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Another soft response.
“Who gives a fuck if I own the firm? You know what?”
Tanner’s about to blow a gasket, and I’m sitting here in a southern hellscape eating it up.
“Shane, I have to go. Call me when you get to Georgia.”
The line goes dead, and I breathe out a sigh of relief.
“Anything I can do to help?”
I hold a hand above my eyes in a lame attempt to shade the glaring sunlight and look up at Brinley.
This morning we got in an argument about what she should wear today.
Digging through twenty bags of clothes, I held up every option I’d bought her, but she laughed and refused each one, choosing instead to pull on her usual T-shirt and jeans ensemble.
Something flickered in her eyes when I gave up, a secret I’m determined to get out of her.
“You a mechanic, by chance?”
Shaking her head, she answers, “Can’t say that I am.”
“Then you won’t be much help.”
I’m dying in this parking lot. The cement is at least a thousand degrees, and the mechanics inside the shop are all peering out at me like it’s a fucking joke I’m being forced to work out here.
Turns out Old Man Shipley, who owns the shop, doesn’t take it well when he finds out he can’t upcharge me 100 percent for working on the busted car of a weary traveler passing through.
Thankfully, he agreed to let me use his parking lot to get the job done, but that was as far as he’d go. It still cost me $500 just for the shitty workspace.
Now his employees are kicking back in the shade of the shop, industrial fans moving the air around for them, each with a bottle of water or soda in hand, acting like I’m the day’s entertainment.
I haven’t heard one squeal from an impact wrench, one curse word from fighting a seized bolt or any noise that would indicate they’re doing their damn jobs instead of sitting around with their thumbs up their asses, watching me.
Priest would have his guys’ heads for wasting this kind of time.
Or hell, knowing Priest, he’d probably be filming it.
“I’m almost done,” I tell Brin. “Can you grab me something to drink?”
With a nod, she walks off to do the only thing she can do to help me out.
Thankfully, the rest of the job only takes me another hour, and when I’m finally turning the key and hear the car’s engine come to life, I send up a silent thanks to the universe.
We’re back on the interstate after stopping at a gas station for coffee and stale donuts, both of us ready for this drive to end so we can start looking for her father.
Brinley doesn’t say much for most of the drive, not that she talked a lot before last night.
Still, I’m concerned that I took advantage of her when I should have done the right thing and turned her down.
We both know this isn’t a relationship.
It can’t be.
Not with everything I have going on, and especially because it’s not in my nature to hang on.
Normally, her silence wouldn’t concern me, but with each passing hour, and as we’re crossing the state line between South Carolina and Georgia, I can’t hold it in any longer.
