Chapter 5
Chapter Five
brOCK
I look up from the transmission part I’m putting back together while sitting down on the stool. The sun wasn’t even up when I walked into the shop this morning, but I knew I had a few more days until Saige returned home. Last night, I was able to pick her up after work and take her out for ice cream, which was not what I asked for, but it was also better than nothing. So I didn’t make a big deal out of it. However, I am getting a bit pissed, and I know I will eventually have to go to the lawyer to have Karla take me seriously. I just wish we could figure it out like mature adults.
The music plays in the background so softly I don’t even know it’s playing. I stop what I’m doing to look out the window, and everything halts when I do. Everleigh is walking by the shop again, something she’s done for the past few days. It started three days ago when I was working, and it was as if a magnetic force made me stop what I was doing and look up, and that was when I saw her. The pit of my stomach burned, and that feeling moved up through my body, and I wanted to scream out my rage. But she didn’t deserve my rage. She deserves nothing from me. She did what she needed to do, and I did what I needed to do. I never thought she would leave me the way she did. Never thought she wouldn’t understand why I did it. I watch her pass with her head down, heading to the bakery and walking in the door. Only when she’s inside do I turn back and focus on the parts in front of me.
Now here I am, working in my father’s garage and keeping up with the legacy of it. It was not what I ever wanted to be doing. I thought I would have my own architecture firm at this point. My goal was always to do my internship and then just start small at first and build it up, but fate had other plans for me. Plans I said I would never make, but when everything went to shit, I knew I had no choice but to try to save the only thing I could, and that was my father’s shop. He taught me everything I knew, and when I was ten, I would come out on the weekends and help him out until I turned thirteen, when he saw I could do an oil change and not fuck things up. But when I turned fifteen, I started tinkering with transmissions.
I was also really good at designing car details, which is why I went into architecture. I loved drawing and designing things and then seeing them all come together. After drawing, building things was always my favorite part. I’m the transmission specialist in the area, obviously, but more than that. A couple of us focus solely on transmissions, and I’m one of them. Something the Cartwrights couldn’t bury was my name in other counties. I have a waiting list of people to work with me, all of which are old cars that need rebuilding. This list has grown even more in the past couple of years.
The phone rings beside me, and I look down to see it’s Saige. I press the FaceTime button and wait for her face to fill the screen.
“Good morning, baby girl.” I smile at her face and see that it looks like she just got up. “How did you sleep?”
“Good,” she mumbles as she rubs her eye with her palm.
“That’s good.” I grab the cup of coffee that has grown cold since I got here. “Did you have good dreams?”
“Yeah, I dreamed of the beach,” she says, as if her hints are subtle, and I laugh. “You know, like the one we went to the last time.”
“I remember,” I say of the trip we took this year on her spring break when it was my week. We spent a week in St. Thomas, and she loved every single second of being on the beach. She would wake up and be ready. She even learned how to surf and then wanted to go scuba diving, but I drew the line at that and instead just let her snorkel.
“Can we go there again?” she asks.
“I think I can maybe see if we can go when I get you at Christmas,” I say, and her face lights up.
“Saige, let’s go,” Karla says in the background, and my dick cringes. “I’ve called you three times already.”
“I’m talking to Dad.” She looks over at her.
“Your breakfast is on the table, and it’s getting cold,” she scolds, and Saige sighs.
“Okay, Daddy, I love you.” She puts her whole face on the camera and gives me a kiss.
“Love you too, baby girl,” I say. “You have a good day at school and then call me later, yeah?”
“Okay,” she agrees and disconnects with me. I finish the cold coffee when the front door opens, and I hear the sound of the bells.
“Morning,” Ryan says from the front as he walks into the garage on his way to the break room, his cooler in his hand. “What time did you get here?”
“About five,” I mumble as I take my tools out.
He doesn’t say anything until he returns from the break room. “You almost finished with that?” he asks, and I nod.
“I’m almost done with the paint job also,” he informs me. I hired him when he came to town a couple of years ago. He didn’t know how to fix anything but could do a mean paint job on a car. He is also great at design, which is something he’s getting more and more comfortable doing.
“Once we get this in and Eddie finishes the engine, it’ll be done,” I say of the Camaro someone brought to us a couple of months ago. It was literally just a shell of a car; weeds were growing between the steering wheel and the front window.
“When are the seats coming in?” Ryan asks as the bells ring again, letting us know someone has come in.
“I have to check,” I reply, and he leans against the table.
“You need to hire someone to do paperwork,” he reminds me. “It’s a shit show out there.”
“Why do I need to hire someone?” I ask. “You are all grown-ass men. Can’t you put things away neatly?”
“You just answered your own question. We are grown-ass men. We don’t do any of that shit.”
He laughs as Eddie comes in. “I need a coffee and a donut, bad.”
Ryan laughs at him, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up. “You mean you need to go and make sure Everleigh remembers your name.”
The minute they say her name, the tool falls from my hand onto the metal table, the sound making the two sets of eyes come to me. I don’t say anything because the bell rings again, and we hear two more voices as they walk to the back, only one of them has their lunch box.
“Are we going for coffee?” Eddie asks once the other two walk in.
“Let’s go, lover boy.” Ryan pushes off and looks at Tony. “He apparently needs a coffee so bad.”
Tony just laughs at him. “I’m going to need you three to stop fucking around and get to work.”
“It’s not even eight yet,” Tony reminds me. “I’ll get you a coffee and a donut.” He slaps my shoulder. “That should get you in a better mood.”
“What will get me in a better mood is moving cars faster.” I look at the three cars that are up on lifts. “That is going to make me feel so much better.”
“On it, boss,” Eddie assures me. “Just after we get coffee.”
I grunt at them and ignore the urge to slam my hand on the table in front of me for two reasons. One, all the small parts will probably go flying, and finding them will be a pain in my fucking ass, and two, I am trying to tell myself that I don’t give a shit what she does or who she does, but I’m also failing at that miserably.
I look down at the parts in front of me. I haven’t thought about Everleigh for the past eight years. I pushed her to the back of my mind and refused to give her any more headspace. That doesn’t mean it worked the whole time. Sometimes she would sneak into my mind, regardless of how much I didn’t want her to. Like on her birthday. Even though I forced myself not to, I would wonder what she was doing. On the day when we started dating is another one, and the day she walked away from me. That day I’m usually my most angry—unless Saige is with me, then the anger simmers at the edge until I can give in to it. The first year after she left me was the worst. She was the only thing I thought about morning, noon, and night. When I was awake, I wanted to call her, and in my dreams, I wanted to call her back to me. Both of them had the same results. I was left without her, and as the days turned into months and then turned into years, the longing for her turned into hatred.
The boys return ten minutes later, laughing at something Eddie told her. Ryan puts the cup of coffee on my table with a donut on a paper towel beside it. “Let’s get the doors open,” I mumble, ignoring how good the donut smells.
If it was Ms. Maddie who made them, I would, without a second thought, take a bite of it, but knowing her hands made them, there is no way in fuck I’m touching it.
We work the whole day. I get up to stretch my legs after three, once I’m done with the transmission, before I walk into the office and decide to clean it up a bit. Grabbing all the papers on the desk, I put them in order in front of me. I’m getting up out of my chair and walking to the front of the shop when I see her again. This time, she’s walking toward me, looking straight ahead. She hasn’t changed one bit since I last saw her. Her hips sway side to side as the wind blows through her black hair.
She looks over at the garage when she gets closer and smiles at one of the guys, waving at whoever the fuck is talking to her. My hand goes into a fist, and the paper in it is crushed and crumpled.
“Do you love me, Brock?” I hear her voice in my head . “Do you really, really love me?”
“I love you more than life itself, Ever,” I said as I kiss her neck after, feeling her heart beating under my lips. “More than life itself, baby,” I repeat, and I always, always get the smile. The smile that made my day. The smile that would make my pulse pick up. The smile that I would wake up to and go to bed to. The smile I thought I would be able to see every single day of my life. Until the smile was ripped away from me, and I yearned for it.
The side door to the garage opens, and Ryan comes in with a paper in his hand. “This job is done on my part.” He hands me the paper, his eyes going to my hand that is still gripping the other papers. His eyes go from me to the window as he watches Everleigh walk by it. “You good?”
“I’d be better if everyone fucking stopped giving that—” I try to calm myself down. “That woman more attention than she needs.”
“What’s the story with her?” he asks, his interest piqued.
“There is no fucking story,” I snap. “I need you guys to focus on what needs to be focused on. You want to chase her pussy, do it on your own time.” The thought of one of them actually chasing her pussy almost pushes me over the edge. Before I say something I know I’m going to regret, I swipe the paper out of his hand and storm back again to my office; the windows face the back, so there is no way I’d even be tempted to look out and see her walk by. It’s a good thing I don’t venture out of my circle because there is no way I’d ever let Everleigh back into it. Not in this lifetime.