12. Arden
Arden
I’ve been around a lot of men and organizations in my life. I’ve seen a lot of deals go down and a lot of deals go wrong, and the men who’ve rushed out of my father’s office when something hasn’t gone the way they wanted–or when their lives are in danger.
And I’ve always thought that every genre of thing has a specific energy to it.
Kids come with sunshine and rainbows, as long as they’re being good, while meetings of ladies over tea can feel intense, but also shallow.
Nothing of importance happens over tea. The men who meet with my father feel like angry dogs, the men who do his dirty work feel like lumbering, dangerous bears.
I’ve never spent much time in a garage before, but I’m starting to recognize the energy of the place, and the moment we walk back in, I realize that the energy here is off.
The men are almost all gathered around one specific bike, and though it doesn’t look like anything special to me, something must be wrong with it.
Ten different men are staring at it like it’s insulted their mother and then presented a riddle they don’t understand, and more than one of them is wringing his hands or pushing his fingers through his hair.
Mars takes exactly half a second to desert me, all the shared laughter of the last two hours forgotten between one step and the next.
I watch him run from me, my heart growing colder with each step he takes, and then shake my head.
Typical.
I might have thought we were sharing something special, that we were actually making space for each other, but the moment someone else needs him, he’s forgetting me as if I never existed.
“Should have seen that coming,” I whisper, angry at myself. Because of course he has other things to take care of. Of course something else is more important than the random stray girl he had the misfortune to rescue in the middle of a cool spring night.
Haven’t I been telling myself that for the last two days?
And I thought I was believing it. But the crack through my heart at his sudden absence tells me otherwise.
I was taking him at face value rather than remembering that everyone has an ulterior motive. Even Mars Hawke.
I turn toward the house, the bags on my arms suddenly feeling like disappointment and loneliness, and realize that the bike hasn’t cornered everyone’s attention the way it did Mars.
Orion is bent over under the hood of an old, bright red truck, and I can hear him muttering to himself from here. I don’t know if he hasn’t seen the bike or if he just doesn’t care, but given what I know of him, I’m guessing the latter.
He strikes me as the kind of man who ignores something other men are drooling over, just to be contrary.
He further strikes me as the kind of man who will make fun of every other man for being predictable and boring because they all like the same thing, while he’s walking his own path and threatening anyone who tries to steer him back to the mainstream.
I have to admit that I respect him for that.
Not everyone is brave enough to be an individual in a world full of sheep.
He suddenly looks up at me like he heard me have that thought and is deeply insulted about it, his brows drawn down and his eyes annoyed. He holds out a hand and gestures that it requires something, and then increases the intensity of his glare.
“Are you going to help? Or are you just going to stand their looking pretty?”
The questions strike me in a way I don’t expect and I freeze, horrified at having been caught staring–and at being asked to help.
I hate it when people notice me and ask me to help them do something. It immediately puts pressure on me, and I don’t perform well under pressure.
There’s too much possibility of disappointing someone, and paying the price for it.
“Arden!” he snaps. “Get me the wrench off that cart!”
I jump at the command in his voice, drop my bags, and scurry toward the cart he’s just indicated. I have no idea what a wrench looks like, but I grab the first tool I can find and hand it to him.
He glances at the thing in his hand and then turns his gaze to me, looking like he wonders if I suddenly lost my mind.
“The wrench,” he says again.
“Oh the wrench,” I mutter. “Obviously. My mistake. So sorry.”
I grab another tool and hand it to him, and once again I’ve guessed wrong.
This time, he doesn’t even bother asking again.
He stalks over, grabs what I assume is actually the wrench, and glares at me.
When he holds the tool up in front of my face and shakes it, I can’t decide if I want to punch him or laugh.
“Wrench,” he snaps. “The wrench.”
“Wrench,” I mimic, turning the word into a sneer. Look, I can’t help it. He saw right through me this morning, then disappeared the moment he realized what he’d done, and now he’s standing here lecturing me with one word and making me feel about three inches tall.
It’s fucking annoying.
He pauses at my tone and looks like I did just punch him and he didn’t see it coming.
His dark, handsome features go completely blank and I have a moment to just stare at him and take him in.
His hair is longer than it should be, framing his face and falling down his neck, and it’s got a slight curl to it, like it’s long enough that it’s starting to have a mind of his own.
His eyes are almond-shaped and dark but still manage to show me everything he’s thinking, and when his mouth twists it brings his dimples out sharply.
I wonder if he hates those dimples.
If he thinks they detract from the dangerous aura he works so hard to maintain.
And the moment I think that, my mouth twitches on a smile.
His eyes drop to my mouth and come back to my own, even more shocked now, and I extend my thoughts three steps further. I wonder if he actually is as dangerous as he pretends... and if anyone ever gives him the chance to be who he actually is.
The man who’s evidently shocked beyond belief that I just made fun of him.
“Are you actually going to help?” he asks. “Or are you planning to just stand there and make fun of me?”
I want to say I’m going to stand here and make fun of him.
God, I want to say it so badly. But that brings the balance of the thought I had earlier.
I can see him expecting me to walk away.
Tell him he’s not worth my time or that I have things I’d rather be doing than helping him.
I can see him assuming I don’t want anything to do with him.
But I remember that flash of the real him I saw this morning, fueled by chocolate and whiskey.
And I want more of it.
“I can help,” I say, crossing my arms.
He scoffs. “I bet you can’t. You didn’t even know what a wrench was.”
I shrug. “So teach me. I’m a quick learner.”
I don’t tell him that I’m at the top of my class in college or that I’m a business major with a specialty in engineering.
I definitely don’t say that I’ve never seen any of these tools but I’m already cataloging what they could be for and how to use them because I’m a quick study and have a mind that picks things up quickly.
I’m guessing he’ll be sweeter if I let him think he’s teaching me.
And somewhere deep down in my soul, in a hidden corner I try not to look at, there’s a piece of me that will do whatever it takes to have that sort of contact with him.
A piece of my heart that wants to know everything I can about Orion.
And that piece knows that getting to know this man started with hot cocoa...
and might grow with something as simple as a set of tools in a garage.
He scowls at me for a moment too long, and the look starts to take on a weight I didn’t expect.
The air between us grows heavy and thick with expectation, colored with the knowledge that we’re both thinking about more than the truck or the wrench.
He looks between my eyes, searching for something, and I hold my breath and wonder what he’s looking for.
Wonder why I’m looking back at him with the same question.
Then he jerks, catching himself, and pulls away abruptly.
He shoves his head back under the hood of the truck and starts using the wrench to loosen a bolt, and before long he’s got his hands full with the piece he’s just taken out of the engine.
He holds it out, waiting for someone to take it, and I step forward, grab it, and put it on the tray.
“What do you need?” I ask simply.
“Screwdriver,” he says. “Phillip’s head.” There’s a short pause, and then: “That’s the one that looks like it has a cross on the end.”
I turn to the cart and take a moment to find the screwdriver, checking the end carefully to make sure it’s right, and when I hand it to him, I swear I can see him hiding a smile behind that scowl.
I take that as a sign of approval and move to stand next to him, watching him work on the engine like it’s a part of his own body.
He tightens things and loosens other things, takes out parts and adjusts them, and then replaces something that evidently didn’t work right.
When he needs someone to steady something I lend him my hands, and when he needs something, he describes it so I can find it.
At one point he needs to get something from another cart and steps away.
“Don’t touch anything,” he says sharply.
Of course I reach out and touch the thing he’s just been working on. How else am I going to learn what it does? The moment I touch it, though, it pops free and falls to the ground.
I stare at it, horrified, and then pick it up, anxious to put it back where it came from.
He returns when I’m still holding it, takes one look at the piece in my hand, and turns his eyes up to mine. He looks deeply, deeply disappointed, and my heart starts hammering in fear.
I hate being in trouble.
“Is this expensive?” I whisper. “Did I break it?”
“Yes it’s expensive,” he says, grabbing it from me. “And I’m billing you.”
“Really?” I ask.
I hate the waver in my voice, but I can’t stop it. I’m crushed at the idea that I did something wrong and that he might be angry at me.
Then I see his mouth twitch.
I smack his arm, more annoyed than I have any right to be. “That was mean!”
His mouth grows firm and he shrugs. “I’m not a nice man, Arden. Better if you know that now, before you start thinking otherwise.”
As he turns, his sleeve rides up, and I see an old scar on his arm. It’s well healed, but it was obviously deep when it happened. It’s clean and straight, the ridge of scar tissue nearly smooth. Despite myself, I reach out to touch it, but he jerks away.
“What happened?” I ask, my voice quiet.
He moves his shoulder like he’s throwing me off, and moves away from me. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with. Old scar, that’s all.”
I freeze, suddenly feeling like I’m twelve years old again and just got caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing.
I’m frozen, waiting to get in trouble the way I always did at home.
Waiting for the blame, the harsh words that tell me I’m not worth the trouble.
That I have to make up for my shortcomings again.
Instead, Orion goes back to work without saying anything else, and he doesn’t ask me for any other tools. In fact, he suddenly acts like I’m not even here. Just leaves me with the knowledge that he’s got scars he doesn’t want anyone to see, and secrets he’s probably never told anyone.
Least of all a girl like me. An outsider. Interloper.
A problem he never asked for.
I feel a rush of adrenaline at the thought... and then a tell-tale pounding in my chest that tells me I’m in trouble. There’s a flutter, and then a pause. The dizziness that says it’s about to get much worse.
I don’t wait. I turn and run from the garage with one thought on my mind: Get upstairs and into private before this gets any worse.
Because I don’t want Mars or Orion or any of their men knowing about my secrets, either. I don’t want them thinking they have to fix it.
And I don’t want them using it as an excuse to send me home before I’m ready.