Page 4 of Wrecked By Rev

“I’m sorry,” I hear myself say. “This was a mistake.”

I turn and walk out before he can respond. My legs feel like they belong to someone else. The sunlight is too bright. I make it to my car, slam the door, and grip the steering wheel with both hands.

My hands are shaking.

I can’t go back there. I can’t look at that patch and not see my brother’s funeral. I can’t?—

But I can’t keep living like this either.

I’m going to have to go back. Tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever I work up the nerve again. Whatever this costs me, it’s better than another four months of Niall.

I pull out of the parking lot and head home, still shaking.

But there’s something else now. Underneath the grief and the fear and the frustration. Something I don’t want to examine too closely.

The way Rev looked at me. The way he said my name, like it had weight.

I shove the thought down hard.

This is business. An arrangement. That’s all it can be.

That’s all I can afford to let it be.

CHAPTER 2

REV

Danny’s Sportster is sitting on the lift, waiting for me to finish the valve adjustment I started two hours ago.

I haven’t touched it since she left.

Angel Medina. Wheels’ little sister. Standing in my garage with fear in her eyes and her jaw set like she were daring the world to knock her down. She looked at me, said my name, and then bolted like I was the thing she was running from.

I should get back to work. Danny’s picking the bike up tomorrow, and I’ve got three other jobs lined up behind his. The garage doesn’t run itself. Bills don’t pay themselves. Sitting here staring at the door she walked out of isn’t going to fix anything.

I pick up my wrench. Put it down again.

Fuck.

Five years. Five years since I’ve seen her, and it took her about thirty seconds to wreck me all over again.

I noticed her the first time Wheels brought her around. Barbecue at the clubhouse, summer, maybe six years ago now. She was wearing cutoffs and a tank top and giving Lock shit about his burger being burned, completely unafraid of a man twice her size who could snap her in half. Wheels was laughinghis ass off. And I was standing by the grill thinking who the hell is that?

His sister. Off limits. End of story.

Except it wasn’t the end. She kept showing up. Birthdays, cookouts, the occasional Friday night when Wheels wanted to shoot pool and she wanted free beer. I learned things about her without meaning to. The way she laughed—loud and real, nothing held back. The way she argued with her brother about everything and nothing. The way she looked at me sometimes, quick glances she probably thought I didn’t catch.

I caught every single one.

I was working up to something. I don’t even know what—a conversation, maybe. A reason to talk to her that didn’t involve handing her a drink or nodding when she said hey. Something that would let me figure out if those glances meant what I wanted them to mean.

Then Wheels went down.

Blown tire on the highway. Dead before the ambulance got there. I was one of the guys who went to the scene. I saw the bike. I saw what was left of her brother.

After the funeral, I pulled the wreck into the garage and went over every inch of it. Needed to know if it was something I missed. Something I could have caught if I’d looked harder the last time he brought it in for service. Spent three days taking it apart, checking every bolt, every line, every component.

It wasn’t mechanical. Just bad luck. Just a piece of rubber that gave out at the wrong second on the wrong stretch of road at speed.