Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dawson had both hands inside the Audi’s engine bay when Wyatt leaned against the doorframe behind him.
“Three to four weeks on the condenser assembly.” Wyatt had the phone against his shoulder, one hand on the frame. “That’s if they have the right housing in stock.”
“Then quote him dealer pricing and let him decide.”
Dawson nodded. Wyatt went back to his desk, and through the open door, Dawson could hear him pick up the next call without a pause.
Wyatt ran the garage the way their father had, one thing at a time, no wasted motion, no wasted words.
The three of them could go a whole day in the shop and say forty sentences between them, and the work got done.
Ethan was under a John Deere in the first bay, just his boots and calves visible.
The radio played something with fiddles and a woman singing about a highway.
Dawson turned back to the Audi. The pulled radiator sat on the bench beside the mangled bumper support, and underneath, he’d found a bent tie rod that hadn’t been visible in the dark.
The deer had come from the driver’s side, which meant Leo had seen it for maybe half a second before impact.
Not enough time to brake and have it do any good.
He pulled up the parts list on his phone and started typing the order. Radiator, condenser, headlight assembly, bumper cover, and tie rod end. He’d have to source the hood through a dealer in Chicago, which meant another week tacked onto the timeline. Four weeks, minimum. Closer to five.
He thought about calling Leo. Texting was easier, so he texted.
Parts ordered. 4-5 weeks. Hood’s coming from Chicago.
That’s longer than 3 weeks.
Found more damage underneath. Tie rod’s bent.
Is that expensive?
Insurance covers it. There’s a couple other things I found that aren’t related to the accident. I can work up an estimate on that and send it over.
Might as well get it all taken care of since you already have the car. Thanks.
That’s exactly what Dawson had figured. He put his phone away and stared at the Audi’s engine bay.
A German luxury sedan in a shop that ran mostly American trucks and farm equipment.
It looked wrong in here—too sleek, too clean, other than the damage, every component precision-fitted in a way that made his usual work feel like carpentry compared to watchmaking.
Leo’s whole life was probably like that.
Polished where Dawson’s was rough. Expensive where Dawson’s was functional.
He picked up the shop rag and wiped his hands again, even though they were already clean.
The Keller barn sat a half mile off the county road at the end of a gravel drive that turned to mud when it rained and dust when it didn’t.
Dawson pulled up beside Justin’s truck and killed the engine.
The barn doors were open, both of them swung wide, and the pulling rig was parked under the overhead lights with its engine cover off.
Justin was somewhere inside. Dawson could hear the radio, classic rock, the kind of station that played the same forty songs in rotation, and nobody minded. He grabbed the six-pack from the passenger seat and walked in.
The barn smelled like diesel and hay dust, the way it had since high school.
Justin’s workbench ran along the east wall: tools on a pegboard, coffee cans of bolts sorted by size, a feed-store calendar two years out of date.
Dawson had spent more hours in here than he could count.
It was the one place outside the garage where his brain went quiet.
Justin was sitting on an overturned bucket next to the rig, eating an apple and reading something on his phone. He looked up when Dawson set the beer on the workbench.
“Throttle linkage,” he said, and took another bite.
“What about it?”
“Felt sticky at the pull. Figured you’d want to look before Oshkosh.”
Dawson grabbed a creeper and rolled under the rig. A little grime in the pivot, nothing a cleaning and a fresh bushing wouldn’t fix. He started working, and the noise in his head quieted the way it always did when he had a job in front of him.
Justin didn’t talk for a while. He was usually chatty, but when Dawson was in the zone he kept his mouth shut. The radio played. Dawson’s wrench clicked. Somewhere outside, a dog barked twice and stopped.
“Fairgrounds called,” Justin said. “They’re booking the fall exhibition. October fourteenth. You in?”
Dawson’s hands went still on the wrench.
The fairgrounds. Leo’s grip on his arm during the pull, and Dawson not pulling away. The soft skin on the inside of his forearm prickled, and he shoved his sleeve up and went back to the bolt.
“Yeah. I’ll be there.”
A pause from above. Then the crunch of Justin taking another bite of his apple. “Cool.”
Dawson freed the linkage and pulled it out, turning the part under the light.
The pivot was scored on one side, not bad enough to replace, but enough to feel.
He grabbed a wire brush from the bench and started cleaning it, focused on the rhythm of bristles on metal while the radio switched to Springsteen.
It didn’t matter what his body did when Leo stood close or spoke in that careless, too-fast voice.
Leo Vargas was a professional hockey player who thought Port Haven was a pit stop on the way back to somewhere better.
He’d said it himself—it’s not Orlando, it’s not what I’m used to—and Dawson had heard exactly what that meant.
Port Haven was a sentence Leo was serving.
Dawson had built his whole life here, and he wasn’t going to risk it for someone who was already looking for the exit.
And even if Leo stayed, it wouldn’t change the fact that Dawson was thirty-six years old, and no one but Justin knew his truth. He’d held a man’s hand where anyone who knew him might see or brought a man home.
Whenever he needed company other than his right hand, Dawson found a reason to head to Milwaukee or Madison to visit one of his favorite bars. He’d get a hotel room and whoever he’d spent the night with was usually gone before he woke the next morning.
If he let someone in, someone from here, the shields he’d built for himself would collapse. At this point, he’d been lying to everyone for so long it was easier to keep up the ruse rather than hurt his family by making them think he didn’t trust them with his truth.
He cleaned the last of the grime from the pivot and held it up to the light. Smooth. He rolled back under the rig and started reinstalling it.
When he finished, Justin handed him one of the beers he’d brought, and they sat on the tailgate of Justin’s truck watching the sun drop behind the treeline. Cold and cheap and tasting like every other evening they’d spent here—good in a way that had nothing to do with the beer.
“Ski was talking about Leo at The Penalty Box last night,” Justin said.
Dawson took a drink and didn’t say anything. “Oh?”
“Said he’s fast. Like, scary fast.” Justin picked at the label on his bottle. “Guess a bunch of the guys helped him move into his apartment last week. Just showed up unannounced and started hauling shit inside. Ski said he looked like he didn’t know how to deal with everyone in his space.”
“He’ll get used to it.”
“Yeah.” Justin took a drink. “Ski likes him though. Said he’s not what he expected.”
Dawson nodded and let the quiet take over.
Leo’s car was going to take longer than he’d quoted.
Common courtesy said he should let the guy know in person, since the timeline had changed twice already.
Dawson could’ve texted that. He could’ve called.
He was halfway to the Icehouse before he admitted he wasn’t going to do either, and by then, it was easier to keep driving than to turn around and ask himself why.
He parked in the lot between a minivan and a truck with a figure skating bumper sticker and sat in his cab for two full minutes before going inside.
The Icehouse was warmer than he expected. September hadn’t cooled the building down to its winter bite yet, and the concourse smelled like Zamboni exhaust and old rubber. The lobby had a row of windows overlooking the ice.
Practice was still running. The team moved through some kind of drill, two lines cycling back and forth across the ice. Dawson recognized Tommy Kowalski by his size, shorter than the rest and twice as wide. Ford was easy to spot, the biggest body out there.
He found Leo on the far side, waiting his turn.
When the drill cycled to him, he took off with the kind of speed that made Dawson’s hands go still against the glass.
He was fast. There was a grace to it that caught Dawson off guard.
He finished and looped back around, and for a second, he drifted to the edge of the group, a half-step behind everyone else.
Not quite part of it yet. Dawson wondered if that was on purpose, so he wouldn’t get close to anyone before moving on to the next place.
A whistle blew. Players scattered, grabbing water bottles.
Dawson watched Leo yank his helmet off and run a glove through hair that was damp with sweat and pressed flat against his skull.
No product, no style. His face was flushed, and when he spat water onto the ice and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, he looked nothing like the guy who’d walked into The Penalty Box that first day in a shirt that cost more than Dawson’s work boots.
Without the product and the clothes, Leo looked like a different person. Looser. When one of his teammates shoved him on the way off the ice, the grin that broke across his face reached his eyes in a way Dawson hadn’t seen before. Dawson liked this version better, and that was a problem.
The team filed off the ice through the tunnel. Dawson stayed where he was, watching the Zamboni start its first pass. He could leave. He should leave. The timeline update was a text, not a conversation, and he could send it from his truck and be home before Ethan started asking where he’d been.
He stepped back from the windows and sat on the bench by the trophy case with its dusty high school hockey photos and a banner from 1994.
Leo came out fifteen minutes later with wet hair and a bag over his shoulder.
He’d changed into shorts and a T-shirt that pulled tight across his chest, and Dawson’s gaze caught on the arms before he could stop it.
Leo was lean, but there was more muscle there than Dawson had expected, which was stupid—the guy was a professional athlete.
His posture was different too, looser than any of the other times Dawson had seen him.
No polish. No effort. Just a man who’d skated hard and was ready to go home.
Leo spotted him and stopped. His eyes dropped to Dawson’s arms, then back up. It was fast, but Dawson caught it because he’d been doing the same thing thirty seconds ago.
“I’ve got an updated estimate,” Dawson said.
“You drove here to tell me that?”
“I was in the area.”
“The Icehouse is in the opposite direction from the garage.”
“I was out at Justin’s place.” This was true, but it didn’t explain why Dawson was at the Icehouse since it was even more out of his way. “I’ve got that estimate for you.”
Leo shifted the bag on his shoulder and leaned against the wall, settling in like he wasn’t in any hurry to end this conversation. One side of his mouth ticked up. “Is this something I’m going to need to sit down for?”
“I don’t think so.” Dawson pulled the paper out of his back pocket. “Mostly routine stuff. But I also wanted to tell you we’re going to have to wait a bit longer of a couple of parts.”
“And you couldn’t text that?”
“Could’ve.” Dawson shrugged. “Didn’t.”
The words sat there between them, doing more work than Dawson had intended. Leo’s eyes searched his face, and Dawson let him look, which was new. Which was dangerous.
Leo reached for his wallet. “I never asked you what I owe you for the other night.”
“The tow’s covered by your roadside assistance.”
“Whatever they’re paying isn’t enough. And this is for you, not the company.” Leo pulled a few bills out. “What’s fair? Fifty good?”
Dawson looked at the money, then at Leo. Leo’s chin was set, his wet hair starting to curl at the ends where the product had washed out, and Dawson hated how much he noticed that.
“I don’t want your money,” Dawson said.
“Then what do you want?”
The honest answer was so far from anything Dawson could say aloud that he nearly laughed. He looked at the floor, then back at Leo.
“Pizza,” he said. “Maria’s. You’re buying.”
Leo blinked. Then his face broke into the same grin Dawson had seen through the glass—the real one.
“Yeah,” Leo said. “Okay.”
Dawson turned toward the exit. Suggesting dinner with Leo was stupid. He tried to come up with an excuse that wouldn’t make him sound like a complete idiot since pizza had been his idea.
The evening air hit them both when they pushed through the doors. It was late September, and it seemed summer was finally over. A few weeks and it would be jacket weather, then coat weather, then the kind of cold that made your entire body ache. Dawson unlocked his truck.
“I can drive,” Leo said. “I’ve got the rental.”
“I’ll take my truck. Meet you there.” If he couldn’t back out of dinner, he needed to minimize the time they spent together.
“Give me twenty minutes? I should swing home and change.”
“It’s Maria’s, not a steakhouse. You’re fine.”
Dawson walked to his truck alone. The parking lot was half-empty, the evening settling in around the building, and he sat behind the wheel for a long moment before turning the key.
He’d spent the last week lying in bed with a book open on his chest, staring at the ceiling instead of reading, thinking about what it would be like to say fuck it and find out if there was anything to the way Leo’s gaze lingered a beat too long whenever he looked at Dawson.
And now he was driving to Maria’s to have pizza with him because Leo had pulled out his wallet and Dawson had said, No, take me to dinner instead, like that was a normal thing to say to a man he kept telling himself he should avoid.