Chapter 1: Oil Stains and Static
The rain hadn’t let up for three days. It soaked through the shoulders of Wren’s leather jacket as she sprinted from her mother’s sedan to the gaping maw of the garage bay, the sound of her boots hitting wet asphalt swallowed by the downpour and the low growl of music coming from inside.
The place smelled like a fight between gasoline and rust.
Her eyes adjusted to the gloom, taking in the cathedral of neglected projects. A motorcycle skeleton dominated one corner, its guts spilled across the concrete in a spill of chrome and cables. Tools hung on a pegboard like a surgeon’s kit, but dirtier, meaner. In the center, the underbelly of a lifted Ford truck was exposed, held aloft by hydraulic lifts.
And under it, a pair of worn work boots, and above them, the denim-clad legs of a man who was very much not her stepfather.
She cleared her throat. The music—some aggressive, guitar-shredding noise—drowned it out.
“Hello?”
A clang echoed from beneath the truck, followed by a low, gritty curse. The legs shifted. A creeper board rolled out, and Damon Voss emerged into the murky light of a single swaying bulb.
He was shirtless. Sweat gleamed across the hard planes of his chest and shoulders, tracing the dark ink that coiled around his biceps and snaked over his ribs. A fresh, red scrape marked his knuckles. He wiped his hands on a rag that was already black with grease, his pale gray eyes finding her with an unnerving lack of surprise.
“Lost?” he asked. His voice was like gravel under tires.
“Looking for my mom’s car keys. She said they’d be on the hook.” Wren kept her gaze deliberately above his collarbone, focusing on the sharp angle of his jaw, the shadow of stubble. She could feel the heat coming off him, mixing with the scent of oil and male sweat. It was stupidly potent.
“Hook’s empty.” He nodded toward a bare nail by the door.
“Great. Any other brilliant observations?”
A slow, dangerous smirk touched his mouth. It didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re blocking my light.”
She didn’t move. “The keys, Damon. I have groceries in the back of my car that are currently achieving soup consistency.”
He watched her for another beat, then pushed himself to his feet with a fluid, powerful motion that made her aware of every inch of her own stillness. He was taller than she remembered, broader. The tattoos weren’t decorations; they were a map of bad decisions and older pain. He turned and walked to a battered metal toolbox, his back a landscape of muscle and more ink.
Wren’s eyes betrayed her, dipping for a second to follow the line of his spine before snapping back up. He turned, keys dangling from his finger.
“You were staring,” he said, simply.
“At the fascinating array of solvent bottles. It’s a gripping aesthetic.” She held out her hand. “Keys.”
Instead of handing them over, he stepped closer. The space in the garage seemed to shrink, the air thickening. He dropped the keys into her palm. His fingers, calloused and warm, brushed against her skin.
A jolt, stupid and electric, shot up her arm.
She snatched her hand back, the keys biting into her fist. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, Wren.” He said her name like he was testing the weight of it. He leaned a hip against the workbench, crossing his arms. The movement made the muscles in his shoulders flex. “How’s the graphic design? Drawing pretty pictures for people who sell organic kombucha?”
“It pays the rent. How’s the face-punching? Or do you just work on cars now?”
His smirk faded, replaced by something flatter, more guarded. “I just work on cars now.”
An awkward, charged silence settled between them, filled only by the drumming rain and the distant thrash of music from a dusty radio. She was supposed to leave. Every sane instinct told her to walk back out into the rain. But his gaze pinned her there, challenging her to be the first to look away.
“Your mom happy?” he asked, suddenly.
The question threw her. “She seems to be. Why? You got a problem with it?”
“No.” He looked past her, out into the gray sheet of rain. “Just seems fast.”
“Well, not everyone needs a decade of brooding in a garage to process change.” The words were out, sharper than she intended.
His eyes swung back to hers, that piercing gray locking onto her. She saw it then, not just the danger the town whispered about, but a profound, banked fatigue. A loneliness that mirrored her own in a different key. It was more unsettling than any smirk.
“Brooding’s underrated,” he said, his voice quiet. “Gives you time to see things clearly.”
“What do you see right now?”
“A woman who bites her lip when she’s lying to herself.”
Her teeth immediately released her lower lip. She hadn’t even realized she’d been doing it. A hot flush of irritation climbed her neck. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you’re standing in a dirty garage arguing with me instead of getting your soggy groceries. I know you looked at me like I was a problem you wanted to solve.” He pushed off the bench, closing the distance again, but this time he didn’t stop. He walked past her, so close she felt the displacement of air, and went to the open bay door. He stared out at the rain, his broad back to her. “The keys are in your hand. The door’s right there.”
It was a dismissal, and a test.
Wren’s pride curdled in her stomach. She shouldn’t let him get to her. This was exactly the kind of small-town drama she’d left to escape. But something in his detached posture, the unspoken taunt, lit a fuse inside her.
She didn’t move toward the door. She took a step deeper into the garage, toward the skeletal motorcycle. “What’s wrong with this one?”
He glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow arched. “Timing chain’s shot. Needs a full rebuild.”
“You going to finish it?”
“When I feel like it.”
“Is that how you run your business? ‘When I feel like it’?”
He fully turned now, leaning against the doorjamb. The rain painted a shimmering curtain behind him. “My business is just fine. Worried about me, stepsister?”
The title hung in the damp air, ugly and provocative. It was a line, drawn in grease on the concrete floor.
“Not even a little,” she said, meeting his gaze squarely. “I just appreciate efficiency. This,” she waved a hand at the chaotic garage, “doesn’t look efficient. It looks like a graveyard for bad ideas.”
For the first time, a real flicker of emotion crossed his face—amusement, dark and genuine. “Some of the best ideas start out bad.”
The radio crackled, and the song changed to a slower, bluesy riff. The tension in the garage subtly shifted, the anger cooling into something more complex, more curious.
“Wren!” Her mother’s voice, faint and worried, cut through the space from the direction of the house. “Did you find them?”
The spell, whatever it was, broke. Damon’s expression shuttered again, returning to its default state of impassive watchfulness.
“Yeah,” Wren called back, not looking away from him. “I found them.”
She finally walked to the doorway, stopping a few feet from him. The rain misted her face. “Thanks for the keys.”
He just gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
She walked out into the deluge, the cold water a shock after the garage’s metallic heat. She was halfway to her car when his voice reached her, low but clear over the rain’s drumbeat.
“You were right, you know.”
She turned. He was still framed in the light, a shadowed figure in the mouth of the garage.
“About what?”
“It is a graveyard for bad ideas.” He paused, and the ghost of that dangerous smirk returned. “Most of them mine.”
“Most of them mine.”
She turned and hurried to her car, the grocery bags splitting as she lifted them, a bell pepper rolling under the chassis. “Goddammit.” She dumped the salvaged bags onto the passenger seat, water dripping from her hair onto the leather. Slamming the door, she started the engine and pulled forward, the headlights sweeping across the garage door.
Damon was still there, a statue carved from shadow and indifference. As her car crept forward, he stepped out into the driveway, into the slanting rain.
He didn’t look at her. He faced the side hedge, his back mostly to her, and with a deliberate, utterly unselfconscious motion, he undid his fly.
Wren froze, her foot on the brake, the wipers slapping back and forth. What the hell? He couldn’t be.
He was.
A steady, audible stream hit the wet gravel of the driveway, steaming slightly in the cool air. The act was so primal, so aggressively casual, it stole the breath from her lungs. It wasn’t an invitation. It was a statement. A dismissal. It said he owned this space, this moment, and her presence was as insignificant as the rain. His posture was relaxed, one hand braced against the garage wall, his head tilted back slightly. The tattooed muscles of his back flexed.
A hot, confusing bolt of something—outrage, yes, but underneath it, a shocking, unwanted thread of pure lust—shot through her. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. She should look away. She didn’t.
He finished, shook himself off, and fastened his jeans. Only then did he turn his head, just enough to catch her stare through the windshield. That ghost of a smirk was back, harder now, edged with a challenge that was both vulgar and deeply intimate. He’d known she was watching. He’d fucking counted on it.