"One of these days, Ms. Silver," he said with a smile and wink and then was gone, leaving her with a stain of pink on her cheeks.
"Alright. Do I have everything?" Martin asked, stepping from his office, patting all of his pockets to make sure he wasn't forgetting anything though they had all noticed that since Alison had started working there, Martin had stopped coming back after already having gotten home because he left his glasses or his keys or one of his pill bottles.
"Here," Alison smiled at him and tonight, she handed him his hat.
He slapped the tattered fisherman's hat on his head and smiled at her. "My angel," he said and she even blushed to what Martin said though the old man probably didn't even know how to flirt with a woman anymore.
And then it was just the two of them. Why was it always the two of them?
Yuriel was meticulous in cleaning up his work station and never rushed through it and Alison seemed to be the same way with her desk. During the day, it was covered in papers but every night, she took her time in cleaning it all for the next day's mess.
He heard footsteps and lifted his head from his toolbox, flicking his head to get the hair from his eyes to see her approaching him. The lights in the office were off and her purse was slung on her shoulder.
"I'm heading out now," she said with a small smile. He nodded and didn't say anything. "Good night, Yuriel."
She hesitated for another moment, he noticed, but he wasn't looking at her, his eyes back to his tools and he heard her footsteps walk away and the squeak of the door and the slam of it shutting behind her and everything was silent again except for the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears.
He didn't know why he was like that around her. Not the silent part. He was damn near silent around everyone. His older brother, Carlos, was the loud one – always talking too loud and laughing too loud and demanding to be the center of attention but Yuriel had never been like that. Even when he was a little kid and was just learning to talk, he hadn't liked to do it that much. He liked being quiet; liked observing everyone and everything around him because that was the only to learn. To survive.
So never talking to Alison wasn't something out of the ordinary. It was the way he actually had to consciously make the effort not to talk to her. She would ask him questions and he found himself actually ready to answer them and he didn't get it nor did he like it. He didn't know what it was about her that made him want to talk.
He barely even talked to the customers who came in here to tell him about their car troubles. He didn't really need to talk to them. He had always been good with engines – a damn gift, as Carlos often said while clapping him too hard on the back – and he didn't need the idiot to tell him that they had been driving on an engine that had gone too long without an oil change. He got engines. He understood them. Every problem was different and yet, every engine was the same. May have been in a different type of machine but every engine worked in the same sort of way and he could be blindfolded and still be able to work on it.
People were completely different. No matter how much he watched them, he was never able to fully figure them out. And Alison Silver was the biggest damn mystery of them all because why the hell would a pretty girl like her be shy and quiet and yet, shining like the damn sun on a clear day?
He could admit to himself that she was a pretty girl. Probably the prettiest girl he had ever seen. When he went to a bar with Carlos, she was never the girl he saw there. The women there had too much make-up and their clothes were too tight and they smelled of smoke and hairspray and were always looking for someone to take care of them while making it clear that they could cut a man's dick off in a second. They were as rough as any man there – on the inside and out.
But Alison, with her blonde hair and dresses and soft smiles and soft songs, was as bright as the sun and as soft-looking as any cloud and he shook his head at himself and wanted to hit himself over the head with a wrench for such stupid thoughts because while Alison was all of those things, he was the dirty older mechanic who belonged in the bar with women completely opposite of her.
Chapter Three.
After getting home from church on Sunday morning, Lawrence Silver took himself to the couch on his crutches and as he sat down, Alison made sure he was comfortable and Vicky went into the kitchen to start cooking their breakfast. Shawn sat down in the chair beside the couch and turned on the television because even though the football game didn't start for another four hours, there was the pregame footage beginning already.
"You have everything, daddy?" Alison asked.
"Yes, Alisony, I'm fine," Lawrence chuckled. "And if I need anything, I can get it myself."
"I'll take an orange juice, Alison," Shawn grinned at her.
"You have two good legs," she quipped back to him, trying to give him a stern look, but he just kept grinning and she sighed because her brother was absolutely hopeless. She left the two in the living room and after stopping in the hallway to change her shoes from her ballet flats to her Converse sneakers, she went into the kitchen where Vicky was getting the pack of bacon and sausage patties from the refrigerator. "I'm going to go for a walk," she informed her.
Vicky looked at her. "Now? But what about breakfast?"
"I'm not hungry," Alison said and the instant she said it, she knew it was the wrong thing to say and she wished she could pluck the words from the air and shove them back into her mouth.
She was never supposed to say those words to her family – especially Vicky. Vicky got so angry and so upset and Alison had to spend days after eating more food than a normal person should ever eat in the first place to put Vicky's mind back at ease. But so much of her life was making sure her family around her was happy and that she didn't do anything to upset them. She had already done so much of the sort and she didn't want to put them through anything else.
"I won't be gone long," Alison quickly amended. "And I'll eat when I get back." Vicky kept looking at her though and not saying anything. "I swear, Vicky. I promise. I'll eat as soon as I get back. I just want to get some fresh air and it's such a beautiful morning." She sometimes forgot that she was a young woman, a twenty-two year old who shouldn't have to explain every action she made. But she supposed she brought some of this upon herself. "I'm not asking for permission," she then felt brave enough to blurt out. She stepped to Vicky and gave her a quick kiss on her cheek before hurrying to the back door. "I'll be home soon!" She called over her shoulder and then hurried outside, gasping in the air as if she hadn't taken a breath for the past few minutes – and that was exactly what it felt like.
She swore she could feel Vicky's eyes staring at her backside through the kitchen window but Alison didn't look back. She crossed the back yard and headed straight for the woods. She had no destination and she didn't even think of where she was walking to now but the woods seemed like the perfect place to get away from her sister's hovering. She loved her sister so much. She loved all of her family more than anything in this world and that was why when her daddy had his accident, she came home in an instant, dropping her life in Atlanta to move back to the farm to help her siblings with the financial responsibilities.
But most of the time, no matter how much she tried to prove herself to all of them, she was still that sixteen-year-old girl, cutting at her wrist and starving herself.
She sighed deeply and kept on walking. She reached the small creek and stepped over the water with careful steps on the rocks that were embedded in deeply and which provided the perfect way to get across.
Once over onto the other side, she kept walking further and further away from the farm and a part of her wished she could just keep walking. It wasn't as if she was necessarily needed here. Her daddy may have lost his leg but he was just as capable as before and Vicky and Shawn seemed to have a handle running things and never seemed to really need her. And Martin could always hire someone else to run the front desk at the garage. She could go back to Atlanta and maybe get her old job at the bookshop she
had been working at after graduation and playing her music at the coffee shop in her neighborhood on open-mic nights.
She was aware of how painfully shy she was. She always had been. And yet, standing on a small stage, strumming her guitar and singing songs, she had never felt fear or nerves. Performing always gave her a joy that nothing else in her life seemed to.
She heard a slight rustling in the passing brush and she stopped her steps. She finally looked around at her surroundings and after a moment, she realized she had absolutely no idea where she was. She turned in a slow circle, her eyes searching for something that looked familiar but she must have walked so far and with her mind having been a million miles away, she didn't even know which direction she had come from or where the farm was.
From the corner of her eye, she saw movement of a shape and she spun towards it. And when she saw who it was, her heart began hammering for an entirely new reason. She was so glad to see him – to see that it was him and not some stranger.
She opened her mouth to say his name but Yuriel quickly but a finger to his lips, silencing her before she could. Her mouth snapped shut and she looked at him, her eyebrows crinkled slightly because she had no idea what he was doing. She watched as he crept out from the trees he had come from, his steps silent, and he was holding a crossbow in his hands, raising it to take aim at something.
She gasped when he suddenly fired and the bolt flew right past her into the brush. Alison quickly spun to see what he had shot and he walked past her, bending down and pulling out a gray rabbit.
"How did you know that was here?" She asked.
He shrugged and pulled the bolt from the rabbit. He hooked the animal onto his belt and then bent down to load his crossbow again. She couldn't help but watch the way his biceps flexed and her throat suddenly felt incredibly dry. It was a cool fall morning and yet, he wore a shirt with no sleeves and with his movements, she saw hints of tattoos he had as well .
"Been trackin' it for a while," he finally said and when he straightened up, he looked at her. "What are you doin' all the way out here, girl?" He asked, looking at her as if she was some sort of puzzle that he didn't have the first clue as how to figure out.
"I was taking a walk and wasn't paying attention to where I was going…" she trailed off, suddenly feeling incredibly embarrassed.
She always felt like she was making a fool of herself when she was around Yuriel Salas. He was just one more person in her life she felt like a little girl around.
"You lost?" He assumed.
She nodded her head and she lowered her eyes from his. She suddenly wished it hadn't been Yuriel who had come across her then. She didn't want him to think she was helpless or weak or just some silly girl who got lost in the woods. He seemed to dislike her so much already and she was sure this was going to do nothing to help change his opinion of her.
"Come on. I'll take you back," he grunted and began walking past her.
"No," she quickly said, reaching out to touch his arm. He stopped instantly and looked at her and she felt her cheeks flame, her hand dropping to her side. "I mean… I'm still taking a walk. If you just point me in the general direction of where I should head…" She was proud of herself for being able to keep her eyes on him and her fingers twisted in her dress at her sides.
He looked at her for a moment and she felt her heart drumming so loud in her chest, she wondered if he could hear it. She wouldn't be surprised if he could. Her heart was always beating quickly like this whenever she was around him and there was something about it that excited her.
No one had ever made her react like that before but that first morning when Martin had walked her into the garage and introduced her to the mechanics, she saw Yuriel for the first time and she felt her stomach drop to her feet. Just like that. She had heard things like that happening. Had seen enough movies and read enough books but had never dreamt of experiencing that for herself. But the instant she saw Yuriel Salas, she fell for him.
"Not done huntin' yet," he finally spoke in that gruff semi-grunt way of his. "You can come with me if you want. I'll take you back when I'm done."
Alison burst into a smile. "Yes," she eagerly nodded her head and for once, she didn't care how excited or happy or ridiculous she was acting around him.
Walking in the woods with Yuriel? Just the two of them? If this was a movie, she would burst out into a random song right now. But thankfully, she was able to control herself as she fell into step beside him. The crossbow was relaxed in his arms but she could see the way he was looking at everything. Nothing was escaping his attention and she wished she could just watch him because she had never been hunting and she had never seen anyone hunt before.
"Do you live around here?" She asked suddenly, seemingly surprising them both.
She wondered if she had wandered that far from the farm without realizing or if he actually lived that close to her and she had no idea.
He nodded and didn't say anything else and she looked at him, waiting for him to though she knew he wasn't going to say anything. She had been working at the garage for three months – had known Yuriel for three months – and she wished that had a reason to talk with him past invoices and ginger ale.
But talking with guys had never been a strong suit of hers, her shyness always keeping her to herself and convincing herself that no guy wanted to talk with her anyway. Not for the first time in her life, she wished she was more like Vicky. Vicky was fearless in all things in life – including, especially, when it came to guys.
Yuriel wasn't just a guy though. He was a man and Alison definitely didn't know the first thing about talking with a man. Especially a man like Yuriel because everything about him just seemed so different. He was just as quiet as she was and what could a girl like her talk about with a man like him? Maybe that was the problem. She was still just a girl to him. Maybe that was why he never wanted to make conversation with her while the other mechanics in the shop seemed to have no problem with it whatsoever. Maybe he thought she was just too darn young.
"Wait," he said suddenly, startling her, and then his hand was on her arm this time.
She froze and watched as he crouched down beside her. He was staring down at the ground and she watched him as he brushed some leaves aside. There, very faintly, she could see animal tracks.
"How did you see that?" She asked.
He didn't answer for a moment, still studying them. He then looked ahead and slowly pushed himself back up to his feet. "Jus' read the signs," he shrugged as if what he was doing wasn't something incredible. He looked at her. "Wasn' plannin' on trackin' a buck today though. Was hopin' for another rabbit."
Alison felt disappointment at that but she didn't argue. She imagined how exciting it would be, tracking a deer with Yuriel, but she didn't say anything and resumed walking beside him. Hunting another rabbit with him was nothing to scoff about anyway. It was more time spent with him and she couldn't think of any other way she would rather spend her Sunday.
They walked in silence and even though the sun was almost directly above their heads now, she still felt the chill against her bare legs as she still wore her dress from church and she shivered slightly, tightening her cardigan sweater around herself, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Cold?" He grunted. She nodded her head truthfully. It was obvious she was and there was no point in lying about it. "Need to get some more meat on your bones."
Alison knew he didn't mean anything by it. How could he? It was just an innocent comment. But it was a comment she had been hearing for years and she had never expected that Yuriel, too, would say it.
She sighed heavily. "I'm ready to go home now," she said, glancing at him for only a second before down to the ground. "Could you walk me home?"
She didn't want to stop spending time with him that day and yet, that one sentence from him had made her even colder. Yuriel saw her as all of her family and friends did. She had tried to kill herself and she had spent years starving herself, only now, finally
, on the road to recovery.
She had known it but she hadn't wanted to admit it to herself but that's all she was to anyone. And that's all she would ever be.
Chapter Four.
Yuriel had no idea what had happened but if she wanted to go home, he would take her, and he walked in the direction of the Silver farm. And though she was walking right next to him, he felt like she was a thousand miles away and he found himself glancing over to her from time to time to make sure that she was okay though it was obvious even to a guy like him that she wasn't. He just wasn't going to ask her about it. If she wanted to say anything, she would and he wasn't going to bother her for it.
They came across the small creek and Alison stepped ahead of him. He watched as she used the rocks, moving from one to the next with no problem. She almost looked graceful as she did it and came to the bank on the other side. A slight breeze blew the skirt of the dress she was wearing and Yuriel quickly looked away when he saw more of her pale thighs than he ever had before and he felt the tips of his ears go red as he quickly followed her path across the rocks and came to stand beside her.
Through the trees, they could see the white farmhouse in the distance.
"You good?" Yuriel asked, preparing to turn and walk back in the direction they had just come from and yet, he lingered. Why the hell he was doing that, he didn't know.
He didn't know what had caused the change. She had seemed happy enough just a few minutes earlier and then like a flick of a switch, she had changed completely and he found himself standing there, studying her as if she was an animal he was tracking. Out here, he felt brave enough to look at her as he looked at anything that was in the woods. Out here, he felt a comfort and ease he never had anywhere else.
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