Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Ronan
The pathetic amount of clothes in my bag was a testament to how damn bare my life was. I ran. It had been a week since I left my hometown and the man who held my heart inside it.
He made his decision. Fuck, he shot our chance with a literal bullet right between the eyes.
I had to accept this. I had to move forward and understand that this was my life.
Sighing, I pulled out a pair of sweats and a tee, dropped my towel on them, and threw them over my damp body.
The apartment in Vegas wasn’t bad.
Lord knew it was better than my mom’s couch, but yet it felt emptier than her drug mule trailer. I had fixed that piece of shit while I was there. Rebuilding my mom’s world to keep her safe.
She had everything she needed to be free of my stepfather, free to push him out and lock the new locks, but she wouldn’t. She never chose herself when it came to that monster.
I asked her to move here, offering her a place in my own world. I wanted her to leave that man behind and sober the fuck up.
But just like Elias, she rejected me.
My mother chose her own hell, and Elias chose his ‘heaven.’
I tossed my duffel bag onto the couch. The rough scrape of leather against fabric echoed in the stillness of my apartment.
It was as cold and impersonal as ever, just another empty space I’d tried to make mine but never quite fit into. The lights outside flickered. The glow of the city barely reached the dim corners of the room. Nothing could drown out the memory of the fight I’d just left.
I wasn’t even sure why I bothered to unpack.
There was no real reason for it.
I wasn’t staying.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure what I was doing here. I was running from the one person I couldn’t stop thinking about, no matter how far I went. No matter how many nights I spent with other people, it was Elias I saw when I closed my eyes and Elias I heard in the silence.
I won’t mask my feelings, Ronan, because clearly that has not worked.” he said, walking me back to my truck, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. “But we can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep making a mockery of God and myself. I’m sorry.”
After that night, I packed my shit and drove away.
I fell back into the old life just as easily as I had left it. The same bullshit routine of drowning my hours in beer and cars, intent on fixing something instead of breaking it. Being a mechanic was my gift. I could take apart any vehicle and put it back together. They were simple, no complex layers that didn’t make any fucking sense.
I enjoyed the mediocrity of my habits, and I barely noticed how much time had passed since last seeing his face. The alcohol helped dull my memory of sitting in my truck crying my eyes out that night, like a bitch, all for the man that lived under the mask of his robes.
* * *
The grease under my nails was a familiar discomfort, a constant reminder that I was meant to be covered in filth. I grew up in that shitty trailer, and now my peace was pouring out in sweat to fix cars that were abandoned.
I wiped my hands on the rag hanging from my back pocket, leaning deeper under the open hood of the 1982 muscle car in front of me. I needed to focus on the engine. The hum of the city outside was barely a whisper inside the garage. Vegas was the city of lights, but the rest of the world in Nevada was a comfortable wasteland.
I was happy to crank up Pantera and lose myself in the steady rhythm of turning wrenches and cursing at stubborn bolts. I’d never admit it, but it didn’t matter how many cars I fixed. Despite my hours of slaving away on them, they’d never be the same.
Their conditions varied, but just like humans, once you were discarded, your worth was already lower no matter how much you changed yourself.
I was nearly done with the Chevy Camaro P22. She would be auctioned off to some man who didn’t throw her out for T-top leaks. The seals on this baby would last for years to come. I forced my mind to focus on the tasks at hand because every time my thoughts wandered, they went straight to him.
Elias.
Every fucking time.
I’d try to look at the engine in front of me, but there he was—his face, his damn voice. Even the sound of his name still echoed in my head like a warped tunnel with no light.
I let out a frustrated breath and turned back to the car, tightening a bolt a little too harshly until the wrench jumped out of my grip and clattered to the ground.
“Fucking hell,” I said, leaning down to snatch the escaped tool.
The garage door creaked open, and the sharp scent of fresh air flooded the room, pulling me from my spiraling thoughts.
“Hey, you still alive in here?” A voice cut through the silence, and I didn’t need to look to know who it was.
I glanced over my shoulder, my eyes narrowing as I saw Travis stepping into the garage, one hand casually resting on the doorframe. He was leaning there like he hadn’t just walked in on me pretending to fix a car, not my life.
“Yeah, yeah, just making sure I don’t kill her before she kills me,” I muttered, wiping my hands again and tossing the rag into the bin.
Travis laughed, tapping the hood of the vehicle. “Story of my fucking life, bro.”
Travis was one of the few people who still put up with me, and God knew I needed someone like that in my life right now.
A mechanic by trade, a troublemaker by nature, and one of the rare friends I kept in touch with consistently. He’d been around back when things were simpler—back when I hadn’t fucked everything up.
He was another escort and one I commonly worked with when clients asked. We did everything from bachelorette parties to threesome cheaply paid porn videos.
“Looks like you’re about five seconds away from throwing her off a cliff. Want me to help?” he grinned, his usual cocky smirk lighting up his face.
Travis was always a light in the dark. He reminded me of Elias in that way. A calm to my chaos, but right now, that just hurt more.
I rolled my eyes but let a small smirk on my lips escape. “It’s not the car that’s the problem.”
Travis raised an eyebrow, stepping further into the garage and walking toward the bench where I’d been fiddling with the engine. He knew me too well and knew better than to push me for details if I wasn’t interested in giving them.
It was no secret that I’d ‘tucked tail’ and run back here, but nobody knew the reason why.
“Wanna talk about it?” he leaned against the workbench, crossing his arms over his chest. I looked over, admiring his muscle shirt and the tightly corded muscles underneath.
Why can’t I love a man like him? A snarky bastard that can keep up with my dumbass. No, instead, I fall for a fucking priest.
I shook my head, wiping off the sweat from my brow and yanking off my shirt that clung to me like a second skin from the sweat on my body.
“Nothing to talk about. Just…tired. Been a long week.”
Travis hummed, unconvinced, trailing his tongue over his lips and admiring my body.
“Yeah? A long week of what? Fixing these beeters? Or running from your past, trying to ignore the fact that you’re still in love with the boy you went there to get back?”
I froze, my breath catching in my throat. I didn’t know my damn life was a billboard for all to see, but there it was.
The truth was stripped raw.
He didn’t flinch, didn’t look away, just stared at me with that cocky grin of his, a little too knowing for my comfort.
“I’m not an idiot, Ronan. You might be able to lie to everyone else, but I see it. I’ve always seen you. And I see that whatever happened between you two ain’t over. It’s like you’re fighting ghosts, man.”
He pushed his body up until he was sitting on my workbench.
“But I get it. You think if you leave, you can escape it. But that never works. You can run all you want, but you’re always gonna feel the weight of that shit if you don’t face it eventually. And don’t get me wrong. I am happy to see your fine ass workin’ on cars any day, but you deserve to be happy, man. Not just survivin’.”
The words hit harder than I expected. I was silent for a long moment, just standing there, feeling the weight of everything I’d been trying to hide. His eyes were on me like he wasn’t waiting for me to fix the car or myself.
He was just…there. And right now, that was all I needed.
Finally, I spoke, my voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t know how to fix it, Trav…he’s a fucking priest.”
Travis didn’t respond immediately, as opposed to his mouth dropping open wide enough for the horse flies to enter, but then he walked over to the shelf and grabbed a couple of tools.
“You don’t need to fix it all at once. You just have to stop running. Hell, we both know that’s the hardest part. In a weird way, it makes sense. A priest makes a promise to be the best person he can be so he can help others. It’s a sacrifice. You ain’t no different. Unlike us whores you don’t actually wanna be selling tricks. You sacrificed a lot to make others happy, too.”
I glanced over at him, catching the quiet sincerity in his gaze.
He wasn’t wrong.
I had been running, running from everything—especially from Elias. We had both made sacrifices to be who we were, and fate decided that the biggest sacrifice was our love. I knew I couldn’t keep going on like this. I would have to go back eventually to help my stupid mother if nothing else but…
“I’m not ready to face him,” I admitted, more to myself than to him.
Travis gave a small shrug, and his usual teasing demeanor softened for once. “You don’t have to be. But when you are, I’ll be here. Hell, I’ll probably be right next to you, throwing wrenches at whatever’s keeping you from it.”
I let out a soft laugh, the tension easing just a little, and for the first time in days, the weight on my chest lifted, if only for a moment.
“Thanks,” I muttered, turning back to the car, though I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d said. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was fighting ghosts.
But my ghosts were real.
Elias may be the one with the collar, but I was clearly his bitch on the leash.