Chapter 18 LEO
LEO
“Goddamn it.” I sucked in a pained breath and gritted my teeth.
“Call an ambulance,” Dash barked.
“No.” I stopped Emmett before he could take out his phone. “I’m fine. Just . . . give me a sec.”
“I’m calling anyway,” Presley said, moving out of the group of guys all standing around, staring at me.
I wasn’t hurt, was I? My eyes were swimming in my head thanks to a massive jolt of terror and adrenaline.
“I gotta sit.” I shuffled toward a rolling stool.
Dash kept hold of my arm, steadying me, then crouched in front of me. “Breathe.”
I dropped my elbows to my knees and hung my head. When my heart finally stopped thrashing against my sternum, I shook my head. “Fuck.”
Presley’s hand landed on my shoulder. There were tears streaming down her face.
“I’m fine.”
She nodded. “The ambulance is coming.”
I scanned my arms and legs. They were whole and attached. Then I ran a hand through my hair, checking for blood. “I’m not hurt.”
My shoulder had taken the brunt of the crash, but it would heal.
“You might have a concussion.”
I didn’t, but she wanted the ambulance, so I was going to let the EMTs check me out because it would make her feel better.
Every person in the shop looked pale faced and terrified. Tyler, one of our mechanics who did the routine work, was shaking. Behind him stood a customer who must have been in the waiting room. His dark hair was parted in a harsh line above his left eyebrow and like Tyler, his face was pale.
I didn’t have time to worry about either of them because—Christ—I could have just fucking died.
What had just happened to me was a mechanic’s worst fear. Equipment wasn’t infallible. Tools were defective. Latches broke. Safety mechanisms failed.
I really couldn’t die. I had things to live for.
The past month had been the best in my life. Seraphina was changing and growing. She’d started to coo and babble and damn it, I needed to hear her first word.
And Cass was a miracle. My miracle. Every day I loved her more. Every damn day. There was a future with her and damn it, I couldn’t die.
I swallowed hard, the reality of the past five minutes sinking in.
“What happened?” Dash asked.
I sighed with the breeze drifting through the open bay doors.
June had brought green grass, sweet spring air and yellow sunshine. Cass wanted to plant flowers tonight after work in one of the beds in the front yard. I’d promised to help.
I could have died and missed the flowers.
Maybe I did have a concussion—I couldn’t seem to organize my thoughts.
“Leo,” Isaiah said, standing at my side.
Right. Dash had asked me a question.
“I don’t know what happened. I grabbed the jack, the new one, and got it under the rear axle. It worked fine. I’ve been using it for weeks.”
We had larger stations for the routine jobs, where the guys could pull a car inside, hoist it up and crank out an oil change or tire rotation.
But for the Firebird, we’d been using the portable jacks, like we did all the time.
This was a side project and not one that was going to disrupt the regular jobs.
“There was a strange noise. I was under the rear wheel, threading through the wiring for the air ride, and I heard a dribbling sound, so I slid out.”
If I’d hesitated for another two seconds, I might have been crushed.
The jack had collapsed and slammed into the jack stand I’d put in as a safety measure. But the spot where I’d been lying was beside a piece of jagged metal that we’d yet to pull out because it was in a spot hard to reach.
That metal would have sliced open my throat.
On the concrete floor beside the Firebird and the jack was a pool of hydraulic fluid. That was what I’d heard dribbling. A seal must have blown.
“Think it wrecked the car?” I asked.
“Who gives a shit about the car?” Presley shrieked, then dropped her face into her hands as her shoulders shook.
Emmett went to her, tucking her into his side as she cried.
My chest tightened and I leaned forward again. Better to think about the car, the gift I wanted to give to Cass, than the fact that had I acted any slower, if that dripping noise hadn’t alerted me to something being wrong, I’d be leaving the garage in a body bag.
The sound of a wailing siren filled the air.
Presley sniffled and pushed away from Emmett, then bolted for the bay door to meet the ambulance as its tires screeched into the parking lot.
I blew out a long breath, then stood, taking a moment before I attempted a step. Maybe Pres was right to have my head checked out. I was struggling to focus and my footsteps through the shop felt heavy.
The EMTs rushed to me, one of them taking an arm to help me to the back of the ambulance. They checked me out, head to toe, and when they deemed me fine, just shaken up, we all relaxed. Tyler returned to the garage to get back to work, and the customer disappeared to the waiting room.
“We could take you to the hospital, just in case,” one of the EMTs said.
“Nah.” I stepped down from the ambulance, feeling more like myself now that the adrenaline had ebbed. “Thanks.”
Dash said goodbye to them as I walked toward Presley and pulled her into my arms.
She hugged me tight. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
“Okay.”
“You could have died.” She started crying again. “What would we have done if you had died?”
“I’m not dead.”
She squeezed, then let me go, swiping furiously at her face.
Then Dash was at her side, taking his turn to offer her some comfort.
Emmett and Isaiah surrounded me, our huddle close under the bright afternoon sun. None of us had much to say.
My eyes wandered down the parking lot toward the clubhouse.
It was there, always there. A constant reminder. For years, I’d pull into the parking lot and stare at that building, feeling like the reason I was so lonely was because of the boards on the windows and the chain padlocked on its doors.
Not anymore. It was just a building. It was the past.
Once, years ago, I’d made the offhand comment that we should burn the place down. It had been right after Draven’s death. I’d muttered the words and instantly regretted them.
But they were true. I wanted to walk over, torch it and never look back.
Maybe that was just the accident taking its toll. The fear of death and a life cut short.
Whatever the reason, I wanted to take a chainsaw to the trees where I’d taken women and fucked them against the bark.
I wanted to smash every fixture in the party room, blacking it out and with it the drinking and the drugs and the fights.
I wanted to fill in the foundation with rubble and bury it in the earth, just like the bodies of the men who we’d killed in the clubhouse basement.
I wanted to come here and not see the reminder of who I’d been.
Cass deserved better than me and the sins I’d committed in that building. I hadn’t had enough time with her. We hadn’t had enough time for me to make good on her words.
She thought I was a good man and damn it, I wasn’t.
But I wanted to be.
“Leo, you okay?” Emmett asked.
I blinked away the tears, suddenly realizing why the building looked so blurry, and shook my head. “We should tear it down.”
“Huh?”
“The clubhouse. We should tear it down.”
Dash jerked, his eyes widening. Then his jaw clenched.
That had been his home too. It had been his legacy and a place where Draven had once been king. My words hadn’t just shocked, they’d slashed.
But I hated it. Today, I hated that building, dark as the stain on my soul.
“You should go home,” Dash said, his voice carrying an edge. Yeah, he was pissed. I would be too if I were in his shoes. If I were thinking clearly. That was his father’s building and I’d just told him to tear it down.
Shit. I nodded. “Yeah.”
It was nonsense. Tomorrow I’d replay my words and realize that I sounded like a fucking asshole. Because there’d been good times in that place too. Brotherhood and family.
What the hell was wrong with me? My head hurt and I couldn’t quite make sense of, well . . . anything.
“You shouldn’t be riding,” Presley said. “I’ll call Cass and have her come pick you up.”
“No. I don’t want her to know about this.”
Her eyes bulged. “But—”
“No one tells her.”
Cass didn’t need that kind of worry. I was fine. The jack would be replaced with one that actually jacked up a damn car, and we’d forget this happened.
“I’ll follow behind,” Emmett said before Presley could object to my decision.
“I’m fine.” I started for the garage to get my keys.
He stayed behind me as we left the shop, climbed on our bikes and drove across town. But I didn’t go home.
I couldn’t go home yet. After that kind of scare, I wasn’t going to put off the conversation that I’d been prolonging for a month. Besides, Cass would take one look at my face and know something wasn’t right. I needed a little while longer to steady up.
The last thing I wanted was her worrying each day I walked out the door for work. I wasn’t putting that on her for the rest of my working life.
I parked on the street outside of the county courthouse and when Emmett stopped behind me, I motioned for him to stay on his bike.
“What are we doing here?”
“I need to talk to Dale.”
“Okay.” He balanced on his bike. “I’ll wait.”
“You don’t need to.”
He pulled out his phone and gave it his attention. No discussion. He was waiting.
“Thanks.”
“Good luck.” He chuckled. “Never met a man so determined to get himself killed so many times in a single day.”
I grinned. There was a chance Dale might murder me for what I was about to do. Some risks were worth taking. Leaving Emmett on his bike, I started up the wide, sweeping steps to the front door.
Dale worked as the director of Human Resources for the county. It took me a few minutes to navigate the labyrinth of hallways to find his office. With one fortifying breath, I shoved open the door.
“Can I help you?” the woman at the front desk asked.
“I’m looking for Dale Cline.”
She gave me a sideways glance, her eyes raking over my tattoos.