5. George
George
The accident may have happened because I was thinking about ProMotive’s latest buyout offer instead of watching where I put my hands.
Carter had left the paperwork on my desk that morning—another revised proposal from the corporate auto group that had been circling Torres and Hayes for months. Each offer looks good on paper and amounts to handing over everything my father built.
My dad, Miguel Torres, opened the original Torres Auto Shop when I was five.
He taught me everything about engines, about doing honest work for the people who came to him.
By the time I joined the Navy at nineteen, the shop was struggling, but he kept it running.
He got sick during my fourth year of service and died six months later.
Without him, the shop closed, buried under debt.
After a couple of years, my mom met Trevor’s dad when his family was visiting from Australia and staying in California at the time.
She eventually married him and moved to Australia with him.
That’s how I met Trevor around my early twenties.
He’s always been this loud, bright kid—everywhere at once, acting like you were already family before you even had a say in it.
Somehow, I just became the older brother he never asked for but stuck with anyway.
When I got out of the Navy, I used my Veterans Affairs loan and years of saved pay to settle what my father owed and start fresh here in Chula Vista. A year later, Carter came on as a partner, and we opened Torres & Hayes Auto.
The shop itself has always been more than just a place to fix cars.
It’s where neighbors bring their kids to learn, people stop by for advice, and most of our customers are on a first-name basis with us.
Selling to ProMotive would erase all of that, reduce it to numbers and policies nobody here cares about.
I’m going to fight this buyout as long as I can.
What I remember most clearly is Carter’s face going white, then him scrambling for his phone while trying to stop the bleeding with clean shop rags that were turning dark red faster than either of us expected.
All I could think was that this is exactly the kind of dumbass move my father would have lectured me about for an hour.
Now it’s three days after the incident, and I’m sitting on my couch around ten in the morning waiting for Lance to show up and change my bandages.
I’ve checked the time on my phone more times than I can count in the last fifteen minutes, which is ridiculous. I’ve never been this wound up over someone showing up at my place, especially Lance, but knowing he’s coming by every morning to check on me has my brain doing weird things.
The knock comes a few minutes after ten, and I haul myself up off the couch with all the grace of a newborn giraffe.
My leg protests the entire trip to the door.
When I open it, Lance is standing there with a medical supply bag slung over his shoulder and two coffees in a carrier, grinning like he’s already plotting to give me absolute shit today.
He’s in a grey t-shirt and dark jeans, looking completely unreasonably put together for ten in the morning when I’m standing here in athletic shorts with my hair doing whatever it wants.
“Morning, Frankenleg.” He pushes past me into the living room without waiting for an invitation, setting the coffees on my repurposed toolbox coffee table. “I brought your usual. No sugar, splash of cream, and enough caffeine to restart your heart if it stops.”
“Frankenleg?”
“Would you prefer Gimpy? Hopalong? The Thigh-Tanic Disaster?” He’s already unpacking supplies, moving smoothly and efficiently, reminding me he does this for a living. “I’ve got options.”
“How about George?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Lance drops onto the couch and pats the cushion next to him, summoning me like a dog.
“Come on, let’s see the damage. And please tell me you’ve been keeping it clean and dry like Dr. Fernandez said, because if I have to lecture you about following doctor’s orders, I’m going to make it as condescending as humanly possible. ”
I sit down, already pulling at the hem of my athletic shorts to give him access to the bandage on my thigh. “It’s been three days. How infected could it possibly get?”
“Do you want the version that’ll give you nightmares?
Because I have seen some things, G.” He snaps on gloves and drops to one knee in front of me, expression shifting into that focused, slightly-elsewhere look he gets when he’s working.
“Things that would make you religious about your bandage care.”
“You’re literally here changing it. It’s all good.”
“Yesterday’s bandage looked damp and wrinkled. Did you sweat through it under those work pants, or were you leaning over a car again?”
“I went to the shop for a couple of hours. Carter’s handling most of it but I needed to check on the ‘69 Mustang restoration.”
“The Mustang can wait until you’re not actively recovering from traumatic injury.” He starts peeling back the outer bandage, fingers careful along the wound edges. “Hold still. This might sting.”
It does sting. I’ve had drill instructors screaming in my face at five in the morning while doing burpees in the rain. I’ve had Carter accidentally drop a transmission on my foot. I can handle Lance Bradford changing my bandages without flinching.
What I’m having trouble handling is the specific fact of Lance between my knees.
He’s close enough that I pick it up every time he shifts.
Clean soap, a flicker of citrus, something that sits sharp at the back of my throat.
His hands rest on my bare thigh with easy confidence.
It’s second nature to him, touching bodies for a living, nothing about it is remarkable.
His eyes are sharp and focused on the wound and nowhere else. He’s completely fine.
I’m not completely fine.
I look at the wall. I look out the window.
I look at the neighbor’s plant, which has been dead since March.
He hasn’t bothered to pull it out. Lance peels back the gauze and my jaw sets hard before I can stop it, not from the sting of it but from ten years of knowing this man and never once having to work this hard to hold still while he was near me.
It’s been like this since we got back from Trevor’s wedding in June. That week did a number on me, including the way I look at my best friend now. It’s been two months since and I’m still waiting for it to change.
“You okay?” he asks, glancing up.
Our eyes meet and I immediately look back at the plant.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice coming out rougher than I mean it to. “Just watching you work.”
“Looks good,” Lance says, examining the wound closely. “No signs of infection, the edges are coming together nicely. Dr. Fernandez did excellent work. You’re healing up like a champ.”
“Glad to hear my thigh meets your standards.”
“Oh, your thigh exceeds standards.” He’s cleaning it now, pouring something like water over it and dabbing gently with gauze. “Good muscle and tissue response. If I were grading thighs, this would be an A-minus.”
“What’s keeping it from an A?”
Lance glances up at me, one eyebrow raised, a playful expression that makes my stomach do a weird flip. “The giant gash, obviously. It really brings down the aesthetic.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind next time heavy metal objects are falling on me.”
“Appreciate it.” He’s applying antibiotic ointment, and I’m trying very hard not to notice how close his hands are to areas that are absolutely off-limits. “So, real talk. How’s the pain? And don’t give me the tough guy routine, because I can tell when people are lying.”
The honest answer? It still hurts like hell when I move.
There’s a deep throb running up into my hip and down toward my knee.
The answer I want to give is that it’s fine, that I can handle it.
I settle somewhere in between. “It’s manageable.
Mornings are the worst, but once I start moving, it eases up.
The hand’s more of a pain than anything else. ”
“Because it’s painful?” he snorts.
“More of a pain in that I can’t do anything that needs both hands working, which is pretty much everything here and at the shop.
” I flex my left hand, the good one, just to remind myself it still works.
“I’ve been trying to tackle some lighter jobs, but Carter keeps watching me like he’s waiting for me to pass out so he can say he told me so. ”
Lance nods while securing fresh gauze over the wound. “Carter has a point. You literally just had a shelf fall on you. Maybe take more than three days before coming back on site.”
“It’s my shop.”
“And it’s your body, genius. It’ll heal a lot faster if you actually rest instead of pretending you’re invincible.” He tapes down the last edge of the bandage and sits back, stripping off his gloves. “There. You’re good for another twenty-four hours. Please try not to do anything stupid with it.”
“Doing anything stupid is more your area.”
“Stupid in this context is anything that requires me to explain to Dr. Fernandez why her perfect suture job got pulled open because you insisted on changing someone’s oil filter.
” Lance picks up his coffee, takes a long sip, watches me over the rim.
“I know you’ve already been running through every single thing you want to do at the shop the second I leave. ”
He’s not wrong, but I’m not confirming it.
“I know you, man. Physically incapable of sitting still for more than ten minutes unless there’s a football game on or you’re unconscious.”
I grab my own coffee just to have something to do with my good hand. “Shop doesn’t run itself.”
“Carter can handle it for a few days.” Lance leans back against the couch, getting comfortable, making it look like he’s planning to stay for a while. I’m not sure if I’m relieved or concerned about that. “Besides, you’ve got me here to keep you entertained. I’m delightful company.”
“You’re something, I’ll give you that.”