Chapter 2: The First Lesson
The fluorescent bulb in the garage apartment buzzed like a trapped insect, flickering once and casting the room into momentary gloom before stuttering back to life. Gage tossed the grease-blackened rag onto the workbench next to a disassembled carburetor. The smell of engine oil and solvent was usually a comfort, a familiar cloak. Tonight it felt thin.
A soft, hesitant knock at the door below, more a scrape of knuckles than a true rap, cut through the hum.
He knew. Even before he moved to the window and peered down through the grimy glass, he knew. She stood under the single yellow porch light, a slight figure dwarfed by his rusted pickup truck. She was hugging herself, not just against the cool night air, but against the act itself. The daring of it. She wore a thin white tank top and cut-off shorts that showed miles of pale leg. Kid’s clothes, he thought grimly. A kid playing at being a woman.
He didn’t call out. He just descended the narrow inner stairs, his bare feet silent on the wooden steps, and opened the side door.
The night air rushed in, carrying the scent of damp grass and her. She smelled like soap and the faint, lingering sugar of birthday cake.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, his voice low. He didn’t move to let her in. He filled the doorway, shirtless, the defined lines of his torso and the dark trail of hair below his navel stark in the low light. He saw her eyes flicker down, then snap back to his face, wide and absorbing.
“I know,” she whispered. Her teeth were beginning to chatter. “But you have the flask.”
A pathetic, transparent excuse. He almost smiled. “It’s empty.”
“Then teach me something else.”
He stared at her, at the desperate bravado in her eyes. The memory of his thumb on her cheek, of her whispered please by the fire, was a live wire in his chest. The walls he’d reinforced for two days crumbled to dust in a second.
With a resigned sigh that came from the depths of him, he stepped back.
She slipped inside, a brush of cool air and nervous energy. He closed the door, sealing them in the buzzing, shadowed room. The lock clicked, a sound of profound finality.
She turned in the center of the room, taking in the chaotic shelves, the old racing posters, the sagging futon with its rumpled blanket. Her gaze landed on the carburetor, the greasy tools. “It smells like you in here.”
“Like gasoline and poor decisions?”
“Like… honest work,” she said softly, turning to face him. She was shivering in earnest now. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Any of it.” She hugged herself tighter. “I’ve read things. Seen movie scenes. It’s not the same. The theory is useless.”
He leaned back against the closed door, crossing his arms over his chest. A defensive posture. “Carly, what exactly are you asking for?”
She took a step forward. Then another. Stopping just within arm’s reach. Her hazel eyes were huge, the flickering light dancing in them. “You said if we went further, there was no going back.”
“I remember.”
“I’ve been thinking about that for two days. About back. ‘Back’ is my room with the floral wallpaper and my childhood Bible on the nightstand. ‘Back’ is pretending I don’t feel like I’m starving.” Her voice cracked. “I don’t want to go back.”
His control, so carefully maintained, began to splinter. “This is a line,” he warned, his voice rough. “Once you cross it, your world isn’t just different. It’s gone. You understand that? The way you see your family, this town, me… it all burns down.”
She didn’t flinch. “Good.”
One word. It was the match.
He pushed off the door and closed the distance between them. His hands came up, not to pull her in, but to frame her face, his thumbs tracing the arches of her cheekbones. Her skin was cool, impossibly soft. She shuddered under his touch, a full-body tremor that had nothing to do with the cold.
“Teach me how to kiss,” she breathed, the words a warm cloud against his lips. “For real. Not like how Josh Miller did at sophomore homecoming. That was… wet.”
A startled, rough laugh escaped him. “Josh Miller is an idiot.”
Then he closed the last fraction of an inch.
The first press of his mouth against hers was slow, deliberate. A sealed promise. He felt her freeze, then melt, her lips parting on a soft sigh. He took his time, teaching her the rhythm without words. The slide, the gentle pressure, the way to breathe through your nose. His world narrowed to the sensation of her mouth—soft, tasting faintly of mint toothpaste and innocence.
He pulled back an inch. Her eyes were closed, her lips still slightly parted, seeking.
“Okay?” he murmured.
“Again,” she whispered.
This time, when he kissed her, he let his tongue trace the seam of her lips. She gasped, and he took advantage, dipping inside. The taste of her was deeper now, uniquely Carly. Her hands, which had been hanging limp at her sides, flew up to clutch at his bare shoulders. Her fingers were cold, her grip surprisingly strong.
He explored her mouth slowly, thoroughly, and she followed, mimicking his movements with a clumsy, eager hunger that set his blood on fire. A low sound vibrated in her throat, a moan that was all surprise and pleasure.
It shattered his last restraint.
His hands slid from her face, down the column of her throat, over the sharp wings of her collarbones. He gripped her waist, feeling the delicate bones, then slid them under the thin cotton of her tank top. The warmth of her skin against his rough, grease-stained palms was a revelation. She was so smooth, so alive. He splayed his hands across the small of her back, pulling her flush against him.
The contact was electric. She was all soft curves against the hard planes of his body. She arched into him, a natural, instinctive movement that brought her hips against his. He groaned into her mouth.
In one fluid motion, he broke the kiss, gripped her thighs, and lifted her. She let out a small yelp, her legs wrapping around his waist as he carried her the few steps to the heavy workbench. He swept the carburetor and tools aside with a crashing arm, not caring where they fell. He set her down on the cleared edge.
Now she was at his height. Her chest was heaving, her lips swollen and glistening. The fluorescent light buzzed above them, painting everything in stark, unforgiving lines.
He stepped between her knees, spreading her thighs wider with his hips. The denim of his jeans rasped against her bare legs. He leaned in, capturing her mouth again, this kiss deeper, hotter, fueled by a rising desperation. One hand tangled in her hair, tilting her head back. The other roamed over her ribs, his thumb brushing the sensitive underside of her breast through the fabric.
She cried out, a broken, beautiful sound, and her hands scrabbled at his back, her nails digging in.
He tore his mouth from hers, breathing ragged. He rested his forehead against hers, his eyes screwed shut. Every cell in his body screamed to keep going, to lay her back on that bench and learn her completely.
“Carly.” Her name was a prayer and a curse. “Look at me.”
Her lashes fluttered open. Her eyes were hazy, dark with a want she probably didn’t even have a name for.
“This is it,” he gritted out, the words scraping his throat raw. “This is the point of no return. If I keep going… if I touch you the way I want to… I won’t be your cousin anymore. I’ll be the guy who ruined you. And I won’t be able to stop.”
He saw the flicker of fear then, real and bright. The good girl, the preached-at daughter, waking up in the midst of the sin. It lasted only a second. It was chased away by a wild, defiant light that was entirely her own.
She didn’t speak. She simply brought her hands to his face, her touch unbearably gentle, and pulled his mouth back to hers. Her kiss was an answer, a permission, a demand.
It was all the consent he needed.
The kiss turned consuming, a battle for air and closeness. His hand slid fully over her breast, the peak tight and pebbled against his palm even through the cloth. She bucked against him, a sharp, uncoordinated movement of pure sensation.
From downstairs, in the main auto bay, the old compressor kicked on with a sudden, deafening groan and rattle.
They jerked apart, gasping. The sound was a bucket of ice water, a reminder of the real world just a sheet of plywood below their feet. Gage rested his head in the curve of her neck, his breath hot and labored against her skin, feeling her frantic pulse under his lips.
The compressor cycled off. The buzzing silence rushed back in, now heavy with the weight of what they had started and what had just been, mercifully, interrupted.
He didn’t move from the shelter of her neck. “You have to go,” he whispered, the words filled with a pain that was physical.
Her legs, still wrapped around him, tightened briefly before loosening. She slowly, reluctantly, let them fall. He forced himself to step back, putting precious, terrible space between them.
She slid off the bench, her legs unsteady. She straightened her tank top with trembling hands, not meeting his eyes. The sight of her, looking so ravished and so young, was a knife to his gut.
He picked up her denim jacket from where it had fallen on the floor and held it out. She took it, shrugging it on, hiding herself away.
At the door, she paused, her hand on the knob. She looked back at him, her face a canvas of conflict—awe, fear, and a dawning, powerful knowledge.
“The theory,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “It’s different.”
He gave a single, tight nod.
She slipped out into the night, disappearing as quickly as she’d come.
Gage stood in the center of the room, the ghost of her heat still branding his skin, the taste of her still on his tongue. He looked at the workbench, at the cleared space where she’d sat. He looked at his hands.
They were no longer just the hands of a mechanic. They were remembered. They were guilty.
The compressor stayed quiet. The only sound was the relentless buzz of the failing light, and the roar of his own damned blood.