Wind in my hair, Johnny Cash on the radio, a thermos of diesel-strong black coffee in the seat beside me, and the blessedly open road before me. The speedometer cranks higher, and there are no responsibilities weighing on my shoulders like stones, no expectations gripping with tight fingers to hold me in place.
I’m Brody Tannen. I’m myself, but also not.
I’m nothing and no one. I’m free. And it’s bliss.
Right up until the old truck jerks, slowing down even though I never let up on the pedal.
“Shit, Bessie! What the fuck are you doing? At least hold it together until we get to town.” Okay, so I’m sweet-talking the truck like the girl I took to the senior homecoming game, and perhaps more relevant, the afterparty where she got drunk as a skunk and nearly puked in my truck.
Bessie—the truck, not the girl—sputters but rallies and keeps chugging along, down to twenty-five now. The ride is rough and jerky, but we’re so close to town, I can see signs rising high in the sky. I rub at the dash encouragingly instead of pulling over. “See . . . just up ahead, girl.”
I scan, looking for a parking lot I can pull over into, not as familiar with the main drag on this side of the mountain. When Shayanne expanded the delivery radius of her homemade treat business to this side of the mountain, I’d told her to go for it, thinking it’d be our brothers, Brutal and Bobby, doing the deliveries, or hell, even Shayanne herself when she could. I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t plan on coming to the far side myself, and I definitely didn’t plan on getting stuck over here. But that was then, and here I am now.
Like a beacon rising in the sky, I see a white sign ahead. Cole Automotive.
Son of a bitch, must be my lucky day in some twisted sort of way. It’d be damn better if Bessie were running smooth as butter, but I’ll take a mechanic shop over parking in some pot-hole-riddled, abandoned lot of a closed dollar store. Anywhere better than that would probably call the police on me for abandoning a piece of shit like this.
Sorry, Bessie, but you know it’s true.
I jerk my way into the lot, cranking the engine off as soon as possible. “Fuck!” The bark of frustration is timed perfectly with the bang of my fist on the steering wheel. The sentiment is repeated as I slam the door.
I turn toward the bay doors of the garage, thankful that they’re still open at least. The sun’s starting to move down in the sky, foretelling a hell of a sunset, but that’ll be a few hours away with the long spring days. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the dimmer light inside and my ears to adjust to the absolutely blaring heavy metal music.
“Motherfucker.” The murmur isn’t silent, but no one would know that because of the music’s volume.
I see a small coverall-clad figure standing on a stool, ass in the air and head buried in the engine compartment of a truck. “Hey, kid!”
No response. Not even a flinch.
“Hey! Kid!”
I step to the side, reaching out to tap the kid on the shoulder. But instead of the ‘good afternoon, sir’ that manners and customer service require, according to Shay, I get greeted by a wrench swinging up in an arc from inside the vehicle to aim right at my head. My hand shoots out automatically, catching the kid’s wrist to stop the attack. “What the fuck?”
The kid’s wrist twists in my hand, some looping motion that breaks it free, and at the same time, a steel-toed boot connects with my gut and pushes me back.
Pushes me back, all two hundred pounds of don’t-fuck-with-me warning-labeled asshole actually moving from the kid’s shove.
“Get your fucking hands off me, motherfucker.”
The response is threatening and more of a lip reading, but the message is loud and clear. It also comes accompanied with a press of the wrench to my throat that keeps me off-balance after the not-quite kick.
“Hey, hey . . . sorry . . . just trying to get your attention.” Every bit of my apology is yelled at volume eleven in an attempt to be heard over the music and drown out my own instincts to instantly fight back.
And something suddenly becomes real fucking crystal clear. It’s not a kid in front of me. It’s a woman. A gorgeous one.
She’s tiny, maybe five feet tall at most, and swallowed by her navy-blue coveralls, which are rolled up at the arms and the ankles.
There’s a thick knot of dark hair piled on her head and a map’s worth of freckles across her nose and cheeks, along with a few smudges of black grease. Her dark chocolate-brown eyes are blasted through with gold, not like some pretty poetry shit but like she’s about to start shooting fire right at me.