Mars
The garage is humming with energy, my mechanics swarming through the space like ants.
I never would have expected Dutch to take something like that under consideration, but the last time Orion saw someone running their fingers along that paint, he lost his head. Guess Dutch is avoiding the drama.
Makes sense.
On the other side of the garage, Cosmo and Whiskey are working on one of the Harleys that came in for servicing, and beyond them, I can see several other men taking apart a truck I didn’t even know we had.
The black and white-checkered floor is covered in tools, rolling stools, jacks, and paint cans, the space humming with the sound of multiple men talking as they work to each other, and I breathe out a sigh.
It’s been too long since I’ve seen the garage this busy, and the noise and action are somehow healing.
Especially after the argument I just had with Orion.
He’s not letting go of this idea of sending Arden home, and though I know why he’s doing it–he thinks New York is honestly the safest place for her–I disagree. I know the Saints are just up the road and that they’re bound to notice that we have her at some point. I know there will be trouble.
Maybe even a war.
But I also know that I have the law on my side.
This is my fucking town–or at least my family’s–and my own cousin is the de facto sheriff.
Granted, Bear isn’t supposed to occupy that position anymore, not after what happened between him and Sammy’s dad, but that doesn’t change the fact that if I need help, I have people I can call.
Now actually calling them?
That’s where I might draw the line.
I wonder, though, what Orion’s real slant is. He’s already said he doesn’t want Bear involved, and that doesn’t make any sense. Orion’s known Bear for ten years. He knows the man will do anything to help us if we ask him to.
I get the feeling it’s more about the fact that Bear is now associated with the law.
And that takes me back to the sudden fear that Orion’s secrets, the ones I’ve let him hold for years, are going to raise their heads up and become problems for me and mine.
I don’t like to think about it, and I’m specifically not thinking about what it might mean for Orion’s spot in my home and the garage–the club itself–but the idea is sitting like a monster in the shadows, just waiting to pounce.
I turn away from it.
Too much drama there, and I already have enough problems with the Arden Situation.
Because I have no idea what I’m going to do with her.
But I know for a fact that I’m not sending her home. She’s far too valuable to just send back to the town and people that let her get kidnapped the first time around.
The girl herself appears at my shoulder, then, popping up like a fucking ghost, and I jump away from her.
“Marshall, I need to talk to you,” she says firmly.
A snort from my other side has me turning in that direction, though, and I find Rookie, his messy brown hair swept down over one eye.
As usual. The kid is only eighteen and our one and only prospect, and he takes his role as up-and-coming club member, and therefore someone who doesn’t have to brush his hair, very seriously.
“Marshall?” he asks, grinning at Arden like it’s the first time he’s ever seen a girl. “Literally no one calls him Marshall.” He pauses, considering her. “Although. I’m guessing he might let you do it.”
My mouth drops open at this. Is he... flirting with her?
To my absolute shock, Arden, a girl I’ve never seen interact with anyone but her family before, doesn’t blink an eye.
Or rather, she does. She does some fluttery thing with her eyelashes that makes her eyes somehow even more luminous, and looks up at him like he’s the funniest person she’s ever met. “What do you mean no one calls him that? Isn’t that his name?”
When I look back at Rookie, I nearly laugh.
He’s become the living embodiment of the Heart Eyes Emoji, and I know in that second that if Arden asked him to walk off a bridge, sprout wings, and fly down to the city below us to pick up some special chocolate for her, he’d run for the nearest bridge, trying to remember everything he’d ever heard about how to sprout wings.
He says something I don’t catch and Arden laughs, though I can hear that it’s not a true laugh. Something shallow and nervous, more like a bird tittering than anything. But it’s more than the solemn tone she’s used up to this point.
More than the dry, damaged girl she was when I found her last night.
She answers him and he laughs too, and within moments he’s turning and walking back toward Dutch like he just won the fucking Olympics.
“Rooks!” I snap.
The boy spins around, shocked, and I glare at him.
“Did you actually need something or did you just come over here to act like Arden is the first girl you’ve ever seen?”
The garage erupts in laughter and Rookie blushes furiously, then scowls at me.
“Watch it, Gramps. I took Orion’s bike all the way down the hill and dropped off his ‘secret cargo’–” He surrounds this phrase with exaggerated air quotes. “–All on my own last night. I’m not the kid I used to be.”
This brings a snort from me, because he’s exactly the same kid he was yesterday before the infamous secret cargo. “Did you manage to get it back without a scratch on it? Because if you damaged that bike–”
“It’ll be no worse than it was before,” Dutch mutters from under the hood of the truck.
I pause for a moment, but then nod. Valid.
Orion’s bike looks like exactly what it is: a monster he put together with found parts, each of them secured to a frame he supposedly discovered in the junkyard.
It runs like a top and roars louder than anything else we have in the club, but it looks like it’s been through several wars and come out the other side having taken a beating.
The embodiment of Orion himself.
“Did you actually come over for something?” I repeat.
Rookie jerks like he’s just remembered he has an actual job, and then grins.
“Oh right. The shipment from that exhaust company down south is running behind so we’re gonna be a little late with the truck.
The nuts and bolts are gonna be here early, though, so we can resupply our coffers.
And we’re getting a new project in next week. Figured you’d like to know.”
He winks at Arden–the audacity of this kid–and then turns back to Dutch, who’s looking at me with eyebrows lifted nearly to his hair line, and suppressing his laughter.
This time I don’t laugh, because Rookie’s given me mostly good news. The kid is a youngest son and I doubt whether he can tie his shoelaces by himself sometimes, but he’s a fucking genius when it comes to inventory.
And I’ve come to depend on him more than I like.
I turn back to Arden, remembering that we were having a conversation. “You were saying?’
She eyes me up and down like she’s trying to figure out whether her fluttering eyelashes will work on me, then decides against it and lifts her chin. “I want to go home. Back to New York. Back where I have family.”
That part hits me in the chest, but I don’t let the hurt show. Instead, I ask the obvious question. “Why?”
It’s not that I don’t know the answer. I do. I figured this was coming, and she’s got her reasons, I’m sure. I don’t know when she was kidnapped or what they did with her, but she’s been through an event, and going home was always going to be her first request.
That’s where she thinks she’s safe.
I think differently. I know what her dad does and who he does it to. I know how close he is to Joseph Rossi and his brother Michael, and though I guess they’re not the worst gangsters in town, they are, nevertheless, part of the mafia.
Which puts Arden entirely too close to men who kill for a living.
I’ve also seen how her father treats her, and what it does to her confidence.
I don’t want her to go back to that.
I don’t want her to leave at all. Between picking her up last night and waking up this morning with the knowledge that she’s in my house, something has shifted, and I’ve started feeling...
Responsible for her?
No, that’s not quite right.
Attached to her?
I pause, considering it. That can’t be it. It can’t. She’s not my stepdaughter. She’s not my family. Hell, she’s not even my sister’s family. Not really. But she is my sister’s stepdaughter, and that means I can’t form any attachment to her.
At least not the way I want to.
I don’t follow that thought any further, because the town suddenly realizes that the garage is open and descends on me like a swarm of locusts.
Penny from the bakery appears with a basket of muffins, saying that she still owes me for fixing her truck last week, and then one of Shane Sampson’s daughters appears with her bike, asking if I can fix the chain for her.
Dutch realizes he forgot to order an important part for the truck, someone stops to report a bike that’s broken down outside of town, and Wendy from the cafe stops in to ask if I can help her brother with his new motorcycle.
I’m swept away from Arden in the midst of answering questions and solving problems, and for an hour I forget she exists. I’ve got suppliers to talk to and everyday problems to solve, and this town learned long ago that the Oaks door is always open if they need someone to handle something for them.
I grew up fixing everything my father broke.
These days, at least I sometimes get paid for it.
By the time I send little Susie and her first two-wheeler back out onto the street, chain fixed and a new bell on the handlebars, Arden has stopped waiting for me.
She’s talking to Penny, she of the bakery, and laughing with a deeper, truer laugh than she used with Rookie.
When Penny bends in to ask her something evidently secretive, Arden hits her lightly on the arm and answers in the same tone, and Penny herself tinkles with laughter.
Penny is older, in her 60s, and has long passed the phase of giggling at boys in the garage, but for just a moment, I can see what she must have been like as a girl, all twinkling eyes and flushed cheeks, and it makes me pause in my work.
Penny is one of the friendliest people in town, but I’ve never seen her giggle at anyone like that.
Not until Arden started telling her secrets.
My eyes turn to the girl I know only from the city and I take her in, wondering. She doesn’t look much healthier than she did last night. She’s still too thin, still too pale. She moves in a way that reminds me of a bird, like she’s constantly ready to take flight if there’s any danger.
She’s trying to disappear, while somehow making other people feel seen.
And she’s nearly as flushed as Penny.
She looks up and catches me staring, and I jerk and nearly turn away.
But then she smiles at me, her eyes full and shining, and despite myself–despite everything I know to be true about her being off limits and me needing to keep my emotions to myself–I catch the smile in the palm of my hand like the treasure it is.
And I give her one of my own in return.