Chapter 17 #2
"Still. That was good work." He's looking at me with something that makes my stomach flip, makes heat rise to my face. Not surprise exactly. More like confirmation. Like he's seeing something he suspected all along but is just now watching me prove.
"You're good at this," he says.
"At what?"
"This. The shop. Dealing with people. Organizing the chaos." He gestures vaguely at the desk, the files, the phone that never stops ringing. "You've made this place run smoother than it has in years."
I blink at him. Process that. Feel something warm and solid settling in my stomach—not the fluttery anxiety from before, but real confidence. Real pride.
"Yeah," I say slowly, letting the truth of it sink in as I speak. "I think I am. Good at this, I mean."
This isn't temporary. This isn't a placeholder.
This is mine.
"You are," Holt confirms. Like it's fact. Like there's no question. Like he's known it for weeks and has just been waiting for me to catch up.
My throat gets tight. "Thank you. For seeing that."
"Hard to miss."
We stand there for a moment, this truth floating between us in the heat-thick air.
"Okay, well." I clear my throat, break the moment before it gets too intense. "Back to work. These invoices aren't going to process themselves."
He nods, almost-smiles, heads back to the garage.
And I sit there at my desk with this glowing thing spreading through me that feels suspiciously like belonging. Like home.
Holt emerges from the garage at closing, wiping his hands on a rag that's seen better decades. He's got that end-of-day look too—hair stuck to his forehead, tank top dark with sweat, another smudge of grease across his jaw that he definitely doesn't know about.
"You heading up?" I ask.
"Yeah. You?"
"Give me five minutes. Need to finish the deposit."
He nods, heads for the stairs. I watch him go, notice the slight hitch in his step that means his leg's bothering him.
I finish the deposit, lock it in the safe, do my final walk-through. Lights off. Doors locked. Everything secure. Then I head upstairs to find Holt already in the kitchen, pulling two beers from the fridge.
He hands me one without asking. I take it, press the cold bottle to my neck where the heat's been living all day. Sweet relief.
"Couch?" he asks.
"Couch."
We settle into our usual spots—me in the corner with my feet tucked under me, him on the other end sprawled out in the process of taking off his prosthetic. There's less space between us than there used to be. Not touching, but close. Comfortable.
The AC's doing its best impression of functionality. The laptop's still on the coffee table from whenever, screen dark. We don't turn anything on. Just sit there in the gathering dusk, drinking our beers, existing in the same space without needing to fill it.
It's nice. Really nice. The kind of quiet that feels like peace instead of tension.
I take a long drink, feel the cold spread through me. Courage, liquid form. Because there's something I want to ask and I'm not sure how to start except just... starting.
"Can I ask you something?"
His eyes flick to mine. "Yeah."
"What was it like? After." I gesture vaguely toward his leg. "Like, after the blast. When you were recovering. What was that like?"
He goes still. Not tense exactly, but that focused stillness he gets when he's deciding whether to open up or shut down.
Then he exhales slow, takes a drink. "What do you want to know?"
"I don't know. All of it?" I shift, pulling my knees to my chest. "You told me about the blast, about losing your leg. But I want to know what happened after. What it was like adjusting."
He's quiet for a long moment, beer balanced on his thigh, eyes somewhere far away. Deciding how much to share. Whether to let me into this part of him.
"It was bad," he finally says. Simple. Direct.
I wait. Let the silence hold him.
"They shipped me to Germany first. Military hospital. Then Walter Reed for the long-term stuff." His voice goes flat. "Physical therapy. Learning to walk with the prosthetic. Dealing with phantom pain. All of it."
"Phantom pain?"
"Your brain thinks the leg's still there. Sends pain signals. You feel it—really feel it—but there's nothing to hurt." He says it matter-of-fact but I can hear the frustration underneath. "Happens to most amputees. Sometimes it goes away. Sometimes it doesn't."
"Does it still happen?"
"Sometimes. Usually at night." He takes another drink. "But that wasn't the worst part."
I stay quiet. Let him find the words.
"The worst part was..." He stops. Swallows. "I didn't give a shit about anything. For months. Just... nothing."
My throat gets tight. "Depression?"
"Yeah. Clinical depression, they called it. Which is just a fancy way of saying I stopped caring whether I lived or died." His voice is still flat but there's something raw underneath. "They tried to tell me it was normal. Part of the process. Trauma response. Whatever."
He's gripping his beer bottle tight. I notice but don't say anything. Just listen.
"Finn was there. He'd come sit with me even when I wouldn't talk. Just sat there making noise so I wasn't alone with my head." Holt's jaw works. "I was such an asshole to him. Told him to leave. Told him I didn't want company. He kept showing up anyway."
"Because he's your brother."
"Yeah." Soft. Grateful. "Yeah."
He takes a long drink. Finishes the beer. Sets it down carefully on the coffee table.
"It took a while before I wanted to try. The prosthetic, I mean. They kept telling me I needed to start physical therapy, start learning to walk with it. And I just... couldn't make myself care enough to try."
"What changed?"
"Finn." A pause. "He came in one day and said, 'Listen, you can lie here feeling sorry for yourself for the rest of your life, or you can get up and figure out what comes next. Either way I'm here. But I'd really like to see you try.'"
My eyes are burning. I blink hard, take a drink to cover it.
"So I tried. Took months to learn to walk properly with it.
More months to build up the stamina. It hurt like hell—the prosthetic rubbing, the residual limb not healed enough, everything just constant pain.
" He says it like he's talking about the weather.
"But I kept at it. Because Finn believed I could.
And eventually I started believing it too. "
"And then you started the shop."
"Eventually. Took another year or so before we had enough saved, before we found this place." He looks around the loft like he's seeing it for the first time. "But yeah. We started the shop. Built something good."
I set my empty bottle down, scoot closer. Not touching him yet but closing the distance. "Thank you. For telling me."
"You asked."
"I know. But you didn't have to answer."
He looks at me finally, really looks, and there's vulnerability in his eyes that he usually keeps locked down tight. "I want you to know me. The real stuff. Not just the easy parts."
Something in my stomach flips. "I want that too."
We sit there in the almost-dark, in the heat that's finally starting to ease as night falls. The AC rattles. Outside, the desert's going quiet, that shift from day to night that happens fast out here.
"I'm glad you kept trying," I say quietly. "I'm glad Finn made you try."
"Me too." He reaches over, takes my hand. His palm is warm and rough with calluses, fingers threading through mine like they belong there. "Otherwise I wouldn't be here. Wouldn't have met you."
My throat's so tight I can barely speak. "Yeah. That would've sucked."
His mouth twitches. Almost-smile. We stay like that—hands linked, the space between us smaller with every breath, building something honest and real out of all our broken pieces.
An hour later we're in the kitchen making dinner—and by "making dinner" I mean I'm boiling pasta while Holt opens a jar of sauce because we're both exhausted and cooking actual food is beyond our capabilities.
I'm stirring pasta with one hand, drinking water with the other, trying not to melt into a puddle.
"You want garlic bread?" I ask.
"We have garlic bread?"
"We have bread. And butter. And probably garlic powder somewhere." I open the cabinet, rummage through spices that look older than I am. "Found it!"
"Then yes. I want garlic bread."
I'm buttering bread—making the worst garlic bread in human history, just butter and garlic powder on plain white bread—when the words come out without planning.
"Evan isolated me from my friends." The butter knife scrapes across bread. "One by one. Said they were bad influences. That they didn't care about me like he did. That they were jealous of what we had."
Holt goes still behind me..
I keep buttering, need something to do with my hands. "And I believed him. Cut people off. Stopped going out. Made myself smaller and smaller until there was nothing left except him."
The butter's not spreading evenly but I keep working at it. Concentrate on the bread like it's the most important thing in the world.
"By the end, I couldn't make a single decision without asking him first. What to eat.
What to watch. Whether I could go to the grocery store alone.
" My hands are shaking slightly. I clench them into fists.
"He convinced me I was stupid. That I couldn't be trusted to make my own decisions.
That without him I'd just fuck up my life and end up hurt or used or god knows what. "
Holt's moved closer. Not crowding, just there. Solid and present and not running.
"And by the end, I believed that too. Thought I needed him. Thought I couldn't function alone." A laugh that's not quite humor. "But I left."
"You did."
"Ran away like some ridiculous movie. Ended up here with nothing except the clothes on my back and a desperate hope that anywhere was better than there."
"And?" His voice is quiet, prompting.