13. Riley
Riley
Morning had only begun to reach the marsh when Riley settled onto the exterior stairs with a blanket around her shoulders and a mug of decaf balanced between both hands.
Beyond the gravel lot, pale light spread across the reeds while cicadas worked themselves into their endless summer racket.
Salt carried inland from the water, mixing with the leather smell permanently baked into Copper Shank now.
The shop below her remained closed for another half hour.
She raised the mug toward her mouth.
Tires ground across gravel.
Riley stopped with the coffee inches from her lips.
The Aston Martin rolled through the entrance at a crawl, its black hood catching the first strip of sunlight.
Graham had been showing up before opening every morning for weeks, so the car shouldn’t have pulled her attention from the marsh.
But instead of continuing toward the production entrance, he turned across the empty lot and brought the car straight toward her stairs.
Her mug never reached her mouth.
What are you doing?
The engine died at the base of the building. Graham remained behind the wheel for a moment before the driver’s door opened.
He stepped out wearing a clean jacket.
Not the sweat-stained work clothes Mac had been making him ruin on the shop floor. Not the cheap T-shirt he’d worn while hauling leather. Not anything that suggested he intended to spend another day scraping rubber dust out of machinery.
A canvas duffel hung from one shoulder.
Riley lowered the mug.
There it was.
Whatever small, stupid piece of her started expecting him here each morning had apparently forgotten who Graham Delaney was.
She’d watched him bleed onto Mac’s floor.
She’d cleaned the cut herself while he stood still beneath her hands.
Somehow that had been enough for her to start imagining consistency where she should have recognized an intermission.
The bag strap rode close to the white bandage at his collar.
“That strap’s sitting on the cut.”
The words escaped before she could stop them.
Graham looked down, easing the weight of the duffel away from the taped skin, then glanced back up at her. “I know. I’ll move it.”
So easy. So familiar.
Riley cradled the mug against the blanket and stared past him toward the silent workshop doors.
Don’t start taking care of him again.
Graham came around the front of the car, but he stopped when he reached the lowest stair. He didn’t put a foot on it.
His restraint should have made the packed bag easier to tolerate. It didn’t.
“You don’t need to come down,” he said.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
He pressed his lips together. The duffel settled against his side, and he adjusted it once more before letting his hand fall.
Riley studied the bag rather than his face. Zipped. Packed enough that the canvas sagged at the bottom. This wasn’t gym gear tossed together for a shift. Whatever waited for him beyond Copper Shank required clean clothes and luggage.
She set the mug beside her on the step before coffee could slosh over the rim.
“So what is this?”
Graham looked out at the marsh. “I saw you on the stairs. Just… hoping I didn’t wake you.”
“I’m already up.” Riley pushed the blanket away from her lap and stood, leaving it pooled behind her. “But if you’re looking to clock in, Graham, you missed the shop doors. They’re around the corner.”
“I know where the doors are.”
“Good. Mac gets unpleasant when people forget basic geography before breakfast.”
He frowned. “You’re still doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Talking to me like I’m another delivery driver who parked in the wrong place.”
Riley looked down at the duffel again. “Delivery drivers usually bring things in. That looks more like you’re taking something out.”
Silence stretched between the stairs and the gravel.
The cicadas filled it.
Graham pushed the strap off the tender side of his shoulder and caught the handle instead. As he did, his jacket fell open enough to expose the edge of the bandage beneath his collar.
Yesterday, her fingers had been there.
That memory irritated her more than the luggage.
She folded the blanket once, then again, giving her hands something useful to do. “If Mac gave you the day off because of the cut, you could have called him instead of driving over here dressed like you’re headed to a board meeting.”
“He didn’t give me the day off.”
“Then you’re late.”
“I’m skipping the floor today.”
She stopped halfway through another fold of the blanket.
Riley raised her eyes.
Graham stayed where he was, one hand around the duffel handle, the other hanging at his side. No argument. No attempt to climb the stairs. No grin meant to disarm her.
The morning suddenly looked less like morning and more like an ending she’d been stupid enough not to prepare for.
Of course.
She placed the folded blanket beside the abandoned mug.
“Why?”
Graham looked up at her.
“I just came by to tell you I’m leaving for the airport.”
Riley kept her place on the stairs. The folded blanket and cooling coffee sat behind her, forgotten now that Graham had dropped the word airport between them. The cicadas carried on beyond the lot as if nothing had changed.
“Where?”
Graham lifted his gaze to hers. “New York.”
She waited.
He shifted his grip on the handle. “The Ice Royalty launch gala is happening. I have to attend.”
New York.
Of course.
Riley crossed her arms, one forearm resting above the curve of her belly while the other tucked beneath it.
The clean jacket made sense now. So did the packed bag, the car positioned for an immediate departure, the absence of shop clothes that had become almost ordinary on him over the past few weeks.
You actually believed this was becoming his life.
Yesterday she’d stood close enough to press medical tape against the cut near his collarbone. She’d worried about infection. She’d thanked him for helping save Mac’s order after he put his own body under a falling clamp rather than let the work hit the floor.
Now he was dressed for New York.
“You’re already dressed for it.”
“I have to go straight from the airport.”
Her eyes dropped to the bag. “You’re carrying luggage on that shoulder after opening it up yesterday.”
“I moved the strap.”
“That wasn’t my point.”
“I know.”
The answer irritated her more than an argument would have. No sales pitch. No swagger. No Graham explaining that he knew best while she simply needed to trust him. He stood in the gravel and accepted each sentence as if the right to object had been taken away from him.
Riley looked past his shoulder toward the road. “So that’s it? A few weeks down here, then New York calls and you’re back on a plane?”
His mouth tightened. “This isn’t about wanting to go back.”
“You’re getting on the plane.”
“Yes.”
There it was. One clean syllable, with no room left for the stupid hope she’d allowed herself after the blackout.
The morning sun had reached the hood of the car now, turning the windshield into a sheet of glare. Riley shifted her weight on the stair but stayed where she was. The distance between them wasn’t large, yet Graham made no move toward the first step.
“Let me guess. The apparel executives threatened to freeze your bonuses, so you’re sprinting straight back to New York to smile for the flashbulbs.”
He caught the edge of his jacket with his free hand, then released it. “Keep the bonuses out of this, Riley. There’s a serious situation with the brand. I need to handle it myself.”
“A situation.”
“Yes.”
She gave a small laugh with no humor in it. “That’s convenient.”
“Riley—”
“No. You always have a situation, Graham.” She kept her arms where they were. “If it isn’t a sponsor breathing down your neck, it’s a co-star demanding a photo op. There’s always some emergency that needs you more than anything happening here.”
His eyes stayed on her face. “This one does need me there.”
“Of course it does.”
“I’m not asking you to like it.”
“Good, because that would be an ambitious request.”
He shifted his stance, bumping the bag against his leg. For weeks, she’d watched those same hands drag leather bundles, scrape machine traps, and turn iron wheels beside Wade, working until sweat soaked through his shirt. Some reckless part of her had begun treating those images as evidence.
Maybe that was the humiliation underneath everything else.
Not that Graham was leaving.
That she’d started expecting him to stay.
He adjusted the bag again, careful of the bandage, and Riley’s gaze caught on the strip of white beneath his collar. The sight brought an unwelcome flash of yesterday—the workbench, the antiseptic wipe, his skin under her fingertips.
She turned her attention to the gravel instead.
“You don’t need to explain the brand to me. I spent years listening to those explanations.”
“I’m not trying to sell you anything.”
“Then don’t.”
His jaw shifted, but he kept his silence.
Riley looked at the jacket, the bag, the waiting car, and let those objects answer every question he refused to.
“Don’t bother spinning the PR script for me.”
Riley stepped down one stair.
Graham looked down. “Watch the step.”
“I know where my stairs are.”
“You don’t need to come any closer.”
“Trust me, Graham. That’s not what this is.”
The breeze pushed loose hair across her cheek. She swept it away and left her arms uncrossed this time, one hand resting against the railing while she studied him below. The bag hung beside his leg. His jacket covered most of the damage from yesterday, but the bandage still showed at the collar.
That strip of white made her want to retreat.
She refused.
Yesterday he had stood bleeding beside Mac’s workbench while she cleaned the cut.
Before that, he’d hauled leather until his clothes turned black with shop grime.
He’d scraped machine traps, lifted freight, worked beside Wade without demanding special treatment, and stayed when every easy exit remained available to him.
She had watched all of it.
Worse, she’d started believing it.
“You should have changed that bandage before you left.”