’re not carrying it every day.
I think about the way she looked standing in the doorway that first night, half-frozen and half-defiant. The way she watched me in the shower like she didn’t mean to look but couldn’t stop. The way she admitted she wasn’t healed and didn’t try to pretend otherwise.
I think about her saying it makes her feel safer knowing I won’t ask her to be my everything.
I think about the way she said she wanted to keep me anyway.
A smile tugs at my mouth under the helmet.
“Any time,” I’d told her.
And I mean it.
She can walk into my world whenever she wants. And whether I’m ready for it or not, I already know— I’ll be waiting.
Fourteen
Tony
The first thing I smell when I open the garage door is old oil and rubber.
Home.
Not the cabin. Not the quiet mornings with the fire still glowing and Holley curled against me like she forgot how to sleep anywhere else.
No—this is Salemburg. My Salemburg.
Concrete floor, tools scattered like a language only I speak, bike parts, car parts laid out on the workbench in the exact pattern I left them in before the weekend. The old radio hums static before finding a classic rock station. The overhead lights flicker once before buzzing to life in that comforting way that says the world here hasn’t changed.
I wish I could say the same for me.
Two weeks.
Fourteen damn days.
And not a single word from her.
I drop my bag by the wall, shoulders tight, jaw clenching at the thought. It shouldn’t bother me this much. I told her not to think too hard about us. Told her this wasn’t a commitment. Told her to breathe easy.
Hell, I was the one who made that boundary.
So why the hell am I pacing my own garage like a caged dog because she didn’t reach out?
I throw the switch on the small space heater in the corner—it’ll take an hour to warm the place—and shrug off my jacket. Underneath is a black shirt I’ve worn to threads, and I catch a faint whiff of something that doesn’t belong here.
Her shampoo.
Damn it.
I’m losing it.
I shake it off, head to the lift where a Pontiac GTO waits. The one that I’ve been fighting with for a week. I squat beside it and get to work, hands moving automatically because I’ve done this for half my life.
I should be thinking about getting this job finished and moving onto the next. I have a Camaro waiting for a custom exhaust, an eighties Blazer needing tires, and a newer Mustang with a weird code flashing intermittently that none of us can seem to pin down the true problem with.
I’m thinking about Holley instead.
The way she looked half-asleep in my shirt. The way she said my name like it meant safety. The way she didn’t crumble when I told her who I was and wasn't. The way she stood in the snow when I rode away, not asking for anything, not begging for more, just letting me go.
I didn’t realize how much those little things were carved into my chest until now.
The wrench slips.
“Son of a—” I hiss, shaking out my hand.
Focus, Tony. I want to kick my own ass. I try. God knows I try.
But it’s the same every damn day since I got back. At first, I chalked it up to a shock to the system—going from two days straight of heat and connection to the constant noise of the clubhouse, the work, the runs, the bikes, the everything.