Chapter Seven
The garage is packed this morning, and all six bays are full.
It’s an all-hands-on-deck kind of day. Fucking perfect.
Brenden and Nate are sorting through all the paperwork so we can figure out which repairs need to be done today.
I'm sitting at my workbench finishing what’s left of my white monster, Creed playing low from the speaker on my toolbox.
A handful of brake changes, tire rotations, and a few bike performance tests on the dyno later, and it's almost lunch time, and I’m fucking starving.
I go over to the sink area, scrub off the grease, and head into the lunchroom.
There is shit everywhere. Removing both valve covers became the easiest part.
My skin is painted black with grease and grime.
I move on to the rocker arms and pushrods, carefully lining them up in the order I removed them on my workbench.
Loosening the head bolts, I lift the cylinder off the block.
The cylinders have so much carbon buildup that I need to soak them in a tub of heated caustic solution.
This would go much more smoothly as a two-person job, but I just want to get this done. The heads are heavy as hell and coated in grease. Walking to the soaking tub, my hands start to slip as I near it.
Losing my grip, the head slams into the bin, the cleaner splashing everywhere. My arms, hands, chest, and neck included. The slick and soapy solution coated my skin. My skin starts to burn. Ебать. Fuck.
By the time I’m at the sink in the back, water blasting over my forearms, my skin is already flushed red.
The burn spreads slowly, deliberately, like it’s choosing me.
My jaw locks. I breathe through my nose, without making a sound.
Pain is something you wait out. Ten minutes pass.
Then twenty. The skin across my chest tightens, wrong, like it’s shrinking.
Blisters rise along my collarbone and ribs—small, glossy, unmistakable.
When I brush one with my fingers, pain detonates, sharp enough to punch the air out of my lungs.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, barely audible.
Someone notices. Then everyone does. The shop noise dulls, replaced by the roar in my ears.
Brendon swears. Nate tells me to sit down.
But I fight them when they want to take my keys.
But I argue and tell them I’m fine to take myself to the hospital with the pain.
My hands start to shake. No matter how hard I try, I clench them.
Pulling into the ER parking lot, I park in the first spot I see open.
I throw my truck into park. I jump down with a hiss.
Regretting the lift I just had to have. I’m 6’2 and still need to jump into the truck.
I start walking to the entrance, and I’m looking down at my phone, texting Brenden that I made it safely.
He was pretty pissed off that I refused to let any of them come with me.
But I can handle myself. As I kept walking…
I collided with something small…or should I say someone, and instantly put my arms out, mindlessly steadying the person in front of me.
A lavender scent strikes me, taking over the smell of grease.
I look down, and I swear I feel my chest crack in half.
Devastating. World tilting. It’s not spinning.
It’s fucking shifting. Like gravity itself just decided to fucking betray me.
This is no stranger, I mindlessly have my arms around…
no. This is the very ghost I buried alive six years ago, who I can still hear breathing in my sleep.
The only saving grace that brings me out of my paralyzing nightmares.
“Juni…? Fuck Любовь, are you okay?” I ask, and my eyes land on her temporarily cast wrist. My burns are long forgotten.
Stunned. Her eyes go wide, looking at me for the first time in way too fucking long. “Gavin… how… Why are you here? Are you hurt?” She looks at me with concern. I see a few parts of my body that are visibly red and irritated—and starting to blister.
“How about you watch where you're fucking going, you big fucking oaf!” Her friend screeches. Before I can even begin to respond, they are gone. She gently grabs Juni’s arm and starts walking to her car. I can’t help but keep looking back. Holy. Shit. I miss you so much, Любовь, so fucking much.
I start making my way toward where I was going.
The ER smells nothing like the shop, but the scent follows me anyway.
Under fluorescent lights, the burns look worse—raw and blistered, spreading across my chest and down my arms. A nurse asks what happened.
I keep it short. “Work accident,” I responded gruffly.
As they start the cleaning process, applying the medicated gel to stop the burning.
My control fractures. The feeling has my teeth clenching tight.
Everything is on fire. But the pain makes me feel alive.
Wrapped in white bandages that don’t hide the ache, grease still ground into my knuckles, I stare at the ceiling and think the same thing I always do when my body betrays me.
It’s never the big things that ruin you. It’s the small ones that linger.