Toby:Miss you too. But you're going to be great there. Ash needs you.
Ash has Jason. Ash is FINE.
Ash finally decides to text me back:Was at the range. Sorry. How was the move?
Three hot men carried my boxes. Your brother is thriving.
I put my phone down and start unpacking the kitchen, slotting my pans into Ash's cabinets like puzzle pieces, my baking sheets beside his cast iron, my stand mixer claiming the corner of the counter like it owns the place. By the time I'm done, the kitchen looks less like Ash's and more like ours, and that feels like something worth holding onto.
Upstairs, my room is small but clean. White walls, a window overlooking the backyard, a closet that's twice the size of my old one. I make the bed with sheets that still smell like my fabric softener — vanilla and cedar, because I have taste — and sit on the edge of it, alone in a room that doesn't feel like mine yet.
Chapter 2
Vaughn
This is pathetic. I'm a grown man. I'm thirty-four years old. I've rebuilt engines in the dead of winter with numb fingers and a busted shop heater, and I didn't think this hard about what I was wearing to crawl under a bike.
But Robin's cooking dinner for the pack tonight and I'm standing in my apartment above the bar staring at a pile of rejected shirts on my bed like a teenager before prom.
The black henley is too tryhard. The grey t-shirt has a grease stain I didn't notice until now. The blue flannel — I actually liked the blue flannel, but then I spent four minutes wondering if Robin would notice I wore blue and what that would mean and whether he'd make some comment about it bringing out my eyes, and I had to take it off before I drowned in my own stupidity.
I put the black henley back on. Roll the sleeves to the elbow because that's how I always wear them. Run a hand over my hair — still in the bun, still neat, fine — and grab my keys.
Knox's apartment is two doors down from mine. I can hear him and Toby in there, laughing about something, and the easy domesticity of it makes me walk faster toward the stairs. Not because I'm jealous. I'm not jealous. I'm the second of this pride and I've got a garage full of bikes that need me and a crossword I haven't finished and a life that works exactly the way I built it.
The bar is quiet on a Saturday afternoon. Jukebox off, chairs still up on tables from when I cleaned last night. I flip on a few lights out of habit, check the locks, run my hand along the bar top. This place is as much mine as Knox's in some ways — I've been here longer than anyone except him. Eight years. Knox was building a pride from nothing, needed a mechanic and a second, and I needed somewhere that wasn't home, where my entire family thought I was wasting my life because I'd rather rebuild a transmission than pass the bar exam.
It worked. Still works. The garage keeps my hands busy. The pride keeps my head steady. I don't need more than that.
I head to the garage to kill time before dinner. There's a Sportster on the lift with a carburetor rebuild half-finished, and my hands find the work without my brain having to participate. That's the thing about engines — they don't lie. They don't perform. A fuel line is clogged or it isn't. A timing chain is worn or it isn't. You diagnose, you fix, you move on. No ambiguity. No mixed signals.
Robin is a mixed signal shaped like a person.
The wrench slips and I bark my knuckle against the engine block. Swear under my breath. Wipe the blood on my jeans, because I'm an animal and also because the shop towels are across the garage and I don't feel like walking.
Jason pokes his head in from the bar. "You okay?"
"Fine."
"You've been staring at that carburetor for twenty minutes without doing anything to it."
"I'm assessing."
"You're brooding." He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, wearing that expression he gets when he thinks he's being helpful. "About Robin."
"I'm rebuilding a carburetor."
"You can do both. You're a multitasker."
"Jason."
"Vaughn." He matches my tone perfectly, the little shit. He's been getting braver since Ash came home — found his spine somewhere between the horror movie dates and the sex, and now he thinks he can mouth off to the pack second like it's casual conversation. "You changed shirts. I heard you through the wall."
I'm going to kill him. "The walls are thin."
"They are. Which is how I also know you sighed about fourteen times while getting ready, and one of them was the big dramatic kind that usually means Robin texted you something flirty."
I put the wrench down because I might throw it and give him a dark look.