6. Riley #2
“I’m fine. Keep working.”
The taste in her mouth finally faded. Riley kept her forehead resting against the metal for another moment.
Night had settled outside the open delivery doors by the time Riley abandoned the workbench for an overturned bucket.
The shop had lost most of its daytime noise, leaving the scrape of her rag across the gear teeth and the distant hum of one remaining machine near the front.
Grease had worked into the lines of her fingers hours ago, and no amount of wiping seemed interested in removing it.
She rotated the gear on her knee and dug the rag into another packed groove.
Footsteps approached through the rear bay.
Riley kept working.
A man in a stained apron stopped several feet from the press. Broad shoulders, work clothes, hands marked with leather dye. He brought over a glass beaded with condensation, ice shifting inside it as he set it on the bench beside her tools.
“That bucket treating you better than the floor?”
“Barely.”
“Good to know Mac still invests in premium seating.”
She studied the glass for a second before meeting his gaze.
He nodded toward the opened press. “Mac mentioned we had a visitor out back trying to resurrect the dead.”
“I’m not a visitor.”
“Fair enough.”
No argument. No amused correction. He left the statement where she put it.
Riley resumed scrubbing.
“Wade,” he said. “I cut leather on the other side of the shop.”
“Riley.”
“I gathered.”
The tea sat untouched between them. Moisture ran down the glass and pooled near its base.
Wade gestured toward it. “Brought you something cold. Decaf tea. Figured caffeine might not do your stomach any favors tonight.”
She stopped scrubbing the gear.
Did Mac tell him?
No. Mac didn’t know anything worth telling.
She set the gear on the bench and picked up the glass. The ice clinked against the sides. Wade made no move to step closer while she took a cautious sip.
Sweet, cold, almost painfully good after hours in the heat.
“Thanks.” She put it back down. “But I don’t need somebody supervising me.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Or rescuing the motor when I get tired.”
“I don’t know enough about that press to rescue anybody.”
Riley lowered the glass and looked up at him.
Wade leaned one hip against the cutting table, but his hands stayed away from her tools. “My expertise ends around the point where leather quits being leather and somebody plugs something into a wall.”
“You work here and you’re admitting that?”
“I like having all ten fingers.”
Riley rubbed the rag across another tooth. “Smart policy.”
“I try.”
The quiet that followed didn’t carry the awkward pressure she expected. Wade didn’t pepper her with questions about where she came from, why she needed the job, or why a stranger had decided to spend the night taking apart Mac’s oldest machine.
He simply stayed where he was.
After a moment, Wade pointed toward a stack of hides on a nearby cart. “I’ve got prep work to finish before morning. I can take it somewhere else if you want the bay.”
Riley studied the opened motor housing. Several connections disappeared beneath the block where the overhead light barely reached.
“I need better light under there.”
Wade followed her gaze. “There’s a flashlight on the shelf behind me.”
She wiped her hands on the rag. “I can manage it.”
“I figured you could.” He took the flashlight from the shelf but didn’t switch it on. “If you want a spare hand to point this thing, I can stick around. Otherwise, I’ll stay out of your way.”
Riley studied him for a moment, then turned back toward the press.
“You can hold the light. Just keep the beam out of my eyes.”
Wade clicked on the flashlight and crouched beside the press without reaching toward the open housing. The beam landed across a knot of wiring near Riley’s elbow.
“Lower,” she said. “I need it under the block.”
The light shifted.
“Here?”
“Hold it there.”
Riley fitted the wrench over the next bolt. The threads ground against the metal, then loosened, allowing her to work it through two short turns. She set the wrench on the bench and held out her empty hand without looking away from the opening.
“Brush.”
A wire brush appeared in her palm.
“You always this economical with words?” Wade asked.
“Only when somebody follows directions.”
“That explains Mac.”
She scrubbed soot from the exposed metal and fought back a smile. Wade shifted the beam to the next spot she needed before she had to ask.
For the next stretch of work, conversation gave way to tools. Riley loosened a connector, wiped grease from the housing, then dropped her shoulder to work her hand farther beneath the motor. Wade moved with her, keeping the light off her face and out of the reflective metal.
When she reached blindly across the bench, he passed her a clean rag.
She paused long enough to look at him. “You planning to read my mind all night?”
“No. You’ve reached for that rag three times.”
“Fair.”
Riley wiped her fingers and returned to the wiring.
Working beside someone this quiet was strange. Graham used to fill every locker room with plans—next game, next contract, next city, next impossible thing he intended to conquer. Even when they had nothing, his energy ran ahead of them.
Wade stayed in the room he was standing in.
No speeches. No advice she hadn’t requested.
Just the light where she needed it.