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“When my dad died, I was twelve, and it screwed with my head. I found some peace playing football, but I spent my angsty middle school years in trouble, usually skipping classes to hang out with a bunch of former military guys my dad knew, who owned a garage.”
“Aah, that’s how you became a gearhead. Why the military after you graduated, and not trade school, then?”
“If you’re a lost kid like I was, the military provides order and purpose. Dad was a Marine, and Grandpa Matthews and his father before him, too, so I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t influenced by family legacy. After boot camp, I discovered I loved being a Marine. When I was in Afghanistan, it was everything I’d ever wanted. I had respect. I had discipline. I knew my place in the world, and my future was mapped out with logical precision.” He paused, taking another bite as his mind recalled the years before the IED explosion. The times in the field with his unit—the feeling of watching a bunch of strangers coalesce into a single fighting force. “You live in the moment. Fighting for the Marine to the left and the Marine to the right. It’s all that I was. It’s all I ever wanted to be.”
Bryce nodded. “There were days I covered for another chef, in at six in the morning to prep, then working both the lunch and dinner crowd. Twelve or fourteen hours on my feet, stopping only long enough to pee and shovel food into my mouth before returning to the stove. It didn’t feel like work, though. It felt as easy as breathing. But now…my whole world has shifted. The universe dealt me a change of plans, and I’m…”
“Off-balance. Like you’ve slipped a gear,” he finished, recalling that hazy time after the IED detonated—those blank places in his mind that were like a camera being switched on, taking a picture, then turning off, the photos a mismatched jumble. “Losing what defined you…I get it. I mourn my Marine career more than my left foot. These past years taught me my limits. Both good and bad.”
He hadn’t meant to get personal. Yet she didn’t look discomfited by his honesty.
“Fixing cars for you is like cooking for me, then—therapeutic?”
He nodded. “I’d always liked cars, and when Dad passed, tinkering with engines was the way I dealt with the grief. After my honorable discharge, I threw myself into starting this vintage vehicle resto/reno business. I figured while God saw fit to take my left foot in Afghanistan, He didn’t take the right one for a reason.” He gave a wry grin. “So I could push the gas pedal.”
“And you found a new purpose. Maybe it’s not as comfortable of a fit as the Marines, but you adapted. Then thrived.” Her serious expression slowly morphed into a smile, like the sun coming out behind a bank of storm-gray clouds. She slapped the table and stood abruptly. “You give me hope, Ryker. I’m going to let you finish your dinner in peace while I go check out this beauty on the lift over here. It’s a Cougar Eliminator, right? Is it 1970? Or is it a ’69?”
Ryker gaped. “She’s a ’69. How’d you know?”
“My dad loves all things car-related. In fact, he says he originally dated Mom because her name was Shelby, like the Mustang, and his name was Hudson, like the defunct car manufacturer. He drove car transporters and collected posters of his favorites.” Bryce peered through the driver’s-side window. “He had one poster of the Mercury Cougars through the ages, and I always thought the snub-nosed 1950s-era models were my favorite. Then he let me drive a 1970 Eliminator off a transporter once, and the whole car literally rocked when you goosed the gas. It was pretty sweet.”
“You…drove cars off the transporter?” he asked, trying to picture a tiny version of Bryce clambering up into a big muscle car. “I mean, your dad trusted you to do that?”
“My brother and I spent summers traveling with him in the big rig. There are few hands and much to be done, so we’d both drive the cars off the transporter. Dad taught me to drive stick by the time I was ten, although he’d had to rig up a wooden block for me to reach the clutch. One summer, I worked a construction gig alongside my brother. I thought about getting a crane operator’s license my senior year, but decided to apply to culinary school, instead.” She gave him that hot-as-hell assessing look, lifting one eyebrow. “I can drive anything with wheels. Probably have driven everything with wheels. Except those behemoth crawler-transporters NASA uses to haul the rockets to the launchpad—although I doubt it’s any harder than operating a Trojan loader. The NASA crawler is a hell of a lot slower, anyway.”
For a second, he thought she was purposely punking him, like he was being set up for some type of hidden-camera joke. How many people knew muscle cars, let alone drove everything from Cougars to construction vehicles? How was she this perfect? Then she squatted down to snag a stray crayon, and he caught sight of a double-wing tattoo on her lower back. It looked like a pair of squared-off angel wings, but a little different, like the logo of a…
“Bentley,” he said out loud as soon as the car’s name came to him.
Everyone in the garage froze.
Too late, he realized the car emblem was symbolic. Bentley, as in Bentley Weatherford. The man who had been the girls’ father. Bryce’s late brother.
The box cutter June was holding clattered to the cement floor. Bryce gasped as if she’d been stabbed, while one of the little girls gave a piteous whimper.
And Ryker wished he’d kept his big mouth closed.
Chapter 6
Uh.” Ryker’s brain scrambled to come up with something to defuse the situation after accidentally pulling the pin on the dead-dad grenade.
“That’s my daddy’s name,” Addison said in the softest voice he’d ever heard her use. “Did you know him?”
His face felt singed, as if he’d jacked up a welding torch too high. “I…I met him once. He brought his plumbing truck in for a part. He was a good man.”
Addison nodded. “I’ve been waiting to see him in his fairy wings. Only Aunt Beamer says the fairies don’t leave heaven ’cause the gates are locked. Have you ever seen a fairy, Mr. Ryker?”
“N-no. Never have. I was—I was talking about your aunt’s tattoo. It’s the logo for a car called a Bentley.”
Bryce stood, pulling her shirt down to cover the ink on the base of her spine. She looked embarrassed, and Ryker immediately kicked himself. That’s what happened when he loosened the hinge on his jaw. Unplanned shit spewed out.
“I got it after my brother…passed.” She said the last word as if she had to handle it carefully in her mouth to avoid being jabbed. “He always lifted me up in life, so I got it on my lower back, as if he were giving me a boost.”
“Yeah, Aunt Beamer’s first tattoo is a tramp stamp.” June leaned against the garage door, her shoulders hunched. “Imagine that.”
Bryce’s body deflated like a tire with a nail in its rim. Her eyes lost their sparkle, and she put a hand out on the Cougar’s metal frame as if to steady herself after a punch to the gut.
His mouth was moving before he realized what he would say. All he wanted was to deflect the girls’ attention and reverse the heavy fog of sadness descending in his garage.
