Chapter 2: The Mechanic's Redemption
The rain on the metal roof was a constant, soothing static. Brady’s weight was a solid, warm anchor, his breath hot against her neck where his mouth rested. Brie kept her legs locked around his waist, her fingers splayed wide across the scarred landscape of his back, holding on as he moved inside her with a slow, devastating rhythm that felt less like sex and more like a negotiation. A silent treaty being written in the damp space between their bodies.
He was always like this afterward. Tender to the point of agony. Like he was trying to rewrite every rough thing that had ever happened to her with his hands and his mouth.
His lips brushed the shell of her ear. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, the words barely audible beneath the rain.
She turned her head, found his mouth in the dim light. “Stop.” She kissed him, deep and slow, trying to swallow the apology. “Just be here. Right now.”
He obeyed, his hips rocking against hers, his pace deepening. She arched into him, a soft sound escaping her throat. The flickering bulb overhead threw their shadows, merging and separating, against the cluttered wall where a wrench hung next to a faded NASCAR poster. The air smelled like him—motor oil, sweat, and the clean scent of his skin—and like her, the citrusy perfume she’d dabbed on her wrists hours ago, now mingled with the salt of exertion.
After, he rolled to his side, taking her with him, tucking her back against his chest. His arm was a heavy band across her stomach, his fingers idly tracing the thin, silvery lines on her hip. She stiffened, just for a second, an old habit. His touch was so careful there, as if he could smooth the scars away.
“Don’t,” she said quietly.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t treat them like they’re holy. Or tragic. They’re just… scars.” She covered his hand with hers, stilling his fingers. “They’re mine.”
He was silent for a long moment. She could feel the steady thump of his heart against her spine. “I know they’re yours. I just hate that he put them there.”
“He’s gone.” The words were flat, final. A statement she repeated to herself on bad days.
“I’m not,” Brady said, his voice rough. “And I let you down before. I walked away when you needed… Christ, Brie, I was so screwed up.”
She turned in his arms then, facing him. The flickering light caught the green in his eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw. He looked older than he was, lines of worry and hard living etched around his mouth. She put a hand on his cheek, the stubble scratching her palm.
“Listen to me. We were both screwed up. You had your crap with the drugs, the arrests. I had… him. We were a disaster waiting to happen.” She held his gaze, not letting him look away. “But we’re here now. And I’m not some fragile thing you have to tiptoe around. When I’m with you, I feel…” She searched for the word, one that wasn’t cheesy or weak. “Solid. I feel solid. Don’t apologize for the past. It just is.”
He stared at her, something shifting in his expression. The guilt receded, replaced by a hunger that had nothing to do with sex. He kissed her, hard and grateful. “You’re the strongest person I know.”
“Damn right I am.”
A real smile, brief and bright, touched his mouth. He pushed a strand of her auburn hair off her face. “Lawyer mode. I like it.”
“It’s not a mode. It’s who I am.” She shifted, sliding a leg over his hip, reclaiming her space. The sheet was tangled at their feet. The storm outside was easing, the rain softening to a whisper. “Your turn. Stop living in your past, too. You’re not that guy anymore. Jack gave you a job, a chance. I’m here. That has to count for something.”
He let out a long breath, his gaze drifting to the ceiling. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough. Like I’m one wrong turn away from sliding back.”
“Then don’t take the wrong turn.” She said it simply, as if it were that easy. Maybe, for them, it had to be.
He looked back at her, his eyes dark. “What if I already have? What if I’ve done something stupid?”
The air in the small room changed. It got heavier. Brie propped herself up on an elbow. “Have you? Done something stupid?”
Before he could answer, a violent buzzing shattered the quiet. It wasn’t the rain. It was Brady’s phone, skittering across the makeshift bedside table—an upturned milk crate—on vibrate.
They both froze. Nobody called Brady this late. Especially not now.
He reached for it, his movement stiff. The screen glowed, casting a blue pallor over his face. His expression went flat, all the softness from a moment ago wiped clean.
“Who is it?” Brie asked, though she already knew. There were only a few people who would call him, and only one who would make him look like that.
“Jack,” he said, his voice tight. He didn’t answer it. They both watched the phone buzz until it stopped, the screen going dark.
The silence that followed was louder than the ringtone. The rain had nearly stopped.
Brie sat up all the way, pulling the thin sheet around her shoulders. “You have to call him back.”
“I know.”
“Brady.” She used her courtroom voice, the one that expected an answer. “What did you do?”
He swung his legs over the side of the futon, his broad back to her, muscles tense. He ran a hand through his short-cropped hair. “It’s not about me. Not directly.” He paused. “There was a guy in the bar tonight. Asking questions. Bad questions. About the old grow operations up in the hills, about who might still be running things. He had a cop vibe, but he wasn’t local. Wasn’t friendly.”
Brie’s blood went cold. “And?”
“And I might have told him to take his questions and get the hell out of Virgin River.” Brady’s shoulders slumped. “Jack was in the back doing inventory. He didn’t see it. But Mike Valenzuela did. Mike followed the guy out. They talked by the guy’s truck for a long time.”
Mike. The former Marine, now a sheriff’s deputy. Jack’s friend. A good man, but straighter than a ruler.
“So Jack’s calling because Mike told him what you did,” Brie concluded, the pieces clicking into place. “Or because that guy came back with a badge.”
Brady just nodded, staring at the dirty floor.
“You were protecting Jack,” she said softly. It wasn’t a question.
“I was causing trouble,” he corrected, his voice thick with self-loathing. “Again. Jack gave me a life, and I just piss on it every time I think someone’s threatening him. I can’t turn it off. That kneejerk… thing.”
She got up, the sheet falling away. She didn’t bother covering herself. She walked around the futon and knelt in front of him, forcing him to look at her. “Call him back. Tell him the truth. Tell him you were an idiot, but your idiot heart was in the right place.” She took the phone from his limp hand, pressed it into his palm, and closed his fingers around it. “And then come back to bed. The world can wait until morning.”
He looked down at their joined hands, then up at her face. The fear in his eyes was raw, but so was the trust. He nodded once, a sharp, decisive movement.
He thumbed the screen, tapped Jack’s name, and put the phone to his ear. Brie stayed where she was, kneeling on the cool concrete floor, her skin prickling in the night air. She listened to his side of the conversation, the short, grim answers.
“Yeah… I’m here… I figured… Look, Jack, I’m sorry, I just… Yeah. Yeah, I know… Okay… Seven a.m. I’ll be there.”
He ended the call and let the phone drop onto the futon. He looked exhausted.
“Well?” Brie asked.
“He’s not mad,” Brady said, sounding almost confused. “He’s worried. The guy was a private investigator. Digging around about some missing girl from Sacramento. He thought the old weed networks might have been involved in moving her. Jack wants me at the bar first thing. Wants to know everything the guy said, every word.”
A missing girl. The tension shifted, morphing from personal regret into something darker, more vast.
Brie stood, pulling Brady up with her. “Then you’ll tell him. And you’ll help.” She guided him back down onto the thin mattress, sliding in beside him, wrapping herself around his chilled body. “Now, sleep. You’re no good to anyone exhausted.”
He held her tightly, his face buried in her hair. The last of the rain dripped from the roof in a slow, irregular cadence. The trouble wasn’t over. It was just beginning, and it was bigger than a bar fight, bigger than old regrets. But here, in this cramped, oil-scented room, they had a few more hours of quiet. A few more hours before the storm on the horizon made landfall.
A few more hours before the storm on the horizon made landfall.
Dawn was a grey seep through the garage’s single dusty window when Brie woke. Brady was already awake, lying on his back and staring at the water-stained ceiling tiles, his arm a solid weight across her ribs. The space between them hummed with unfinished conversation from the night before, with the dread of the impending meeting at Jack’s bar.
She rolled into him, skin sliding against warm skin. His chest was a wall of tension.
“You’re thinking,” she mumbled into his shoulder, her voice gravelly with sleep.
“Yeah.” The word was clipped.
“Stop.” She traced the line of his collarbone with her lips, then his sternum. Her hand drifted lower, over the flat plane of his stomach. He caught her wrist, his grip firm but not unkind.
“Brie,” he said, a warning and a question.
“I’m not fragile,” she whispered, repeating her words from the dark, her breath warm against his skin. “And you’re not that guy anymore. So prove it. Be here. Right now.”
She freed her hand and moved it lower, taking him in her grasp. He was already half-hard. He inhaled, a sharp, ragged sound that wasn’t quite a gasp. His fingers tangled in her hair, not guiding, just holding on as her mouth found his neck, his jaw, finally his lips.
This was different from the night before. There was no worshipping slowness, no tremor of past ghosts. This was a claiming, deliberate and heated. She swung a leg over his hips and sank onto him in one smooth, unbroken motion, her eyes open and fixed on his.
“See?” she said, the word trembling only slightly as she adjusted to the sudden, full feeling of him. “Right here.”
A groan broke from him, all the coiled worry transmuting into a raw, physical need. His hands found her hips, fingers pressing into the soft flesh, and he helped her set a relentless, driving rhythm. The futon frame complained with a rhythmic squeak beneath them. The scent of last night’s sweat and her citrus perfume mingled with the new, musky tang of this.
It was fast and fiercely quiet, broken only by their stuttering breaths and the sound of skin meeting skin. There was a frantic quality to it, as if they were trying to outrun the morning sun. His gaze never left her face, watching every flicker of her expression, every parted gasp.
When she came, it was with a sharp, muffled cry against his mouth, her body clamping tight around his. The intensity pulled his own release from him a second later, a deep, shuddering pulse that left him breathless and blank for one perfect, empty moment.
She collapsed against him, slick and breathing hard. He held her, one hand spread wide on the damp skin of her back, the other still gripped in her hair. The grey light grew stronger, outlining the tools on his workbench, the dead bulb overhead.
“Okay,” he finally said, his voice wrecked. “I’m here.”
She kissed his chest, right over his pounding heart. “Good. Now you can go face my brother.”
He let out a shaky laugh. “Way to kill the mood, counselor.”
“The mood’s served its purpose.” She pushed herself up, swinging her legs off the futon. Her body felt loose, liquid. “Shower’s mine first. You smell like a garage.”
“You love it,” he grumbled, but he slapped her thigh as she stood, a familiar, easy gesture that felt more like them than anything all morning.
She looked back from the doorway to the small, drafty bathroom, taking in the sight of him sprawled in the rumpled sheets, the defined lines of his torso, the relaxed set of his mouth. The worry was still in his eyes, but it was banked now, manageable. He looked ready.
“Yeah,” she said softly, almost to herself. “I really do.”
Then she turned on the shower, the pipes groaning in the wall, steaming up the tiny room as she stepped under the spray and began washing the night and the morning away, preparing for whatever the day would bring.
The water was hot, almost scalding, and she let it beat against her shoulders, trying to loosen the knots of tension that had settled there during the night. She soaped her arms, the citrus scent of her body wash cutting through the lingering smell of sex and motor oil.
The bathroom door creaked open.
Steam billowed around her as Brady stepped into the cramped space. The flickering light from the single bulb caught the water on his skin, glistening over the tattoos on his chest and arms. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there for a moment, watching her through the fogged-up plastic shower curtain.
“Water’s hot,” she said, not turning around.
“Good.”
He pulled the curtain aside and stepped in behind her. The space was so small his body pressed against hers immediately, the cool of his skin against the heat of hers a startling contrast. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, his chin resting on the top of her head.
“We’ll figure it out,” he murmured into her wet hair.
“The PI thing?” She leaned back into him, letting the water cascade over both of them.
“All of it.” His hands slid down her arms, following the path of the soap. “Whatever Jack knows. Whatever this guy is digging for.”
She turned then, facing him. Water streamed over his face, and he blinked. His expression was serious, but the grim set of his jaw from earlier had softened. Here, in the steam and the heat, he looked less like a man waiting for a hammer to fall and more like just a man.
“You’re not going to do anything stupid,” she said, raising a hand to his cheek.
“I’m already in the shower with my girlfriend’s brother’s employee,” he said, a faint smile touching his lips. “That’s pretty stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s just… complicated.” She kissed him, a quick press of lips made slippery by the water. “But it’s ours. Our complication.”
He nodded, his hands settling on her hips, thumbs brushing the scars there. This time, she didn’t stiffen. His touch felt deliberate, an acceptance rather than an apology. He leaned down and kissed her shoulder, then her neck, his mouth soft against her skin.
The water pounded down around them, a private thunder in the tiny room. She tilted her head back, letting it rinse the soap from her hair. Brady’s mouth trailed lower, over her collarbone, down to her breast. His movements were slow, almost lazy, a quiet exploration devoid of the earlier urgency.
It wasn’t about sex now. It was about proximity. About being together in a space too small for doubts or past mistakes to fit.
He reached for her shampoo, squeezed some into his palm, and worked it into her hair. His fingers massaged her scalp, strong and gentle. She closed her eyes, a soft sigh escaping her. It was an intimacy she hadn’t expected, this simple act of care in the middle of a chaotic morning.
“Jack trusts you,” she said, her voice low under the spray.
“He shouldn’t.”
“He does. That’s his choice. Your choice is whether to prove him right.” She opened her eyes, meeting his gaze. The green in them was vivid, even through the steam. “You will.”
He rinsed the shampoo from her hair, watching the suds slide down her body. “I need you to believe that.”
“I do.” She took the soap from the ledge, worked it into a lather on his chest, over the faded ink of an old regiment number. “So believe it yourself.”
They finished washing in silence, a practical, shared chore. The heat of the water began to fade, the pipes groaning as the pressure dropped. Brady turned it off. The sudden quiet was jarring, the drip of the faucet loud in the small space.
He stepped out first, grabbing a towel and handing it to her. She dried herself quickly, the coarse fabric scratching her skin awake. Through the foggy curtain, she watched him towel off, the muscles in his back moving as he wiped the water from his neck.
The morning fully arrived now, a cold, clear light replacing the grey dawn. The day was here, and with it, Jack’s bar, the questions, the missing girl from Sacramento. Brie dressed in the clothes she’d worn yesterday—a simple blouse and jeans. Brady pulled on a clean t-shirt and work pants, his movements efficient, focused.
He caught her hand as she was about to open the apartment door. “Whatever happens today,” he said.
She squeezed his fingers. “We’ll figure it out.”
They left the garage, the smell of rain-wet pine and earth filling the air. Brady’s truck sat in the gravel driveway, dew glittering on its hood. The drive to Jack’s bar would be short. The conversation there would be long. Brie climbed into the passenger seat, and Brady started the engine.
The truck rumbled forward, turning onto the main road through Virgin River. She looked at him, his profile stern against the brightening window.He was here. He was solid. And whatever was coming, they were going to face it together, the steam of their shared shower still clinging to their skin as they drove toward the uncertain day.