CHAPTER 20
The basement is the only place in the building that still smells exactly like it always did.
Motor oil, concrete dust, firewood, and the cold that never really leaves a basement no matter what you do to the pipes.
The Grand National sits in the back beneath the street-level garage door we put in during the renovation—an upgrade I fought for and Tyler and my old man didn’t argue with because they knew what that car meant to me.
It runs. Better than when I bought it, which took three years of weekends and a level of stubbornness Ty still brings up whenever he needs an example of my worst qualities.
But a car like that is never really finished. There’s always something to check—a seal starting to whisper, a bushing wearing down, some small thing worth catching before it turns into a bigger headache.
I don’t mind.
I like investing my time in things worth coming back to.
Tonight I’m under the front end checking the exhaust hangers, which usually requires enough focus to shut everything else off.
The press-fit is giving me a problem. I’ve reset it twice, but the bushing keeps seating just misaligned enough that I’ve been staring at it trying to figure out it’s actually wrong or if I’m just looking for something to fix.
I reset the press and try again. This time, the fit comes in clean. I hold it for a count of ten and check the alignment from three different angles.
Huh.
Turns out it’s been fine all along. I’d just been looking hard enough to convince myself there was a problem that wasn’t there.
Funny what you can talk yourself into expecting.
Nothing’s changed on paper—Darcy still lives upstairs, Tyler and I still live down here, the calls still come in, my schedule hasn’t changed. Everything that was true before is still true.
What never showed up was the awkwardness I’d spent weeks expecting.
What showed up instead was the memory of the fact that I’d tasted her. And now instead of getting her out of my system, all I’ve been able to think about is going back for more.
It’s not just the physical part — even though that part is fucking fantastic. If it were only that, I’d take it for what it was and move on the same way we always have.
The problem is the way I keep thinking about the way she’d laughed against my shoulder afterward.
The way she’d looked at me that morning like she was deciding whether what she wanted was allowed, before deciding it was.
The way Tyler spotted the note I’d left for her on my bed still sitting on her kitchen counter a few days ago.
I slide out from under the car and sit up, reaching for the shop rag on the workbench.
I’ve spent a long time building a life that made sense—the job, the house, Tyler.
Piece by piece, it all found its place and once it did, I didn’t have much interest in disturbing it because I know what happens when you let something in before you’re sure about it.
You ended up attached to things that didn’t fit.
She’s been upstairs for two months and the house is somehow warmer, like she just…fits. Like she’d been part of this place longer than she has.
I still don’t know what to do with that.
An hour later, I’m back to torquing the new hardware when I hear the basement door.
The footsteps are lighter than Tyler’s, and I know it’s her before she even says anything.
I turn to find Darcy standing at the bottom of the stairs with a laundry basket balanced against one hip and a bottle of detergent tucked under her arm.
Brown tank top and sweats, hair pulled back in that messy little bun that I’m beginning to like, she stands there taking in the garage like she’s deciding what she thinks of it.
I watch her like I wanna know.
Her eyes drift over the workbench first, then the shelves, taking in the rows of labeled bins before settling on the Buick sitting beneath the shop lights.
“I was actually coming down to do laundry,” she says, gesturing vaguely toward the room off to the left with the detergent bottle. “Then I saw the light on.”
“And?”
She smiles without looking away from the car.
“And now I’m curious.”
I glance at the laundry basket.
“Your towels are gonna be waiting a while.”
“They’ve waited this long.”
She finally looks at me.
“I figure another few minutes won’t hurt.”
“No complaints here.”
The words leave my mouth before I think about them.
She hesitates just long enough to make sure I’m serious.
“You don’t mind?”
I shake my head toward the stool beside the workbench.
“Stay if you want.”
She sets the basket beside the washing machines before wandering farther into the garage, fingertips trailing lightly across the fender like she’s trying to understand it by touch.
“How long have you had it?”
“About twelve years.”
“Is it done?”
“Depends what you mean by done.”
She looks at me over the hood.
“That sounds like a guy who doesn’t want it to be finished.”
I let my gaze slide over her face.
“It’s something to come back to,” I say.
She nods like she gets it without needing more explanation. I think about the sketchbook she left open on the nightstand. The way she’d described her work once as always having something half-finished she could pick back up.
“Where’d you learn all this?”
“My old man taught us the basics growing up.”
“Tyler, too?”
I nod.
“Then I skipped the college thing and worked at a repair shop for a few years while Tyler finished school.”
“You didn’t want to go?”
“I knew where I wanted to end up.”
“The fire department.”
“You catch on quick,” I tease.
“I’m beginning to,” she gives me a small smile.
“So you just… waited?”
“Worked. Saved some money. Learned a trade.”
“And Tyler?”
“He graduated, realized he wanted to be a firefighter anyway, and we took the entrance exam together.”
She smiles to herself.
“He followed you.”
“He’d tell you I followed him.”
“But?”
“But he’d be lying.”
She laughs again, quieter this time.
“I like that.”
“What?”
“The two of you.”
I glance back down at the torque wrench.
“Yeah.”
She leans against the workbench now instead of the car, watching me tighten the last bolt.
“You’re doing pretty well.”
“At what?”
“Living on your own.”
She blinks.
“I lived with my ex for two out of the three years.”
“So you said.”
“I mean…” She shrugs. “I like it.”
“The apartment?”
“Having a place that’s mine.”
She says it simply, but her shoulders relax as she does.
“I like deciding where things go. Cooking when I feel like it. Leaving a book open on the coffee table because I know it’ll still be there when I get back.”
I tighten the wrench another quarter turn.
“I get that.”
“Do you?” She raises a brow.
“You sound surprised.”
“I don’t know, you just strike me as someone who likes things a certain way. Order. Routine…”
“Not exactly wrong. I like things I can rely on. Things that are consistent,” I glance up at her before looking back down at the engine. “But what you’re describing is still its own kind of routine.”
“I hadn’t looked at it that way.”
She looks down at her hands.
“I spent a long time living in somebody else’s version of home. I guess I’m just enjoying figuring out what mine looks like.”
Something about the way she says it pulls at my chest.
“Looks good on you.”
Her eyes meet mine, neither of us saying anything for a while.
Then she smiles.
“So…”
She nods toward the Grand National.
“You do this a lot?” she asks. “Just…come down here at night?”
I can’t help the smirk I feel spreading across my face.
“When something needs doing.”
“And tonight?”
I set the torque wrench down and look at her. She’s already watching me, that natural curiosity on her face like she’d rather have the real answer than the easy one.
“My hands needed something to do.”
She bites her lip and I fight the urge to follow suit.
“Something on your mind?”
“Something like that.”
She looks down at her hands, picking at her nails, like she’s weighing her next words carefully.
“Is it weird? For you?”
She doesn’t have to explain what she means.
I think about it for a second.
A week ago I would’ve said yes without hesitation. I’d have told myself we’d complicated things for no good reason.
Instead she’s sitting on the stool in my garage while I work, laundry forgotten beside the washing machines, and it feels normal.
“No,” I say.
Her eyebrows lift.
“No?”
I shake my head.
“Not weird.”
That makes her smile.
I pick up the torque wrench and go back to work. She doesn’t fill the silence or reach for her phone. She just sits there watching while I finish tightening the last bolt, asking the occasional question whenever curiosity gets the better of her.
She heads back upstairs around ten-thirty, laundry basket balanced against one hip, finally remembering why she came down in the first place. I hear the basement door close, then her footsteps cross the ceiling toward the kitchen.
The garage settles around me once again—the car, the tools, the occasional clank of metal.
For a long time this was the place I came when I needed to clear my head. Tonight, for the first time I can remember, it isn’t the thing I’m looking forward to coming back to.