Chapter 6 #2
Sienna jolted back so fast she nearly hit her hip on the fender. “I’m going to donate him to science.”
I blew out a breath through my nose and went back under the hood. “Science would send him back.”
“He has trauma.”
“He has demons.”
“He has standards.”
“He ate gas station bacon off wax paper.”
“So did I.”
“Explains a lot.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, and just like that, the heat shifted back into irritation. Safer. Easier. Still hot as hell, but at least it had teeth.
I handed her the flashlight from the tray. “Make yourself useful.”
She took it, instantly offended. “I was already useful.”
“You were distracting.”
That slipped out before I could stop it.
The flashlight beam wobbled.
Sienna went still.
I kept my eyes on the engine.
Coward.
“Distracting,” she repeated.
“Your commentary.”
“Right.”
“Hold the light here.”
She moved closer again, but this time the air between us had changed.
She held the flashlight where I needed it, steady hand, no argument.
For a minute, there was only the clink of metal, the scrape of tools, Bandit muttering murder in the cab, and the distant sound of women laughing inside the Airbnb.
Then she said, softer, “I don’t like needing help.”
“I noticed.”
“That wasn’t an invitation to be smug.”
“I’m not smug.”
“You radiate smug.”
“I radiate competence.”
She made a sound like she hated that answer because it amused her. “You radiate untreated emotional damage and motor oil.”
I looked at her.
She lifted one shoulder. “Also competence. A little.”
I should’ve let it go.
Didn’t.
“You don’t have to pay me back.”
Her face closed fast.
Too fast.
“I didn’t ask for charity.”
“Didn’t offer charity.”
“What would you call it?”
“Help.”
She stared at me like I’d used a language she distrusted.
I understood that look. Help always had a hook when you grew used to paying for everything with pieces of yourself. I hated recognizing that in her. Hated it more because it made me want to be careful, and careful was not a thing I trusted myself to do well.
I turned back to the engine. “Regan would skin me if I let you drive this thing.”
“Ah. So this is self-preservation.”
“Mostly.”
“Good. I’d hate for you to develop a personality this early in the day.”
I huffed. “Point the light.”
She pointed it.
I worked.
The sun climbed higher, pushing heat under the carport until the shade stopped feeling like shade and started feeling like an oven with manners.
Sweat slid down my spine. Grease smeared my forearms. Sienna’s shirt stuck worse now, and every time she shifted, I caught the movement in my peripheral vision like my body had turned traitor and assigned itself surveillance duty.
She knew.
That was the problem.
She knew, and instead of shrinking from it, she got sharper. Chin tipped. Mouth curved. Eyes bright with challenge. She didn’t flirt soft. She didn’t flutter. She weaponized the fact that I wanted to look and made me hate myself for it.
At one point, she reached across me for the coffee she’d left on the fender, and her breasts brushed my arm.
Barely.
Enough.
I froze with one hand on the radiator cap.
She took a slow sip, eyes on me over the mug.
“You okay?”
“No.”
Her brows lifted.
I realized what I’d said.
Her mouth curved.
I pointed at the engine. “This is worse than I thought.”
“Smooth recovery.”
“Wasn’t recovering.”
“Obviously.”
I stared at her. She stared back. The whole damn desert felt like it leaned in.
Then the front door banged open.
Regan’s voice cut through the morning. “Do I need to supervise?”
Sienna stepped back instantly.
I looked over my shoulder. “No.”
Regan stood on the porch with a coffee mug, wearing the expression of a woman who absolutely did need to supervise because she already knew something had happened.
Amber appeared behind her, sunglasses on top of her head. “Why is Mason shirtless?”
“Grease,” I said.
Sienna coughed into her coffee.
Amber’s grin spread. “Sure.”
Regan’s eyes slid from me to Sienna’s damp shirt to the open hood and back again. “How’s the truck?”
That killed the heat fast.
I wiped my hands on the rag and looked down into the engine. No point dressing it up. I could patch some things. I could get it to cough itself forward maybe a few miles. But five hours to Santa Fe? Across desert roads with heat climbing?
No.
Not unless Sienna had a death wish and Dolores had a miracle hidden under her rust.
I reached for the key through the open window. “Try it one more time.”
Sienna set her coffee down and climbed into the driver’s seat. The movement pulled her shirt tighter across her back, and I made myself look at the battery because apparently I still possessed one working scrap of discipline.
“Pump it twice,” I said.
She did.
“Again.”
She did.
“Now turn it.”
The engine coughed. Caught for half a breath. Shuddered so hard the whole truck trembled. The knock came deep and ugly, a metal-on-metal sound that made my jaw tighten.
Then it died.
Silence.
Bandit yowled from the passenger seat like he was filing a formal complaint with God.
Sienna stayed behind the wheel, both hands wrapped around it. Her face had gone still. Too still. All that sharpness tucked away behind a blank look I didn’t like.
I knew that look.
That was someone doing math and finding out every answer hurt.
She climbed out slowly. “Okay.”
Regan came closer. “Sienna—”
“No, it’s fine.” She nodded once, too quick. “It started. Sort of. That’s something.”
I shut the hood carefully.
She watched my hands.
I hated this part.
“Don’t,” she said.
I looked at her. “Don’t what?”
“Make the face.”
“What face?”
“The mechanic face. The man face. The this poor idiot woman is about to receive bad news face.”
I leaned back against the front of the truck and crossed my arms. “It ain’t gonna make Santa Fe.”
Her mouth tightened.
No joke this time. No comeback ready in the chamber.
“How not make it?” she asked.
“There are levels?”
“Yes. There’s expensive but possible, catastrophic but negotiable, and tow-it-into-a-ravine-for-emotional-closure.”
I almost smiled.
Almost.
“Closer to the ravine.”
She looked away.
The wind moved through the carport, lifting loose strands of her hair, pressing that damn T-shirt against her chest again.
This time, I didn’t notice it the same way.
Or I did, but it got tangled with the way her shoulders dropped half an inch before she caught herself and forced them straight again.
She was trying not to crack.
Right there in front of all of us.
Over a truck most people would’ve junked two states ago.
But I got it. Wasn’t just a truck. It was her way out. Her proof. Her whole life tied down in the back under tarps. New job, new apartment, new state, new skin she hadn’t grown into yet. Dolores wasn’t transportation.
Dolores was escape.
And escape had just died under my hands.
Sienna cleared her throat. “Can you patch it enough?”
“No.”
The word came out rougher than I meant.
She flinched anyway.
I pushed off the truck. “Not safely.”
“How unsafe?”
“Sienna.”
“How unsafe, Mason?”
Hearing my name like that—tight, angry, scared underneath—made something in me pull hard.
I stepped closer. “Unsafe like you break down in the middle of the desert with no AC, a dead phone, and a cat that would eat you before help got there.”
Bandit screamed.
Amber muttered, “He would.”
Sienna ignored her. “I have to be in Santa Fe.”
“We’ll get you there.”
“I need my truck.”
“Your truck is done for today.”
“For today?”
“Maybe longer.”
“How much longer?”
“Depends on parts. Depends what the knock is. Depends how much money you want to throw at a truck that might throw it back.”
Her laugh came out small and mean. “Great.”
Regan stepped in gently. “We’ll figure it out.”
Sienna shook her head. “I can figure it out.”
“You don’t have to do it alone.”
That was apparently the wrong thing to say.
Sienna’s face sharpened, all the soft gone in an instant. “I have done almost everything alone. I can handle logistics.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” Regan said.
“No, but everyone keeps saying some version of it.” Her eyes flicked to me. “Reckless. Desperate. Risk. Stray.”
The last word hit Regan. I saw it.
It hit me harder.
Sienna grabbed her coffee off the fender and took a step back, putting space between herself and all of us.
“I appreciate breakfast. I appreciate the bandage. I appreciate the unsolicited rescue brigade and the roadside autopsy of my truck. But I need to get to Santa Fe today, and I need to do it without becoming everyone’s new project. ”
Quiet settled.
Even Bandit shut up.
I should’ve kept my mouth closed. I knew that.
I didn’t.
“You think needing help makes you weak?”
Her eyes cut to mine. “I think needing help gives people leverage.”
There it was.
Honest enough to bleed.
I stared at her, and something old in me shifted. Rylee in a cream dress on River’s phone. Rylee saying she wanted a life that felt secure. Rylee looking at everything I offered and seeing liability instead of love.
Then Sienna, standing in front of a dead truck wearing grease-smudged jeans and a shirt stuck to her skin, too proud to say she was scared because fear had probably cost her too much before.
I understood leverage.
I understood not wanting anyone’s hand on the back of your neck.
I rubbed my thumb along the rag in my hand. “No leverage.”
She looked suspicious. “What?”
“You need to get to Santa Fe. I’ll take you.”
Her brows pulled together. “In what?”
I nodded toward my bike parked near the side of the house.
Her eyes followed.
Then widened slightly.
“No.”
Regan said, “Actually—”
“No,” Sienna repeated, louder.
Amber leaned against the porch post, smiling like Christmas came early. “This is going to be fun.”
“No, it is not.” Sienna pointed at the bike. “I have luggage. Field equipment. A cat with unresolved violence. I am not straddling a motorcycle behind a man who thinks I’m a cartel intern.”