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Paperwork he always put off as long as he could. From their aftercare conversations, she knew he’d much prefer to have his hands in an engine than on a stack of invoices. One of these days, he intended to hire an office person. When he wasn’t so busy, that is.
That comment and her arched brow had made him laugh at himself. Small problems to a man who enjoyed his work.
She detected the faint drone of a TV and the smell of cigarettes. She trailed her hand along cheap paneling and noted a few framed photographs. A younger version of himself, holding up a set of keys, suggesting it had been the day he’d opened the garage. He had his other hand hooked in a jeans pocket, a defiance to the stance.Try to knock me down, it said. Yet in his eyes she detected a flicker, a candle expecting to be blown out.
He’d grown up a lot since then. That kind of defiance often came from an underlying insecurity, and she’d never seen that in him.
She stopped at the next photo. Maryshka leaned against his shoulder as he stood with his arms crossed, the rest of his crew grouped around him with various badass looks. In front of them was a motorcycle they’d customized for a community charity auction coordinated by the New Orleans PD. ThomasRose Associates had donated a seven-night suite at the Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter.
She’d been thinking a lot about him these past few days, and as she’d been thinking, she’d looked beyond the confident smile she saw in this photo, the maturity, to focus on the reserve that was always there, a door he’d never opened. Whether or not he chose to do so for her, consciously or subconsciously, would determine if she could do anything useful here.
“Who are you?” she mouthed as she studied the picture.
As she continued down the hallway, the cigarette smell grew stronger.
The office door was halfway open. He sat at a scarred metal desk, hand with the lit cigarette propped against his temple, long ash precariously close to the hair over his brow. He kept his hair short, but there was a thickness to it that revealed itself in subtle ways, a strokable wave in the back where the hair narrowed to a point at his nape. She’d often let her fingers play in the strands and follow that wave. He used a shampoo that smelled of bergamot, pomegranate and cucumber, a mix that was masculine and pleasant at once, though she was sure here the cigarette and garage scents would take the upper hand.
His long legs were clad in denim, one foot braced on the desk, the other on the floor as he sat at a slight angle in the chair. He hadn’t shaved in a few days. He often maintained a clipped beard, but when he came to the club, with or without facial hair, he was well-groomed. He looked clean at least. Though his jeans were faded and ripped, and the black T-shirt he wore had holes, it wasn’t a bad look for him.
From the tilt of his head, he seemed to be staring at the TV screen. It displayed a sitcom she was pretty sure he could care less about, but he was trained on it like the fate of the world depended on his understanding the plot.
Or was he? A stillness to him suggested otherwise.
As did the gun on the desk, resting inches from his unoccupied hand.
She saw that at the exact moment he grasped it, his foot coming down. The chair turned on its swivel and he was on his feet facing her, gun leveled.
The familiarity to the movement told her such vigilance wasn’t new to him. The cold, still look in his eyes was that of a man standing alone on a wall, ready to defend it. What was behind that look said he knew it was a crumbling wall in a fallow field, but it was still his to defend, damn it.
As he’d risen, she’d also registered a slight hitch, a course correction as he found his balance. It didn’t make the movement any less intimidating, not with those frigid blue eyes leveled on her and his jaw set like granite. But it gave her more information.
As did his reaction when he recognized her. Instantly, the gun muzzle was pointed upward. He swore and put it back down on the desk. Then stared at her. She waited him out. Waited to see what he would do next.
So she would know the path to take.
Silence was a coffin around him. When Tiger had taken a shower this morning, he’d wanted to hear the rush of shower water, running over his arms and chest as he lifted his hands to rinse the shampoo out of his hair. He’d stared down at his feet, the water swirling over the small tiles. Movement in his peripheral vision made him jump. Just the shower curtain. Rippling from the brush of his elbow and the splash of water against the folds.
The thrumming of the drops against his skin was like sound. But it wasn’t. Tiger had shut off the water and toweled off. Foundjeans and a T-shirt. He needed to go to the garage. Why the fuck he did, he didn’t know, but that was what he kept doing. Maybe today he’d finally box up the stuff in the office and officially close the place up. Take the insurance money, sell the place and start doing one-man repair jobs and custom bike work at his place.
Him losing it with Larry had told him that was his best option. His crew didn’t deserve that shit.
He got into the truck, white-knuckled the wheel, head on a swivel until he reached the office. Him, the guy who’d been comfortable at the wheel of anything since he could reach the pedals. Fuck, he missed the sound of an engine. Vibration was a mockery he hated.
Once at the garage, he did some paperwork. Bills. He had the battered TV on in the corner so he could glance at it on occasion. Like it was keeping him company. He’d turned on subtitles. Some kind of family sitcom, some stupid shit, and now it was a teenager trying to get his mother’s attention. Mom. Mom. Mom. Over and over.
Expecting her to hear him.
If he didn’t get his hearing back, which was looking less likely every day, he'd never hear anyone say his name again.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. He was almost forty. Yeah, when really bad stuff happened, the kid part of the brain that never fully packed up and left would resurface with this thumb-sucking crap. Didn’t mean he couldn’t handle it like an adult. But he was going to explode out of his skin.
Aubrey would never hearhermom say her name again.Thatwas something to cry about. Him, a mechanic whose hearing had already been scarred by a million engines, now relegated to full silence? That barely rated an eye roll. He’d been to racetracks and motorcycle rallies where no one could hear anything, and they were tickled as hell by it. If his balance wasn’t total shit right now, he'd get on his bike and go to one.
That was the stuff that sucker-punched him. When he was trying to find normal, and the stuff that had been the easiest wasn’t anymore.
No port in the storm.
The doc wanted him to go to a learning-to-be-deaf class. Said that would help him “cope” better. Yeah, if he set aside his general state of being pissed off and tried to do what they said, maybe. At the moment, he wasn’t in the mood to do more than sit here.
