40. Harper
FORTY
HARPER
"Hey Flagg! Speed it up down there; you’ve been working on that tune-up for an hour now. "
Tony’s annoying ass voice barely penetrated the bubble of disinterest I found myself stuck in since the day I walked back into Big John’s shop.
Ron retired while I was gone; on day two of his freedom, he was gunned down in a drive-by outside of a cafe where he’d stopped for coffee. He was gone from my life in the blink of an eye, and it left me with a lot of feelings I didn’t care to deal with right now.
Mostly because I’d done the same thing to the Blackwood boys.
I walked out of their life like I’d never been a part of it. Nobody followed me as I slipped out of the front door of the asylum. Nobody tried to stop me when I passed through the gates and stood on the curb, trying to decide if I’d rather hike it all the way across town or dip into my meager savings and call a rideshare.
Home was exactly as I’d left it—the windows locked, plants in dire need of water, empty and silent, save for the low hum of the refrigerator.
It was too quiet.
The bolt I’d spent the last five minutes absently tightening and loosening over and over, like some sort of fucking robot stuck on repeat.
The newbie who’d taken Ron’s place on the staff line snapped a towel at Tony, the two of them like fucking children as they giggled and jerked around in a place that wasn’t designed to accommodate teenagers.
"Come on, Tony, give a guy a chance! You’re too fast; I can’t keep up."
"Who are you kidding? You’re out here gunning for all our jobs, fastest mechanic in the bays here."
My head hurt from the amount of times I’d rolled my eyes at them since I returned. And it’d only been a week. "Could you two maybe cut out the bullshit and get to work? Jesus, I leave for a few weeks and this whole place goes to shit."
Tony openly mocked me now, having forgotten how he got that crooked bend in his nose. "Oh no, wouldn’t wanna offend the little ladyyyy." He laughed, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at me with his back turned. "Watch out for that one. She’s dangerous." He said the last word with air quotes and more than a hint of sarcasm. "Don’t ever bother to invite her out or anything. She’s antisocial, and a bit of an ass."
The new guy, who we’d all taken to calling Sport, rubbed the back of his military buzz cut and winced. "I dunno, she seems like a decent enough person to me."
"I’m only an asshole to people who earn that treatment. Ask Tony how he got that crooked nose."
He looked to Tony, who immediately ducked his head into the next open car and hid his shame. "Fuck off, Flagg."
It took me three days to stop having to do a double-take every time someone called me Hannah or Flagg. In a matter of weeks, the boys had reverted me back seven years, like I’d never been living in hiding under an assumed name. Like Hannah Flagg and her meager life hadn’t existed.
They made me forget everything I’d learned. Every wall I built to protect myself, I had to now rebuild. And yet, there was nothing more than a whisper of touch on my skin or an aching in my heart to prove they’d even returned.
The Blackwood boys phased out of my life as quickly as they’d come into it, leaving a piece of my soul forever changed.
Hours later, I wiped the sweat from my brow and straightened, realizing with a start that I’d disassociated through my following two jobs, and was about to have an empty bay. I glanced at the clock; sure enough, it was mid-lunch break, and I was the only one left in the bays.
The isolation gave me an eerie feeling of being watched .
I shook off the strange heaviness on my shoulders and grabbed a shop rag, wiping as much of the grease from my palms as I could before I trekked my way across the street for one of the taco truck’s famous burritos.
Tito, as usual, was happy to see everyone, and I was no exception. Those weathered lines on his face crinkled up as I approached, and I smiled despite my sour mood.
"Ayye, if it isn’t the lovely lady of my dreams. Here to finally accept my marriage proposal, míja?"
I grinned wider and slapped his arm out from under him as he leaned out the window and winked at me. "Tito, I love you for your food, and that’s all I’ll ever love you for. But I hear Miss Chen down at the Asian Market is in love with you and your taco Tuesday."
He blushed under that dark tan skin, and I laughed for the first time since I’d come back to my old life. My life without the Blackwood boys in it.
I hoped that escaping them would mean returning to my normal life. I was wrong.
Life without them no longer felt all that appealing.
Tito handed out my usual order through the square window, and like he often did when there was no rush or line of customers, the grizzled veteran from Mexico City took off his apron and came out to sit down with me at the nearby picnic bench to chat.
His eyes scanned me as I bit into his little handheld tortilla-wrapped heaven and moaned, eyes drifting closed. "So, where’d you go?"
I shrugged and took another bite, ripping off the tortilla wrap with a savagery akin to a venomous snake. "Oh, I was around." I gestured in the air with one hand and grinned over the burrito. "But I’m back now."
His brows furrowed. " Sí , you’re back in the shop and your old apartment, but are you really here with us, or are you going through the motions?"
"They don’t pay you enough to man that taco truck, Tito. You should go into therapy. They make top dollar for this free advice and opinions you be handing out on the street corner."
I didn’t like that he could see right through the mask I’d pasted on my face. Hated that he knew my mind was elsewhere. Hated that the closest thing I had to a friend now was the taco vendor on the corner.
I’d spent so much time isolating myself from others that I didn’t realize I needed someone to balance me out at my lows.
The panic attack hit me out of left field, and as I tried not to choke on my food, Tito leaned over and put a hand on my arm, squeezing it gently to tell me I wasn’t alone.
But I was. In the basest of senses, in the truest of truths, I was alone. And for the first time in seven fucking years, I didn’t want to be.
I’d broken the biggest rule, the one I made when I realized I’d been betrayed by the three people closest to me in life—don’t fall in love. It happened so slowly, so subtly, that I didn’t even see the signs until it was too late. Now, I’d have to live with the repercussions of this aching heart because I certainly wasn’t going back to being locked up and kept as a fucking house pet anymore.
Work welcomed me back with open arms, and Big John insisted he would never fill my spot even if I disappeared for years.
If he only knew I’d been hiding in his very shop from the ghosts of my past the whole time.
"I should get back to work," I mumbled, wrapping up the unfinished half of my lunch and shooting him a half-assed wink. "Thanks for the lunch, Tito. And the chat. I missed this place."
A frown marred his features as I walked away, but I didn’t comment on it, and he didn’t stop me. Like all the rest of the people in my life, he let me go without trying to hold on.
The days blurred together, one after another, the same old routine I’d been so eager to return to now lacking any reason to live, to keep going. I kept expecting to see the Torino pull up, Rowan and the others piling out to demand I come back.
But that day never came.
Angel had been saying it all along—I was only temporary. That when I didn’t need protection anymore, I’d return to my life, and they’d return to theirs. Hell, he so much as laid out the fact that they were better off without me every day we were together.
When would I learn to listen to men when they tell me their intentions?
Probably never.
I never stopped feeling like there was always someone watching me, though. Sure, I could have called up Rowan or one of the others, and asked them what was going on. But I didn’t have any fucking desire to intrude on their lives. The last thing I wanted was to be dragged back into that very unhealthy shitstorm of a life.
Right?
Right.
Friday came and went, and soon enough, I was facing down Big John for my paycheck on the second Friday I’d spent away from—alone and—well, fuck. It was the two-week mark since I’d come back and reclaimed my alter ego’s life.
And paydays were hell around here, mainly because Tony spent an hour lamenting about how few jobs he got compared to those of us who actually worked hard.
Today was no different.
There he was, leaning over the hood of a nice-ass restored GTO, his paycheck out for anyone to see, as he gesticulated wildly in conversation with Big John and Sport .
"John, listen. I come here every day and work. I might not be the most senior person here, but I think it’s time to start talking about a raise."
Big John’s laughter echoed across the bays and made me crack a smile. "Tony, when you can pull and rebuild an engine in two days, we’ll talk about your raise."
The absolute affront on his face would have been comical if he hadn’t ruined the effect by turning to me and sneering. "Well, we can’t all be little Miss Perfect. If I abandoned my job for weeks with no excuse or word on when I’d be back, I wouldn’t have a job to come back to."
The whole garage fell silent as I pulled back from the Mustang I had been touching up, smearing grease across my forehead. I pinned him with a glare that could melt steel.
"If you’ve got something to say, Tony, just come out and say it."
The fear in his eyes was apparent, on display for anyone to see, but he tried valiantly not to let it show. "I’m saying I don’t think it’s fair that you get special treatment. Just because you’re a girl ? —"
"Now, Tony, I warned you," John started, but he didn’t need to say a word. He already knew Tony had crossed a line, as did everyone in this place. And if Tony thought anyone would step in to save him from me right now, he was dead wrong.
My feet made muffled thumps of rage as I marched across the floor and threw my grease towel between us, staring him down with all the hatred our years working together had built up. "If you’re insinuating I’m getting unfair treatment because I’m a woman, I’d like to know what sort of treatment you think I should be getting." I gestured to Big John, waiting for him to step in and say something. "If Big John treated me preferentially, it’s because I earned it, not because I’m a woman."
"Earned it on your knees, maybe?—"
I saw red so fast I just snapped. My hand flew out, balled into a fist, and I cold-cocked Tony so hard, so fast, he didn’t have time to blink. When he hit the floor, I felt no sympathy. No regret. I just picked up the discarded grease towel, wiped off my knuckles as if touching him had dirtied me, and threw the towel in his lap.
"You ever make the mistake of talking to me again, Antonio, and I will put my old tire iron to use on your skull."
Luckily, he didn’t make the mistake of speaking in retaliation.
Big John helped him off the floor, frog-marching him into the office, likely for a heart-to-heart between men. When we closed up shop later that night, John singled me out, his face long and drawn, clearly from a lifetime of stress.
"Hey, Flagg, can we talk?"
Here we go. "If you’re going to fire me, just get it over with."
His chuckle was old and deep and familiar, yet somehow foreign at the same time. "Nah, I’d have to be a special kind of stupid to fire my best mechanic." He patted his pockets and pulled out another check, handing it over to me with a smile. "You missed your last payday, so I held on to this for you. Figured you’d be back for it." His eyes crinkled at the edges when I accepted the check.
"So, about Tony?—"
"Listen, he’s trouble, and he is on his last leg with me. For now, though, I was thinking maybe I could have you come in after lunch and work late with Sport. Kind of like a night shift. I’ll even pay you extra."
"Pay me extra so I don't have to deal with Tony for the first half of the day? Say less." I wasn’t worried about the dangers of walking home at night. If I was making more money, I could just take a cab. Maybe even carpool with Sport. He seemed nice enough. "When do I start?"
John’s smile fell a bit at the edges as he hesitantly peered at me sideways. "Tonight? "
I patted the sides of my jumper and tucked the extra check away for later. "Good thing I don’t have a social life, eh?"