Chapter 11 Definitely Not Blushing #2
We keep working. She adjusts a clamp, I check random things. She shifts closer again, and I catch the faint smell of her—clean sweat, soap, a warm hint of something I can’t name. It gets stuck in my head before I can push it away.
“You smell really good,” I murmur, barely loud enough to count.
Her wrench pauses mid-turn. “What?”
Panic hits like a truck.
“Nothing,” I blurt, way too fast. “I said the… uh…” My brain scrambles for anything usable. “The metal. The metal looks good. Also.”
Also. Really?
Raine’s mouth curves, like she’s finding this way too entertaining.
“Sure, Theo.”
Heat crawls up my neck, because I can’t stop it. I keep my eyes on the fork like it’s suddenly the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen. A minute later, she glances over—and catches me staring at her mouth, because apparently I still have no idea how to act around a woman when they’re this close.
Her voice dips, almost amused. “Do you always blush this easily, or is that just around me?”
“I—I’m not blushing.”
“Theo.” Her eyes drop to my cheeks, then back up. “You’re literally pink.”
“It’s… warm in here,” I mumble.
“We’re in a garage with the roll-up door open.”
“A warm garage.”
She huffs out a laugh, the sound so quick and real that it hits me right in the chest.
“It’s cute.” Raine says it like it’s nothing, like she didn’t just lob a grenade into my chest.
I forget how to breathe for a second. “That’s… debatable.”
She bumps my shoulder with hers, light, almost casual. “Relax.”
“Not sure that’s possible,” I mutter, but the edge in me dulls anyway.
And something does shift. My shoulders loosen. The pressure in my chest backs off. The shop noise fades into the background until it’s just tools, metal, and her beside me like she belongs there.
I nudge her knee with mine, more warning than flirt even if it doesn’t come out that way. “You know you’re not exactly helping my focus, right?”
Her eyebrow lifts, all calm confidence. “Yeah? How’s that?”
“I’m trying to pay attention to the damn bike,” I complain, tightening the bolt with a little more force than necessary, “and you keep…” I glance at her, then immediately regret having eyes. “Being here.”
Her gaze sticks on me a beat too long, like she’s weighing something.
“Maybe,” she starts, bumping my shoulder again, “I like when you lose focus.”
Yeah, I stop existing for a second.
Her hair falls forward again and brushes my arm; my hand shifts to brace the frame, and her fingers land right over mine for balance.
“Spacing still good?” Raine tips her head toward the triple tree, like she’s asking about hardware and not the fact that her hand is still resting on mine.
“It’s clean,” I respond, keeping my eyes on the alignment even when my brain wants to be anywhere else. “You did it right.”
She looks at me for a second, then gives the smallest nod, like she’s filing that away somewhere private.
After that, everything slows. We start dragging out tasks that should take minutes, stretching them into more.
Her knee stays pressed to mine. Our shoulders keep bumping as we shift around the frame, close enough that I’m hyperaware of every tiny contact and trying not to act like it.
She leans in to line something up, squinting at the bolts, lips pursed in concentration. I’m supposed to be watching the alignment.
I’m not.
“Raine?”
She hums without looking up. “Yeah?”
The words sit in my throat for half a second, then come out rougher than I mean them to. “You know I’m here for you, right? With all this. Bash. The shop. Everything.”
Her hands still. For a second, the only sound is the music and the quiet hum of the air conditioner. Then she turns her head, and we’re close enough that I can feel her breath brush my mouth. I should stop there, but I don’t.
“I don’t know if you think we’re friends or not yet,” I add, because apparently my mouth has decided tonight is confession night. “I know we’re not that close still, and you’ve had to do a lot on your own and you probably still feel like you should, but I just…”
“We’re friends, Theo.” It’s quick, like she needed to say it before I dug myself into a hole.
I blink, my brain lagging behind my heart. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Her voice stays steady, but there’s something softer underneath it. “We are.”
We stay like that, staring at each other like we’re trying not to but can’t help ourselves.
The rest of the world feels very far away.
I lean in before I can talk myself out of it.
Slow enough that she can turn away if she wants to.
She doesn’t. Her eyes flick down to my mouth and back up, and that’s all the encouragement I need.
My nose brushes hers first. Just barely. Her breath catches, chest lifting against my arm.
I hover there for one slow, torturous beat. I can feel the warmth of her lips right there. The shape. If I moved half an inch, we’d be kissing. Really kissing, not some accidental brush.
Her eyes flutter halfway closed. My heart slams against my ribs, desperate and loud.
“Raine…” I whisper.
The bell over the door explodes into sound.
We both jolt back so fast my spine almost snaps. She nearly smacks her head on the hanging light. A wrench clatters to the floor between us.
“Jesus,” she mutters, hand flying to her chest.
“Sorry,” Elias is standing in the doorway, holding up a takeout bag like a peace offering. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
Jax pokes his head in around him, eyes bright. “I absolutely meant to scare you, but I didn’t think it would work that well.”
My face is on fire. I can feel it. It’s like my soul jumped out of me when they came in and is still trying to reunite with my body.
Raine straightens, snatching a rag and wiping her hands like nothing weird just happened at all. “Shift’s over?”
“Yeah,” Elias responds, stepping fully inside. “Thought I’d bring food. I figured you may have forgotten to eat.”
“I didn’t bring food,” Jax announces, sauntering in behind him. “Just dimples. My shift doesn’t start for a couple hours.”
“Of course,” Raine deadpans.
I clear my throat and move around the other side of the bike, pretending to be absolutely fascinated by the wiring harness so I don’t have to look at anyone for a second. My heart is still doing laps. Her lips are still a ghost on mine even though they never actually touched.
We end up sitting around the workbench—Raine on a stool, Elias on an overturned crate, me on the other side of the books I just untangled, Jax on a rolling chair that he keeps shoving off and dragging back with his feet.
Elias unpacks the food: burgers, fries, a couple of bottled sodas. It smells incredible.
“Figured you wouldn’t say no to free dinner.”
Raine’s gaze drops to the food, unimpressed but interested anyway. “You figured right.”
We eat. Conversation starts light—Jax complaining about some drunk regular, Elias telling a story about a guy who tried to superglue his own cut closed, Raine snorting into her drink when Jax mimes passing out behind the bar.
I laugh in the right places, say a couple of things here and there, but mostly I’m replaying the almost-kiss on a loop. The way her eyes went half-lidded. The way she didn’t move away. The way my name sounded in her mouth when she said we were friends.
Maybe we're more. Could be more.
“You good?” Elias keeps it under his breath, nudging the toe of my shoe with his like he’s checking for a pulse.
“Yeah.” I answer too fast, already hating how obvious that is. “Just tired.”
He gives me a look that says he doesn’t quite buy it, but he lets it go.
Raine finishes her burger and leans back, rolling her shoulders out. There’s a looseness to her I haven’t seen before.
The world is still on fire, but at least tonight isn’t.
Jax wipes his hands on a napkin and tosses it into the bag. “Alright, since I brought my personality and Elias brought dinner, I’m thinking you two repay us by coming to the bar and keeping me company while I pretend to work.”
Raine snorts. “Oh, I'd very much like to see you doing anything other than being annoying.”
“Oh, gee, thank you, Sunshine." He takes a little bow from the chair. “Drinks on me. I’m feeling generous and slightly bored.”
She hesitates for half a second. Just half. Then she nods. “Yeah. I could use a drink.”
My head snaps up before I can stop it.
She’s going? With us?
“Yeah?” Jax grins wide enough to blind a person, like he’s personally responsible for this rare alignment of planets. “Look at us. Hanging out.”
Elias smiles too, the soft, relieved kind that makes it obvious he’s been hoping for this to work since the second he suggested it. “We’ll keep it low-key.” He glances at Raine like he’s trying to make the offer feel safe. “You can bail whenever you want.”
Raine doesn’t even hesitate. She points a fry at him, warning in her eyes like she’s setting a boundary line in the dirt. “If you try to make me talk about feelings, I’m leaving.”
Jax gasps like she just committed a crime in front of the whole table. “So no trust falls?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Harsh.” He shrugs it off, then turns his attention to me like he needs to double check I’m on board. “You in, Professor, or you gonna stay here and alphabetize her receipts?”
My ears burn at the reminder of the earlier mess, the paper chaos, the way she’d looked at me like she couldn’t decide if I was helpful or annoying or both.
“I’m in.” I nod, probably too fast.
Raine’s gaze slides over to me and lingers for a heartbeat. Not long, not dramatic, but long enough that I feel it anyway. There’s something there I didn’t see before tonight. Something that isn’t quite trust, not fully, but closer than it was when I walked in.
“Good,” she smiles softly, which stops us all like always. “Somebody has to make sure Jax doesn’t set the bar on fire.”
He snaps out of it, scoffing, already offended on principle. “That was one time.”
“That was zero times,” Elias corrects, standing to toss the trash, cleaning up after everyone. “Please don’t make it one.”
They keep bickering all the way to the door, Jax insisting that flames would only improve the ambiance and Elias listing fire codes like he’s reading from a laminated handbook.
It’s stupid, and familiar, and normal in a way I don’t think Raine gets a lot of, which makes me watch her more than I mean to.
She hops down from the stool, stretches like she’s trying to work the tension out of her shoulders, then grabs her jacket off the hook by the door.
She moves like she belongs in this shop, like it’s an extension of her body.
Then she pauses beside me, just for a second, and when she slides her arm into the sleeve, her elbow brushes mine.
It’s nothing. It’s also not nothing.
“Thanks.”
“For what?” I ask, even though my brain is already filling in a list.
“The books. The bike. Being here.” She shrugs one shoulder like it’s not a big deal, like she didn’t just hand me something she never hands anyone. “All of it.”
My chest does something painful and stupid, and I hate that it shows up at the worst possible times. “Anytime,” I tell her, and this time I don’t try to make it casual. “I mean it.”
She holds my gaze for a couple of seconds, close enough that I can see the little shifts in her expression, the way she decides what to show and what to keep.
The memory of her breath near my mouth flickers between us, and I don’t know if she’s thinking about it too, but her eyes don’t dart away like they normally do.
Then Jax yells from outside, loud enough for the whole block. “Let’s go, accountants!”
Raine rolls her eyes like she’s annoyed, but there’s a tiny edge of amusement in it, and she heads out after them without looking back.
I follow because I said I would, because I’m not going to be the guy who backs out, but my mind is stuck in the shop with her, stuck on that second where she thanked me like it mattered.
And the whole time we walk to the door, that thought keeps circling.
Next time, I’m not stopping halfway.
Next time, I’m kissing her.
And God help me, I think she’ll let me.