by Lexi Ryan
A metallic clang yanks me from my thoughts, and I turn to see Dante DeLuca coming through the door that divides the service area from the body shop. He’d kick my ass clear to Chicago if he knew his little sister plays the starring role in my seriously dirty daydreams. He’d throw in a bonus punch to the junk if he knew how often I’ve had those fantasies.
I’d like to be the kind of guy who could say he never looked at his best friend’s sister that way, that I always saw her as one of the guys. But that would be the biggest fucking lie I’ve ever told. I knew Alex before I knew Dante. I fell for that sweet smile and the way she chews on her thumbnail when she gets nervous before I even knew she was into cars. And even if I’ve done my best to hide it, from the first day I met Alex I’ve wanted more from her than I should.
“You could get off just looking at her, couldn’t you?” Dante says, walking my way.
Fuck yes, but you don’t say that shit out loud. “What the hell, man? Lower your voice.” Hopefully the girl isn’t offended. Who is she, anyway? She’s probably one of the random women Dante brings into the shop trying to impress with fancy cars, though in reality, Dante’s women have never been the type to get their hands dirty.
He grunts. “Nothing wrong with speaking the truth.” Stepping forward, he strokes the top of the Mustang, and the woman backs out from under the hood and turns to me.
It’s in that moment that my lust-addled brain registers two pieces of information simultaneously. One, Dante was talking about the car, not the girl working on it. And two, Alexandra DeLuca isn’t in Colorado anymore.
Alex wipes her greasy hands on the rag tucked into her skintight jeans. Reaching up to close the hood, she lifts onto her toes, and my gaze lands on the strip of skin exposed between her waistband and the hem of her shirt—that soft skin my fingers itch to touch. I caved to that itch once. One dark night in the hallway of her parents’ old house when I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see her again.
I was sixteen years old when Alex took the seat next to me in English class and instantly caught my attention with her big blue eyes, long, dark hair, soft skin, and a set of curves straight from my horny teenage fantasies. When I learned of her unapologetic love for all things muscle car, you could pretty much stick a fork in me.
“Sebastian.” Dante’s firm tone makes me think I missed something. Like maybe he was asking me a question while I was ogling his sister.
It’s been so damn long since I’ve seen her, and I want to soak her up, drink her in, swallow her whole. I tear my eyes off Alex and turn to her brother. “What?”
“I asked if you were responsible for us getting this job. People with cars like these usually take them to specialty shops in the city.” He eyes the dent. “Does it belong to one of your fancy football friends?”
I drag my hand through my hair and shake my head. “If this belongs to any of the guys, this is the first I’ve seen it.”
Alex’s eyes meet mine and she cocks her head to the side, concern wrinkling her brow. “You okay, Sebastian? You look upset about something.”
“Not a thing.” A lot of things. But I’m not upset. I’m reeling—from my body’s reaction to seeing her again, from this ache in my chest that feels like my lungs are in a trap two sizes too small, from the fact that no one fucking bothered to tell me she was coming home. I need to prepare myself for this, to give myself a pep talk that includes a list of ninety-nine excellent reasons I should stay away from her.
“Welcome home,” I say as she saunters toward me. No. She doesn’t saunter. Alex isn’t the type to saunter. She walks with purpose, like a girl who has no fucking idea that her every move is my sexual fantasy.
“Thanks.” Her mouth stretches into a wide smile. “When do you head back to Lafayette?”
I flinch. If she’d ever bothered to ask about me, she’d know that I moved home and transferred to BHU a year ago. If she’d ever bothered to contact me, I’d have told her myself.
Then again, communication is a two-way street, and I’ve personally been sticking to the detour since the night I pinned her against her bedroom wall and came so fucking close to taking exactly what I wanted. Some lines you just can’t cross.
“I’m at BHU now,” I say. “I came back when Mom was sick.”
Some of the color leaves her cheeks. “I didn’t know that.”
“She’s all better now. It’s okay.” Of course, with cancer, doctors never say “all better.” They prefer the word “remission,” which always sounds foreboding as hell to me.
She nods. “Oh, good. So you…live here again?”
“I can’t seem to stay away.” I swallow and attempt a smile. “For better or worse, this is home.”
Dante grumbles something under his breath that I can’t make out, but I catch the words “until the draft” and “pro ball.” When it comes to my football career, my buddy likes to put the cart way ahead of the horse.
“How long are you visiting?” I ask Alex.
She looks at Dante and back to me. Her lips are bubblegum pink, and I wonder if they taste as sweet as they look. “I enrolled at BHU. Didn’t Dante tell you?”
Dante shrugs. “I didn’t think about it. Why does he need to know?”
“BHU?” I ask stupidly.
“It was a last-minute decision,” she says. “There’s no place like home, and if I’m going to get a degree, I need to get started.”
“You weren’t going to college in Colorado?” I don’t know why I assumed she would.
She shakes her head. “Just working at Aunt Phyllis’s service center.”
“Right,” I mumble.
She takes a deep breath. “Well, when you see your dad, tell him I said thank you again for the job. I can’t wait to get started.” She turns to her brother. “See you at home for dinner.”
She waves to each of us before heading out the door, and I have to focus every bit of my willpower on keeping my eyes up when I want to drop them to the curve of her hips in those skintight jeans.
It’s only when the door swings shut that her words register. “What job?”
“Your dad hired her to replace Mike. She’ll handle the oil changes and basic maintenance shit.”
“Oh.” The single syllable is all I can say, because it’s the only word that will fit around the lump forming in my throat. Alex is back in town, she’s going to BHU, she’s working at Dad’s body shop, and unless someone’s invented a time machine and erased my teenage mistakes, she’s as forbidden as ever.
I. Am. Fucked.
Chapter Two
Alexandra
It’s not every day you get to lock eyes with the man who ruined you, but apparently today’s going to be special in more ways than one.
Wake up in my childhood bedroom surrounded by memories of my twin sister? Check.
Register for my first college classes? Check.
Land sweet new gig working with cars? Check.
Look into the eyes of the first guy to break my heart and realize I’m not over it? Not even a little? And, oh yeah, learn that he’ll be working by my side and going to the same college as I am? Checkity-check-check.
Sebastian Crowe is the kind of tattooed bad boy who likes classic cars and wild girls, who parties hard but is fiercely loyal to his family. He was the first guy to make me aware of my body and want to be wanted, through no fault of his own. And instead of grinning when he saw I was back in town, he stood three feet in front of me and stared at me as if he’d seen a ghost.
Even after two years, the sight of Sebastian makes a mess of the thoughts in my head and tangles a knot low in my belly. He looked as gorgeous as ever in jeans and a Crowe’s Automotive T-shirt that stretched too tight around his biceps and across his broad chest. He’s the same in so many ways—still wears the neatly trimmed beard he grew our senior year and has that aura of quiet strength about him. He’s broader than before and he’s gotten a few more tattoos, but he’s still every bit the guy I lost my naïve heart to.
As
soon as my sneakers hit the gravel in the back lot of Crowe’s Automotive, I remember Dante is my ride home. I can’t make myself go back in there and face Sebastian yet, not when I just found out that he’ll be living and working right by me all year.
So what? I’ll just walk. It can’t be more than a couple of miles, and fresh air beats facing Sebastian again so soon. I keep my head up and smile at old neighbors as I pass. I don’t let myself run, but walk with my hands tucked into my pockets, as if every cell inside me isn’t shaking.
“Alexandra DeLuca, is that you?”
I turn at the sound of the familiar voice and see an old friend coming out of the Pretty Kitty. “Bailey?”
Her grin is so wide that it takes up half her face. “Come hug me, you twerp! You’ve been gone forever!” Before I can reach her, she rushes over to me and wraps me in a hug, trapping my arms at my sides and rocking me left and right. “How long are you staying?”
“I moved back.” Her smile in response to this news is so much better than Sebastian’s horror-glazed eyes that I have to grin in return. “I start BHU next week.”
“And tonight, you drink with me,” she announces. When my eyes shift to the Pretty Kitty neon sign, she must sense my hesitation, because she laughs. “Not at the strip club. At a party. Come on, what do you say? I just collected my last paycheck from this meat market. I want to celebrate my freedom, but my bestie is working all night.”
“Okay,” I say carefully. Bailey and I never shared a social circle. In fact, we didn’t even go to the same schools in Blackhawk Valley. Instead, life threw us together in one of those experiences that’s so painful and awkward that you immediately bond with anyone else who’s a part of it. “What time?”
She looks at her watch. “How’s seven sound?” She points a thumb over her shoulder. “I was only in there five minutes but still need to shower it off me.”
“Seven’s good.”
“Should I pick you up at your parents’?”
“Yeah. I’m there for a couple more nights.”
“I can’t wait,” she says, pulling me into another hug. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too.” We separate and wave goodbye.
There’s a bounce in my step the rest of my walk home. I’ve been really nervous about coming back here, and maybe Sebastian’s reaction to my return was disappointing, but at least someone is glad to see me.
When I step through the front door of my childhood home, I draw in a deep breath, close my eyes, and remind myself I need to chill the fuck out about Sebastian. I catch the scent of the pumpkin candle Mom burns in the kitchen and the faint smell of pipe tobacco that lingers under everything else, even though Mom hasn’t let Dad smoke in the house for ten years.
When I graduated from high school, I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. I knew I couldn’t stay in Blackhawk Valley, but after two years living with my aunt and working on cars in Colorado, I learned you can’t run from ghosts. If I’m going to be haunted by mine, I want to do it somewhere closer to the people I love.
The truth is, even though my four brothers are frustrating, bossy, and sometimes chauvinistic pigs, I missed them. I missed Sunday dinners at Mom’s big oak dining table. I missed the sound of the screen door slamming and my brothers arguing over football. And I missed Sebastian, too. His deep brown eyes. The crooked tilt of his mouth when he’s trying not to smile. The way his lips part and his nostrils flare as he studies a new project in the body shop.
But I made a promise to myself. I’m not going to fall back into old habits. It’s just that “don’t pine over Sebastian” seemed like a much more reasonable plan when I thought he was still at Purdue and would only be home on holidays.
I might always love Sebastian from afar, but I’m done letting unrequited love rule my life. So even though I stand here and want to close my eyes and indulge in a fantasy of a different kind of greeting from Sebastian, the fantasy of how his fingers would feel sliding up my neck and into my hair, I won’t let myself.
I cut off the fantasy only to be left with the memory of the night before I left. How many times have I mentally replayed the moment he spun me into my room? How many moments have I wasted remembering the rough pads of his fingers as he cupped my jaw in his hands or the heat in his eyes when he looked at my mouth?
Usually when people look at my mouth, I assume they’re looking at the scar that covers the corner of my lips and the side of my chin. It’s the only part of my scarring I can’t cover inconspicuously, and I’ve been self-conscious about it for as long as I’ve had it. I feel like people either look at it, wondering how disgusting the worst of the scarring looks, or they stare at it, trying to wish it away. But that night two years ago, I knew Sebastian wasn’t wishing away my scars or pondering how much of me they cover. He wanted me—if only in that moment—and it felt so fucking amazing.
I left for Colorado the next morning, and I’ve spent the last two years mentally rewriting the end of that night. What he should have done. What I should have done.
I tried to tell myself that he stopped because he was leaving. That he didn’t let his lips touch mine because he didn’t want me to wait around for him. But the truth is, Sebastian Crowe had three years before that night to make me his if that was what he’d wanted. If you want someone badly enough, you don’t give a shit about all the other stuff—family, college plans, overly protective older brothers. But he’s never been interested.
We shared one moment, and in that moment I got to see heat in his eyes directed at me. I got to watch his pulse thrum at the base of his neck and feel what it was like to have his fingers start their slow slide into my hair. All it took was thirty seconds of having his attention one hundred percent on me, and I was ruined.
I’m done fantasizing about a night that never happened. Which is why, instead of hiding in my room all night, I’m going to go out with an old friend and pretend I’m like every other red-blooded college female in the world. I strip out of my clothes, slide into my robe, and go across the hall to the bathroom, where I step under the hot spray of the shower. There, I try out a new fantasy—one where I’m not growing old and waiting for Sebastian Crowe.
Chapter Three
Sebastian
I flip the sign at the front of the shop to closed and twist the deadbolt on the front door. It was a quiet day, and Dante’s already gone. I could have left an hour ago, but I stayed to sweep the service bay and organize new inventory. I was hoping the mindless work might clear my head after seeing Alex. It didn’t. If anything, my thoughts are even more scrambled now than they were before.
“Don’t set the alarm,” Dad says, coming out from his little office behind the front counter. “I’ll get it when I go. I’m finishing up some paperwork.”
“No problem. Need any help?”
He shakes his head. “I got it.”
“You hired Alex?” I ask. I can’t stop fucking thinking about her bent under that hood and how much I’d have liked our reunion to have taken a different turn. I have to get that idea out of my mind. Alex is off-limits.
“Alex?” His brow wrinkles. “Who?”
“Alex DeLuca.”
His eyes widen in recognition. “Oh, Alexandra. Yes, of course I hired her.” He gives me a hard look. “She needed a job, and I needed a service tech. She has experience. What would you have had me do?”
I turn away. When Dad hired Dante, I tried to explain that I wanted to keep my distance from the DeLucas, that it just didn’t feel right bringing them into our lives. But Dad insisted that hiring Dante was the right thing to do, and I’m sure his reasons for hiring Alex are the same. What would he do if he knew I’d told Dante the truth about our ugly past? Would he feel the same? Would he be bringing the DeLucas closer if he knew one of them knew our darkest secrets?
“Son.” He waits for me to look him in the eye before he continues. I wish I had pride when I looked at my dad. I wish I was one of those people who believed his father co
uld do no wrong, but Dad and I have never had that kind of relationship. He points to me now, a stern frown creasing his brow. “Don’t dredge up the past.”
How can I not when he just brought the past right to my door? “I care about her.”
He folds his arms and holds my gaze. “All the more reason to keep your relationship professional. We talked about this before.”
“Of course.” I want to argue that if he’s so set on me keeping my distance from Alex, he shouldn’t have hired her, but I know he’s right. Giving Alex a job is the right thing to do. And hell, she is great with cars. When other kids were hanging out at high school parties and going to football games, Alex was in the garage with her brothers, learning to rebuild an engine. Her passion and experience are paired with a dynamite intuition. We’re lucky to have her. I just have to figure out how to keep my thoughts in check when she’s standing close. “Of course I will. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He grunts his goodbye, and I’m heading to the back door when I hear the deep “Crowe” Dad uses when he answers his phone.
I stop, listening as hard as I can. I only make out pieces of his side of the conversation. “Sure… Why?… I gave you the money… Consequences…”
I shake my head. The snippets give me a bad sense of déjà vu, but it’s ridiculous that my mind wants to jump to the worst possible conclusion from so few words. I leave, not letting myself listen any more.
As I’m unlocking my truck, my phone buzzes. It’s a group text from Chris Montgomery, the Blackhawks quarterback, to a small group of us from the team. Even as I read his message, the replies start rolling in.
Chris: I just dropped Grace off at the airport. Need a beer and a distraction. There’s a party at Trent’s house tonight. Who’s in?