I stop.
They slide out, and Ronan Ryder sits up in one fluid motion. Gray thermal shirt, sleeves pushed up, forearms inked and dark with grease. He wipes his hands, then looks up.
His expression doesn't change.
"Hey," I say. Because I'm already standing here, so I might as well own it.
A pause. "You're the new PT."
"Word travels fast."
"Yeah." He stands. All of him, which is a significant amount of him. He's even bigger in daylight, or maybe it's just that there's no bar crowd around to absorb the impact. His eyes drop briefly to my wrist. "You okay? From last night?"
It takes me a half-second to register what he's asking. Cal's grip.
"Fine," I say, and I mean it. "I’ve had worse." And I do mean it—more than I should. Cal’s grip on my wrist registered as manageable because my baseline for what hands can do was set by someone worse.
Derek had a way of grabbing that looked accidental from the outside. A hand on my arm in public, too tight, smiling at whoever was watching.She bruises easily,he used to say, like it was a quirk of my body and not a consequence of him.
I don't say any of this to Ronan. It's not his story to carry.
But I notice the way his jaw tightens when I say it. Like he heard everything I didn’t say out loud. He looks at me steadily, the scar catching the afternoon light in a way that makes it look silver, and says nothing for long enough that a lesser person would fill the silence. I don't.
"My warning still stands," he says finally.
"I heard it the first time." I shift my bag strap on my shoulder. "But I'm not going to stop living in my new town because one bar has rough nights. That's not how I'm built."
He studies me the way you'd study a map before a route you're not sure about, looking for the gaps, the weak points. He won't find any. Or rather, he'll find them eventually, but they're not where most people look.
"Suit yourself," he says. He picks up a wrench. The conversation is clearly over, on his terms.
I should go. I know that.
"Ronan," I say instead. Testing it. "That's your name, right? Rosa told me."
He doesn't confirm it. Doesn't deny it either.
"I'm Harper." I smile, because that's just what my face does. "In case it didn't stick."
It stuck. I can tell by the way he doesn't react at all, and I'm already learning that with him, no reactionisthe reaction.
I leave him to his engine.
Walking the last two blocks home, I turn his warning over in my mind like a coin in my pocket.You shouldn’t come here alone.Flat, factual, no drama. Not an order—just something he knew and said.
I left it. Mostly.
But underneath the good coffee, the first satisfying day of work, and the gold-tipped aspens, something quieter has settled in. Warm at the edges.
Curiosity. The kind I probably shouldn’t encourage.
Chapter 4 – Ronan
The morning starts with Blaze's mouth, which is how most mornings at the garage start.
"Heard the Denton crew's been running product through the county road again," he says, not looking up from the tire he's mounting. "Third time this month. They're getting comfortable."
"Judge knows," I say.
