Chapter 2 #2
Ronan nodded, then moved to help when Evan started pulling tools from the cabinet.
The way they worked together was surprisingly smooth, like muscle memory from childhood that had survived everything else.
Ronan handed Evan the socket wrench before he asked for it, anticipated what he'd need next, moved around him in the bay with the easy spatial awareness of someone who'd spent time in garages before.
I noticed the scars on his forearms when he reached for a different tool. Old marks. Faded white against tanned skin, the pattern suggesting restraints rather than accidents. Parallel lines that spoke of being held down, bound, kept from moving or fighting or escaping.
Whatever he'd survived, it had left marks. Not just on his skin. Deeper. In the way he moved, the way he held himself, the way he seemed to exist half in this world and half in whatever nightmare he'd escaped from.
Ronan glanced up, caught me watching.
Our eyes met across the garage.
I should've looked away. Should've gone back to the clutch assembly like a professional who wasn't cataloging the damage written across another man's body.
Instead I just stood there, caught.
Then he turned back to whatever Evan was saying, and I felt the absence of his attention like something physical.
I forced my focus back to the clutch assembly in front of me. This wasn't the time. Wasn't the place. I was still walking on broken glass with Evan, still proving that I could be trusted, still earning back every scrap of credibility my father had burned to ash.
The morning stretched on. Cal finished with the Chevy and moved to a Honda with brake issues.
Mason started on a different project, some custom work for a client who wanted performance upgrades.
Evan got Ronan's truck hooked up to the diagnostic computer and started running codes while Ronan stood nearby, patient and watchful.
And I kept working. Kept my head down. Kept my hands busy. Kept pretending I wasn't acutely aware of every movement Ronan made, every word he spoke, every moment he existed in the same space as me.
“Oxygen sensor,” Evan called out from the bay after about twenty minutes. “Needs replacing. I can do it now if you've got time to wait.”
“Yeah,” Ronan said. “I've got time.”
He moved to lean against the workbench near me.
We existed in the same space for maybe thirty seconds without speaking. Without looking at each other. Without acknowledging that there was tension here, attraction here, the pull of two broken things recognizing damage in each other and wondering if that made them compatible or just doubly fucked.
I heard Evan moving in the bay. Heard the clink of tools, the soft curse when a bolt didn't want to come loose, the steady rhythm of someone who knew what they were doing and didn't need supervision.
“You're gonna strip that bolt,” Cal called out to Mason from across the garage, not even looking up from his own work. “I can hear you forcing it from here.”
“I'm not forcing anything,” Mason shot back, though the defensive edge in his voice suggested otherwise. “This block's just old as hell and rusted to shit.”
“Old doesn't mean you get to muscle it like a caveman.” Cal straightened up from the Honda, wiping his hands on a rag that was already filthy. “Try penetrating oil. Novel concept, I know.”
“I did use penetrating oil, jackass.”
“When? Last week?”
Mason flipped him off without looking up from the engine block. “Maybe if you spent less time giving advice and more time actually fixing that brake line, we'd get out of here before midnight.”
“Brake line's fine. It's the caliper that's being a bastard.” Cal wandered over to Mason's workbench anyway, peering over his shoulder with the critical eye of a man who lived to find fault. “And you're using the wrong socket size.”
“The hell I am.”
“You are. That's a thirteen millimeter. You need a twelve.”
There was a pause while Mason checked. Then a muttered curse. “Fuck.”
Cal's grin was smug enough to be audible. “What was that?”
“I said you're still a jackass.”
“But a correct jackass.”
I caught the corner of Ronan's mouth twitching, just barely, and felt my chest do this stupid thing where it tightened and eased at the same time.
Because that micro-expression was the first crack in the armor I'd seen from him all morning, the first hint that underneath all that exhaustion and vigilance there was still a man who could find humor in the everyday bickering of two mechanics who'd been working together too long.
“They always like this?” Ronan asked, voice low enough that it was clearly directed at me.
“Every day,” I said, keeping my eyes on the clutch even though every instinct I had wanted to look at him. “Sometimes twice a day if Mason's feeling particularly stubborn.”
“Which is always,” Cal interjected, proving that his hearing was better than we'd given him credit for.
“You're one to talk,” Mason said. “Remember last month when you spent three hours insisting that sports car had a faulty alternator when it was just a loose battery cable?”
“That was a diagnostic process.”
“That was you being too proud to admit you were wrong.”
Ronan made a sound that might have been a laugh, low and rough like gravel shifting. The sound did things to my pulse that had no business happening in a professional environment.
“I like them,” Ronan said, and there was warmth in his voice that hadn't been there before. The guarded edges had softened just slightly, enough that I could hear the man underneath the armor. “They're real.”
Real. I understood what he meant by that.
No performative politeness. No careful navigation of supernatural politics.
No weighing every word for hidden meaning or threat.
Just two men who worked with their hands and gave each other shit because that was the language of affection between people who trusted each other.
“They're idiots,” I said, but there was affection threading through my voice too. “But they're good at what they do.”
“So are you.”
The words were simple. Matter-of-fact. But the way Ronan said them made me look up before I could stop myself.
He was watching me. His dark eyes tracked my hands where they worked on the clutch assembly, followed the movement up to my face, stayed there.
I forgot how to breathe properly.
“Thanks,” I managed, and hated how rough my voice came out.
From the back bay, I heard Evan's quiet chuckle.
When I glanced over, he was leaning against Ronan's truck, arms crossed, watching Cal and Mason bicker over the correct way to remove a seized bolt.
There was ease in his posture I hadn't seen in weeks.
The Head Alpha weight had dropped off his shoulders, replaced by the simple pleasure of watching people he cared about be themselves.
It struck me then—this was what pack looked like when it worked.
Not the formal hierarchy, not the politics and territory disputes, but this.
People existing in the same space, doing work that mattered, finding humor in the small frustrations, trusting each other enough to be honest instead of careful.
I'd spent a month trying to earn my way into that trust. Trying to prove I could be part of this instead of the threat I'd been raised to be.
And Ronan was watching me like he understood exactly what that cost.
“You rebuild that clutch yourself?” he asked, nodding toward the assembly in my hands.
“Yeah. Original was shot. This one's from a salvage yard, but I went through it. Replaced the pressure plate, resurfaced the flywheel, new throw-out bearing.” I heard myself talking and couldn't quite stop. “It'll outlast the rest of the transmission now.”
“You do good work.”
There it was again. That simple acknowledgment, delivered without flattery or agenda. Just observation stated as fact.
My hands steadied on the clutch. “You do too. Saw how you handed Evan tools earlier. You've spent time in garages.”
“Some.” Ronan's expression shifted, memory flickering behind his eyes before he shuttered it. “Long time ago.”
I wanted to ask. Wanted to push just enough to see if he'd let me in, let me understand what he'd survived and whether any of it could be fixed or if he was just carrying damage too deep to reach.
But I'd learned decades ago that pushing broken things just broke them faster.
“Well,” I said instead, “you ever want to pick it back up, I've got space here.”
The offer came out before I'd fully thought it through. Before I'd considered what Evan would think, what it would mean to have Ronan here more than once a week, what it would do to my carefully maintained focus to have him in my space on a regular basis.
Ronan's eyes widened slightly. Surprise, maybe. Or suspicion. Like he was waiting for the catch, the hidden cost, the moment where the offer turned into a transaction.
“Just saying,” I added, keeping my voice level. “If you wanted.”
“Cal, I swear to god, if you don't stop backseat wrenching—” Mason's voice cut through the moment, loud and exasperated.
“I'm helping!”
“You're hovering. There's a difference.”
Ronan's mouth quirked again, that almost-smile that felt like a victory. “I'll think about it,” he said quietly. Then louder, to the garage at large. “You two need a marriage counselor or something?”
Cal barked out a laugh. “Nah, this is how we show affection.”
“By being assholes to each other?” Ronan asked.
“Exactly.”
Mason pointed a socket wrench at Cal. “Don't listen to him. I'm delightful.”
“You're tolerable at best.”
Even Evan was grinning now, and the sight of it made the tension I'd been carrying in my shoulders ease slightly.
This was good. This was normal. This was the kind of moment that reminded me why I'd chosen to stay, to fight, to try to build a life here instead of running from the wreckage my father had left behind.
And Ronan was part of it, leaning against my workbench with his guard lowered just enough to let the warmth in, and I was trying very hard not to think about what it would mean if that guard ever came down completely.
Ronan left forty minutes later, truck fixed, bill paid, nothing dramatic or noteworthy except the way my pulse had kicked up when he'd walked past me on his way out and our shoulders had almost brushed.
The garage felt emptier after he was gone.
I stood there, hands still on the clutch assembly, and tried to pull my focus back to the work.
“You good?” Evan's voice came from behind me, careful and neutral in a way that meant he'd noticed and was trying to decide whether to call me on it.
“Yeah,” I said, which wasn't quite a lie but wasn't quite the truth either.
I turned to face him, and the expression on his face made my chest tighten. Not anger. Worse. Concern. The careful, measured concern of someone who was watching for signs that I was about to make another mistake he'd have to clean up.
He looked at me. Then he glanced toward the door Ronan had just walked through and back to me, and the understanding that crossed his face felt like a judgment I hadn't earned the right to defend against.
“He's been through hell,” Evan said quietly. “Still going through it, probably.”
“I know,” I said, meeting his eyes because looking away would have been an admission of guilt I wasn't ready to claim yet.
Evan nodded, slow and deliberate, and went back to his bay.
I stood there in the garage, surrounded by tools and engines and the everyday machinery of normal life, and tried not to think about how nothing felt normal anymore.
I was still earning back trust. Still proving I wasn't my father. Still walking the razor edge of being useful versus being a liability.
Getting involved with Ronan would be the fastest way to lose everything I'd clawed back.
I knew that.
Understood it on a level that went bone-deep.
But knowing didn't make the pull any weaker. Didn't make me stop noticing. Didn't make me stop wondering what it would be like to stand beside someone that broken and see if we could hold each other together or if we'd just tear each other apart faster.
I went back to work. Let the familiar rhythm of disassembly and diagnosis drown out the thoughts I couldn't afford to have.