Pop The Clutch: A Second Gear Romance

by Kristin Harte

  Copyright © 2019 by Kristin Harte

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  POP THE CLUTCH is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Edited by Lisa Hollett of Silently Correcting Your Grammar.

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-944336-68-4

  Paperback ISBN 978-1-944336-72-1

  * * *

  Kinship Press

  PO Box 221

  Prospect Heights, IL 60070

  For my parents -

  * * *

  Thanks for raising me in an area that seems totally unique now that I’ve lived in other places. Don’t read the dirty parts.

  * * *

  Not all people need a second chance at love. Some need a second chance at life.

  * * *

  To Violet Foster, the past ten years have been a continual replay of an ill-fated night in high school. Without warning, she went from Downriver’s sweetheart to unintentional adult film star, her most intimate moments shared with the world in ten-second loops. She's lost friends, been forced to change career plans, and had to stop dating because of that one indiscretion. The last thing she wants is to return to the scene of the crime, but with her grandma’s health failing, she doesn’t have a choice.

  * * *

  Easton Cole is a walking, talking bad-boy cliché in blue mechanic coveralls. He's always known his trailer-park-kid shadow would follow him into adulthood, but building his auto repair shop into a successful business means he has a chance to change that image. People in Downriver have long memories and getting them to forget his past is an uphill battle. The last thing he needs is the trouble Violet could bring. She's a lightning rod for gossip, with a reputation that precedes her. So what if he's been crushing on her practically since puberty?

  * * *

  Violet’s only planning on staying a month, even if the good memories of Downriver have started to overpower the bad, and Easton is dead set on making new ones…together. But the internet is forever, so there's no chance of Violet having a future unblemished by her past. And when the stain of her damaged reputation resurfaces, Violet knows it could destroy everything around her…including Easton.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  VIOLET

  Second chances were like zombies—rotting from the inside, reeking of decomposition, and a total waste of time seeing as how they were going to die again. Nothing made it through death unscathed—not people, pets, or even cities. Which was why the changes made to my hometown seemed almost impossible to accept. The place had been transformed.

  Steel mills and auto factories had ruled the horizon when I’d lived there, and everyone you knew drove an American car because a family member or friend had worked for that company. But many of the mills had closed, and the auto industry had laid off workers, instigating the shuttering of the support businesses in a factory town. I hadn’t expected people to adjust to that, but they had. Adjusted and profited. A different sort of suburbia had emerged from the ashes. A fact proven by the view as I looked across the overpass at the skyline baking under the summer sun.

  The flat patch of asphalt leading to the stamping plant where half the town had once worked had morphed into something else, sprouting buildings and looking more like a shopping center than the industrial complex I remembered. A couple of department stores, a home improvement center, a handful of restaurants, and a huge exercise facility dominated the view that was once owned by blue steel walls and a logo you could see for miles. The same logo I’d seen on the majority of cars driving past me as I rolled into Downriver, Michigan.

  I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel as I waited for the light to turn green, trying to remember the last time I’d looked out over that particular piece of land. Graduation… College… Chicago. Eight years? No, nine. Wait, ten. It’d been ten years since I’d last driven down these roads. Not nearly long enough, to be honest, but enough for the place to come back from certain death after the plant closed. Enough time for the city to rise again, though whether like a phoenix or a zombie, I had yet to determine.

  The light turned green, and my stomach dropped right along with my foot on the gas pedal as I turned onto the main road through town. There were reasons I’d left and reasons I’d stayed away, but the reasons to finally come home had outweighed them all. I didn’t want to be there, but it was time to cross that border and head inside the battle zone known as my hometown. It was time to come home.

  After a short drive and a couple of turns, I pulled into the driveway of my grandma’s house. Long and low, the brick ranch sat nestled behind a lawn of bright green as it always had. Nothing appeared out of place, though my memories seemed to have faded over the years. Had that flowerpot on the porch always been blue, or was it red when I’d lived there? Had the storm door always been tan? I’d thought it was white. And I could have sworn the house numbers had been brass and not the dark bronze decorating the brick.

  “It’s a house, not a spot-the-differences puzzle,” I mumbled as I opened the car door. The sudden pressure against my chest made my breath catch, the humidity giving heft to something that should have been weightless. We were too far inland to catch a lake breeze, and the heat of the day practically radiated off the concrete beneath my feet. Or maybe, just maybe, that inability to breathe came from something internal. Being here, looking at this neighborhood where I’d spent the majority of my life, made me both nostalgic and completely out of sorts. I could feel the force of eyes on me, could sense the judgment my very presence would incite. The tidy, suburban homes with secrets inside the walls and big windows to hide behind closed me in. Made me itch to get on the road and head back to the anonymity of the city two states away.

  But some things were bigger than my personal comfort, and one of them was waiting for me. So, I took a deep breath, and I squared my shoulders. And I opened the door to my past.

  Almost literally, because stepping inside the house was like opening some kind of time capsule.

  The kitchen looked the same as it had every day when I’d come home from school. Dark cabinets, light countertops, and braided rugs brightening up the floor screamed home to me. Memories of baking cookies for bake sales and holidays jostled to the forefront of my mind, overpowering any of their not-so-sweet brethren with their silliness and warmth. This place had been home for so long, had been where I’d fallen in love with food. Had been my entire world.

  The smell of fresh-baked bread and the vanilla of the beeswax candles Grandma had always burned pulled at my heart, made my earlier worries almost disappear. That smell was pure childhood magic, and my God, had I missed it. I hadn’t known how much until right at that moment. There was nothing better than the smell of home.

  “Is that you, Vee?”

  “No one calls me Vee anymore.” My lips curled up almost of their own volition as Grandma walked into the kitchen from the hal
lway with a bright smile on her face. Looking at me with the same amount of love in her eyes as she had since I’d been a tiny thing playing dolls on the floor beneath my feet.

  “That’s because you scold anyone who dares to cross your ‘Don’t call me Vee’ rule. But I changed your diapers—I’m allowed a little lenience.”

  Her arms wrapped around me like a blanket, creating a fortress of safety that settled my soul in a way nothing else could. It’d been months since I’d felt her embrace, since she’d been able to meet me in one of the coastal towns on Lake Michigan for a girls’ weekend. I hated coming back here, and she hated Chicago, so the lake was our compromise. But she’d had to cancel our regular trips when she’d started feeling a little under the weather, and I’d had to make the decision to return when “a little under the weather” had been diagnosed as cancer.

  “How’re you feeling?” I asked, holding her tight. She’d lost weight. Her shoulders were definitely bonier than the last time I’d seen her, and her hair seemed thinner and much grayer. Something she hid well, but I noticed. I saw.

  “Oh, honey, I’m fine. Quit worrying over me.” She patted me on the back and pulled away, her smile a little less bright, her eyes a little more watery. All signs of her lie.

  “Grandma.” I gave her my best family glare, the one she’d taught me. The look that said both “Don’t mess with me” and “You’d better tell me the truth right now, young lady.”

  “Violet,” she mimicked, cocking her head in rebuttal. “I’m fine today, and I’ll be better once all this is behind me. So quit worrying so much. Come on now, let’s go sit and catch up.”

  Lies, all of them. But I let her tell them, and I let myself believe them if only for a few moments. Tomorrow, we could deal with the truth. Cancer, chemo, radiation, surgery…all the not-fun things that needed to be picked apart. Nothing was going to change in the next twenty-four hours.

  I followed Grandma into the family room, sweeping a glance across the mantel. My high school graduation pictures dominated the left side, while pictures of my cousin Dahlia took up the space on the right. The two of us could have been sisters in those pictures—our reddish-blond hair and light eyes a perfect match to one another. Not anymore, though. That color had been too striking, too unusual. Too easy for strangers to recognize. I hadn’t been a strawberry-blonde since my freshman year of college. Since the first time someone had told me they’d seen me in a clip on the internet.

  “You brought your swimsuit, right? We should get you a pool pass since you’re here for the summer and all.” Grandma kept her voice light and almost innocent, but I knew her better than that.

  “I’m not staying the whole summer. I’m here until Dahlia finishes her training classes, then she’s taking over.”

  “What’s your hurry?”

  “I’d prefer to be in a more populated area when the zombie apocalypse starts.” I kept my voice deadpan flat as I gave her a much-practiced, casual shrug. “Safety in numbers, and all that.”

  Grandma tried to tsk at me, but I could see her fighting not to smile. Being on the receiving end of her fake glare was totally worth that bit-back grin.

  “Gotcha,” I said, leaning against the couch cushions. “No, really. I’ve booked a huge catering gig for a popular event in August, and I’ve been picking up as many shifts as I can at the restaurant. I need to save more money if I have any chance of opening my own bakery within the next decade.”

  “Why you choose to live someplace so expensive is beyond me.”

  The adult side of me fought the urge to roll my eyes like the teenager I’d once been, having argued this point too many times to count. “I like it there.”

  “You don’t like it there—you like that you can hide there.”

  I lost my battle against the eye roll on that one. “Grandma—”

  She interrupted me with a wave of her hand. “Besides, you don’t have to work so hard. I’ll help you.”

  Different day, same argument. I hadn’t expected it so early, though. “You know I won’t take your money. Plus, I like the restaurant and the catering business. They both give me chances to work on things I wouldn’t normally get to do. They stretch my skills.”

  It was her turn to roll her eyes, which only showed me where I’d gotten that particular habit from. “Please. You had skills before you even went to culinary school. How much stretching do they need?”

  “If I want to open my own business, lots. Which is why I take every job I can—word of mouth is vital in this industry.”

  “Stubborn child.” She tempered her words with a soft smile, no less beautiful to me with gray hair than with the red I remembered from my childhood. She’d been the one to clean up my scratches and soothe my aches, the one who’d raised me and taught me right from wrong. The one who’d picked up the pieces when I’d messed up over and over again. The only mother I’d ever known, the person who’d stepped up when a plane crash had stolen her own daughters and their husbands. Who’d been practically my only family for my entire life. Who’d taught me to love the science of baking the perfect cake and cookies from the time I was too short to reach the counter. And she was sick.

  “Of course I’m stubborn. I take after you.” I shrugged, fighting to hold back the fear her illness instilled in me, fear of losing my favorite lifeline making my throat tight. “I should grab my bags before my luggage melts out there.”

  “Oh, sure. I could help you—”

  The ringing of her phone interrupted her, breaking the oncoming argument over what she should and should not do barreling down on the little ranch house. Grandma sighed and rose to answer it, giving me the perfect opportunity to escape outside before she could stop me. I needed to be alone for a few minutes, to remember why staying once Dahlia didn’t need me anymore was a bad idea. A really bad one—a horrible, no-good, awful, terrible idea. As much as I missed this house and what was left of my small family, there was no future for me in the enclave of Downriver. Not with my past. If I moved home, the rumors and lies people had once loved to spread about me would rise from the dead. I’d be Vee all over again…the favorite subject of every gossip mill in the area. I couldn’t see setting myself up for another round of betrayal and abuse by returning, so I needed to stay gone. As soon as I fulfilled my commitment to Grandma and Dahlia.

  Determined to make the best of my few weeks home, I dragged my suitcase inside to what had once been my bedroom. The space hadn’t changed much, if at all, which was more of a curse than not. Pink walls, tan carpet, white furniture. It screamed teenage girl and was practically a shrine to the life I’d had. The one I’d run away from.

  I fingered the edge of the lacy curtains, remembering the times Jace, my high school boyfriend, had crawled through the window that first winter we’d been together. How he’d grab me with his cold hands and kiss me senseless. All the times he’d sneak into my room, into my bed, and I’d warm him with my blankets and body. He’d set me on fire with a touch back then, and I’d happily burned for him. For a while, at least.

  “Violet?” Grandma called from down the hall. “You want lunch, honey? I can make a fresh pitcher of lemonade.”

  Lemonade. Of course.

  “Yeah!” I yelled. “Be there in a second.”

  Fighting back the urge to rip down the cheery fabric—especially thankful I didn’t have matches to start a blaze so I could vanquish the demons haunting me—I pasted on a smile and headed for the kitchen. A couple of weeks, maybe a month, and then I could escape once more. I just needed to ignore the spider webs wrapping themselves around my heart and mind, the ones trying to trap me where I didn’t want to be.

  EASTON

  If ever there was a moment to regret opening my own auto repair business, it was whenever some armchair-mechanic customer tried to talk me into doing something I didn’t want to do. Especially one who liked to throw my family history in my face.

  “I don’t know about the timing,” I said, staring down at the piece of shit ta
king up space in my lot. “This is a big job, and your deadline’s close.”

  Rick, my dad’s former boss, wasn’t one to give up easily, though. “I get that, I do. But I need this thing running, and you’re my last hope.”

  Last. That word rankled more than it should have. Rick hadn’t come to me because he thought I had the skills or the talent to fix his neglected, beat-up piece of garbage. He did it because every other shop around had probably already said no. As should I.

  “If you’d have gotten it to me a week ago, I could have done it. We’ve got a few too many projects coming in that are going to take up time and space. I can’t take over a lift when I’ve got work on the books to do, especially when we don’t even have any idea what’s wrong with it other than the engine doesn’t turn over.”

  “I’m begging you as a family friend,” Rick said, pushing that so-called family friend connection to my dad for the third time since he’d shown up. “I have to get this beast ready to head out west. If I had any more time, I’d give it to you, but I’m stuck. I’ll even pay you extra. Just…please. I need this thing running. Besides, it’ll be a cool project.”

  Cool project? Who was this guy kidding? A forty-year-old, seized-up rebuild on a foreign car was not a cool project. It was the epitome of banging your head against a brick wall as you dealt with the ins and outs of shitty design made worse by lack of proper care. The bastard had been a foreman at the stamping plant. He had to know something about cars, which meant his comment was a blatant lie.

  I was already shaking my head to refuse the job, but Rick wasn’t done.

  “Though, I mean, if you can’t do it, I understand. These older trucks aren’t easy to fix. Even your dad had a rough time with them, and he was the best mechanic around.”