The front of her truck stood stripped back to the engine. Pieces of fender and front grill and engine parts littered the floor, arranged in a carefully disordered pattern. The long tubes of fluorescent lights hummed against a turned-down country station and the chorus of bugs and tree frogs outside the open garage door. Oil and gasoline mixed freely with the heavy musk of honeysuckle and warmed pine.
Virginia sat on an upside-down milk carton on the floor, elbows on her knees, as she watched Jason and Cash work on the mangled truck.
Tourmaline perched silently on Cash’s motorcycle.
Finding a way to stop Hazard, the cop, and Wayne seemed impossible. They didn’t even know where Wayne was. Or how to get him to violate parole—though that seemed to be the only thing they could do. It’d been a few days and they were still arguing in between yards and weeds and mulch. Still trying to hash out a plan. But they’d made no great advance.
This wasn’t a game.
“He’s not in the same house. I went by this afternoon.”
Virginia twisted on the crate. “You went alone?”
“I was riding the bike.”
“Don’t do that shit alone. I’ll come next time.” Virginia kept her voice just above a whisper so as not to attract attention. Sighing, she flicked a mosquito off her ankle. “He’s like a dog. He’ll just trot back and forth on the same path until someone kicks him off.”
“So where does a dog go when someone kicks him out of his bed?”
Virginia shifted on her crate and shrugged.
They fell silent then.
Virginia’s eyes wandered back to the stripped-down truck and Jason’s arm buried in the engine. His muted red T-shirt was ripped at the shoulder, and part of a slick perfect biceps twisted out as he worked. It’d be easy to disappear around him. That’s what she should do, so as not to remind him of what she’d done. Who she was. Except, she didn’t want him to ignore her. She wanted to bite that muscle in his arm until he moaned.
Stretching out her legs, she sighed and spoke in a normal tone. “Are y’all gonna feed us anytime soon?”
Jason didn’t look up. “No.”
“I can order something. Have them pick it up,” Cash said, wiping his hands on a shop rag. “Want Harry’s?” he asked Jason.
“Mmm. I want those whiskey-and-molasses wings,” Virginia said. “That’s Harry’s, right?”
Jason rolled his eyes.
She caught his glance and meant to smile, but froze halfway. What if he regretted every thing he’d ever done with her? He had to. She would if she were him.
He went back to working.
“What do you want?” Cash asked.
“Nothing,” Jason grunted, angling the can of WD-40 into the engine.
Cash shrugged and dropped the shop rag.
“I’ll come help you order. Wings, Virginia?” Tourmaline said, hopping off the bike. All that eagerness simmered right beneath her words, her body strung as tight as a pulled-back bow.
Even Jason looked up and narrowed his eyes as he looked between Tourmaline and Cash.
No way were they going to get away with this for long. You could practically smell the heat.
“Virginia?” Tourmaline asked again.
Virginia looked up. “Yeah. Sorry. That’s good. And some fries.”
Jason shifted so his back was to her.
Tourmaline practically bounced after Cash into the dark.
Standing, Virginia pushed her hair behind her ears and walked to the side of the truck.
“What’s going on with them?” Jason asked.
“Not a clue.”
“You lying?” He looked underneath his arm and cocked an eyebrow.
“Probably always.” She curled her fingers tight over the opened engine block.
He didn’t say anything, but the edges of his mouth tightened as if he were trying not to smile. He strained against the bolt smashed up inside the engine.
“How bad is it?”
He shrugged and kept working. “The conscript is pretty good at fixing shit. I’m relying on his diagnosis once we get it stripped down.”
She squeezed her fingers on the sharp edge of the engine cavity and swallowed, wanting to explain in this brief moment alone with him that before him no one would have remembered the truck, let alone gotten a tow, or put this much time into anything of hers. She wanted some way to tell him how much she wanted him to hold her bones in his hands and turn her again into the girl she wanted to be.
But all those things Virginia felt a deep ache to say and do were like everything else in her brain—scattered and fragile and broken. She could only look at them and know they went together somehow. It was a terrible feeling. Terrible. Her hands were sweating and she tightened her fingers even more on the sharp edge until bright, rusted pain cut through the choking feeling, and she only heard the humming lights. And this feeling, this moment, was what she’d fought so hard to preserve. It seemed strange. Without smiling, she whispered, “Thanks.”
He stilled, his back tightening for a split second. As if the word had caught in his body, snagging in his movement. “Don’t think of it.”
She loosened her grip and it all came tumbling down—pulling back and forth in her stomach as she watched him work in the silence. “I don’t have words,” she choked out. “I mean. I have a lot. For this. But I don’t often have to use words.”
He straightened then, a serious look on his perfect face.
And she was sure feeling would be the thing that, in the end, killed her. But for him it was worth it.
“How’re your ribs?” he asked, voice deep and husky.
“All right. My hair managed to survive, too.” She touched the shortened strands that had decided to pull up into rough curls in the humidity. “Sort of.”
“It’s nice. Doesn’t drag you down like . . .” But Jason didn’t finish the sentence.
“I can’t hide behind it, though. I miss that. It was my dark curtain thing.”
His gaze briefly slid down her throat and came back up, mouth turned up in a tight, but amused smile. “You weren’t ever trying to hide anything that hair covers.”
She knew it was there, under his skin. The part of her that wanted to bite his shoulder knew he wanted to feel the sink of her hot teeth while his hands gripped raw and hungry on her hips. The part of her that wanted to spin in his hands and sink back into him knew he wanted to thrust forward and slide a hand up her spine to grasp the back of her neck.
But he just stood there, powerless in his eyes and unyielding in his body.
“You’re going to fucking kill me,” she whispered. Kill her with shrugged-off kindness. Kill her every time she looked at him and he looked away.
He didn’t say anything.
Virginia didn’t want to step toward him this time. She wanted him to come to her. She took a deep breath and tightened her jaw, forcing her body to stay put.
He blinked and turned away, picking up where he’d left off with the bolt.