by Lexi Whitlow
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, you’re going to have to leave it,” he says, shaking his head, gesturing out to the full lot behind me. “As you can see, we’ve got at least ten others ahead of you. It’s probably going to be tomorrow before we can look at it.”
“But none of those car’s owners are here,” I insist, trying to use my incredible gifts of persuasion to woo him over to reason. I give him a weak smile. I’m not even convincing myself right now. “I have a noon meeting. I need my car. Please?” I try batting my eyelashes, but I was never very good at that.
“I’m sorry ma’am,” he says again. He hands my keys to a short, greasy mechanic with a crooked grin who’s nearly leering at me. “Can I call you a cab?”
“Oh, come on! Please,” I insist, not believing my predicament, watching the short guy and another, much taller, tattooed mechanic, push my Z to the side of the garage. “You can’t even look at it? I’m right here. It won’t take five minutes to peek under the hood.”
He shakes me off. “Come in the office and let me fill out a work order, get your name and contact info.”
I have no choice except to follow him. I make him wait by his idling computer while I call the office, begging my admin, Bonnie, to get someone to come pick me up.
I look at my Lyft app, and true to form, there is no one in the area. The closest car is thirty miles away. This place might have a nice car shop, but it hasn’t caught up with twenty-first century technology.
“Name?” he asks, when I’m finished with my call.
“Bryn Beckett,” I reply coolly. He asks twenty more questions, taking an inordinate amount of time inputting data into his derelict computer. I’m surprised he doesn’t request a DNA sample—but then again, he has my car.
I hear a bell jingle at the door behind me.
“Hey, there you are,” a familiar voice chirps. I glance up. It’s Charles.
Great. Just what I need. How is it that a guy who bills $600 per hour for the firm can be spared to run an errand?
He must have been talking to Bonnie when I called. He spends way too much time chatting up the admins, especially mine.
“I hear you need a lift.” He steps up, smiling.
The shop manager hands me a sheet of paper fresh from the printer.
“Sign right here,” he instructs, a stubby finger pointing at the signature line.
Just as I sign, Charles starts laughing. I look up, following his gaze through the wide glass windows that open to the mechanic’s shop floor. He’s looking at something inside. Whatever it is, it fills him with glee.
“Check this out,” Charles says, urging me forward.
I slide the paper back to the shop manager.
“We’ll call you as soon as we have an opportunity to have a look,” the manager says. “Probably tomorrow.”
I thank him, standing, joining Charles near the window. He tips his head forward, nodding toward a mechanic in the corner who’s rifling through boxes of parts.
“You know who that is?” Charles asks, an amused smirk cutting his face.
The guy has his back turned to us. He’s wearing a blue, short-sleeved shirt stained from collar to belt with grease, and is smeared with used motor oil up to his elbows. I’m not usually one to go for that type, but there’s something about the smear of grease on his well-defined bicep that sends a tiny shock of lightning straight to my core.
Calm down, girl. That’s not why you’re here. Not even close.
But my eyes can’t stop taking him in. He’s trim, but not thin, the blue of his shirt betraying a defined waist and thick, structured muscle. His shoulders are broad, stretching the fabric so it’s about to burst. And the curve of his thighs and ass are tightly defined in his work pants, which cling low on his narrow hips.
Hot damn.
I shake my head. “No. Should I know him?”
I might want to.
Charles bites a stifled laugh. “That’s Logan Chandler. Remember him?”
Logan… fuck.
Just then, the guy turns and looks up. His eyes first fall on me, and then narrow sharply, settling on Charles.
“Let’s have a reunion,” Charles says, glee rising in his tone.
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. I feel my face flush pink. My heart rate quickens, and that familiar feeling comes back. The guilt, mixed with regret. And that haunting, hollow longing I always felt whenever I was near him.
The shame I feel every time I look back and remember my own shallowness and the weight of the things I wanted back then. The even heavier weight of the things my parents wanted for me.
“No,” I say, panicking. “Leave him be. I’m in a hurry. Let’s go.”
Charles is having none of it. But he’s got a functioning car and keys, so I’m stuck watching him shove his hands in the pockets of his suit pants, leaning into the swinging door separating us from the mechanic’s shop.
“Hey, Logan.” Logan looks away and ignores Charles. “Chandler,” Charles calls out again. “Nice seeing you today. How ya been? Hey, that BMW you just got in, that’s Bryn’s.” He nods to me, cutting his eyes in my direction. “You remember Bryn, don’t you?”
Double fuck.
Logan walks forward slowly, crossing the oil stained, concrete floor, his eyes fixed on Charles. He’s got something in his hand. It looks like a wire of some kind. He’s gripping one end of it like he’s holding a whip, ready to strike. His crystal blue eyes have gone ice cold.
“Of course I remember Bryn,” he says, stepping past Charles into the office, his big build crowding Charles back two steps. He’s the same, but different. His voice hasn’t changed since our senior year. It’s still deep and measured, tinged with sweet honey and a slight accent, peculiar to the neighborhood of Raleigh we all grew up in. He’s taller now, and much bigger, ripped with defined muscles, inked with all manner of tattoos creeping under his shirtsleeves, peeking out of his collar.
The feeling inside of me should subside. I’ve gotten all of those things I thought I wanted back in high school. I’m getting good—well, better—at my job. And I have the clothes and the car and the…
My mind draws a blank. Instead, I focus on the ropy muscle of Logan’s biceps, and I feel fifteen years old again. His voice, the way it shook me. The strong lines of his hands, the way I had wanted them on me, exploring me, finding new places I hadn’t had the bravery to discover on my own.
I try to smile, but his eyes glance away from me.
He doesn’t smile back at me. In fact, he seems … cold.
“Bryn’s joined the firm,” Charles says, stepping up close to me. “Just graduated from Columbia Law. She’s made everyone proud, coming back home. She could have joined any law firm in the country pulling down huge money, but she came back here to carry on the Beckett tradition. Like her daddy always wanted.”
Logan nods, his jaw clenched. “Apparently.”
“And as you can see,” Charles continues, a cruel smile turning his eyes at the corners. “Logan here has come back home too, after blowing up his knees.” He sniggers, shaking his head as he recalls the event. “You know I have that Cotton Bowl recorded on DVR, just so I can call it up and watch it over and over again. That hit was epic. I show it to people sometimes, and they get a little sick watching it. Who knew knees could bend in that direction? Well—actually—I guess they’re not supposed to, which is why you’re here—”
“Shut up, Charles,” I say, stepping up, ending his gloating reverie. I put my hand out for Logan. “It’s really good to see you again, Logan. It’s been too long.”
He looks at my hand, then at his own. He holds his up, oil stained palms out, shaking his head.
“I wouldn’t want you to get your hands dirty,” he says. “This shit doesn’t wash out. Trust me, I should know.”
His eyes flash with a haughty defiance, as if he’s making a point—a point that’s gone over my head. He was always like that.
Looking at him, I realize he’s still
the same, just bulked out and covered with different markings. Still as cocky and confident, still as self-contained. The only difference is there’s something gruff in his manner. Something older. Like he’s seen too much of life in a few short years. But maybe I’m reading too much into things.
He’s more beautiful than he ever was, only now he appears a little dangerous. The combination is intoxicatingly sexy.
I find myself wondering what his skin smells like, what the refined planes of his body would feel like pressed against mine. In the dark, in the light. Any fucking where at all.
I flush hot thinking of him that way. His eyes flash and I fear he see’s what’s in my head. A small smile curls his lip.
“I’ll have your car ready in ten minutes,” he says. “You had a cracked plug and a burnt wire. Easy fix. Fast turnaround for old friends.”
He gives me a broader smile, and I have a quick flash of feeling. Like he knows.
He couldn’t.
I calm myself.
But I can’t quite shake that feeling.
Chapter 2
Logan
This time, it takes every single ounce of self-control I possess not to punch Charles Pearson in his smug, pasty face. He’s standing there in a thousand-dollar suit, wearing a self-important smirk, reminding Bryn about every fuck up I’ve had in my life. Meanwhile I’m stuck taking his shit with a spark plug in my hand.
Bryn is every bit as beautiful as she was on graduation night, and then some. She’s still got that smoking hot cheerleader’s body with long legs and a perfect, heart-shaped ass I’ve never stopped dreaming about. Her blond hair is still golden, streaked with honey and sunshine. Her eyes are still pale green, and her lips are still pink, full and pouty; the kind of lips that beg to be kissed—or bitten.
The ideas crossing my mind in the moment are of a long-standing nature, and completely obscene. I’d like to turn her over Joe’s desk, lift that little pleated skirt she’s wearing, and do things to her that would get me arrested in a couple of states.
Instead I hold tight to the spark plug wire, begging her patience.
“It’ll take a few minutes.”
“That’s fine,” she says mildly. Her eyes are like the sea before a storm. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she’s hiding something. I’ve been with plenty of women since Bryn left town, and I know how to read a woman’s face just about as well as I know how to fix a fucked up car.
I don’t say anything, though. Whatever she’s got in her mind, I’m better off not knowing it.
“At least you won’t need to catch a ride back to your office,” I say, cutting my eyes at Charles. “You’ll be back on the road shortly.”
She smiles at that, and like they say in the movies, my heart skips a damn beat.
* * *
The encounter with Bryn at the shop this morning got me distracted. I was worth jack-shit the rest of the day. I could barely turn a wrench without thinking of how she might smell, how she would taste, the way she’d feel beneath me, beside me, her skin touching mine. I spent half the day fighting a semi hard on, gritting my teeth.
Bryn is so far out of my league, the closest I’ll ever come is taking her memory home with me and jerking off to it in the dark. Girls like her do not hook-up with guys like me. Don’t get me wrong. Plenty of women hook up with guys like me, and me in particular. But I can’t see Bryn wasting her time.
She drives a BMW Z. I drive a primer stained, ‘83 Camaro that’s in desperate need of a new transmission.
She looks like she could summon any guy in the world with the crook of her pinky finger. We don’t just occupy each other’s worlds. We exist in different dimensions.
And Bryn isn’t the kind of woman a man would want to just sleep with. She’s the one you take out to dinner and then make breakfast for the next day.
I keep it quick, easy, and reliable when it comes to women.
Anyway, it’s difficult to really date anyone when I can barely keep my own shit together. That, and the fact that I need to be home every night, all night, to be with Drake. He can’t be left alone.
I say goodbye to the idea of Bryn along with her car, and I forcibly push the thought from my mind.
Just like every day, I go back to my routine.
Tonight is no different than any other Wednesday. I come home, make dinner, pop open a beer, then I spread my lottery tickets out on the coffee table in front of the television. Tonight, they’re calling the Triple Mega-Powerball.
I already know how it’s going to go. I never win, but it’s fun feeding the anticipation when the numbers start popping up with those little ping-pong balls blown through chutes into their landing zones. There’s something random and authentic about it, something hard to fix, the way everything else in life is fixed, with a thumb on the scale, predetermined to screw over every little guy just trying to get by.
“If you win, pizza every night,” Drake says. He’s pointing his phone at me, like he does every Wednesday. Taking another video. He records everything, even stupid shit like me watching television.
I don’t mind it. Not really. It makes him happy.
“Okay buddy,” I promise half-heartedly, grinning for the video. “If we win, we’ll have good food every day of the week.”
“French fries,” Drake says. He glances up at the ceiling, then down at the floor, his free hand flapping fast in front of him. He stills it to grab a potato chip, popping it in his mouth. “French fries with mustard.”
“Okay,” I say. “And on Fridays, we’ll have pizza. You choose the toppings.”
Drake grins, gently rocking on the couch as the lottery music ramps up in anticipation of calling the winning numbers.
“I’ll pick. I want sausage and pepperoni. And mushrooms that smell bad. This Friday.”
Drake thinks mushrooms smell bad. He senses things the rest of us don’t, or senses them differently. He can’t hold eye contact, or have a normal conversation, but there’s stuff going on in his brain that sometimes make me stop in my tracks and think—hard.
“Two days from now,” Drake says, summing up the state of his world. “Sausage, pepperoni, and mushrooms. You get paid on Friday. We get pizza. No Powerball on Friday. It’s Wednesday now.”
“It is, buddy.”
Drake knows this routine well, and he knows to stay quiet when they’re calling the numbers.
The first number that appears is a 6, eliminating two of my tickets right out of the gate. I toss them on the floor, focusing on the rest.
The girl on the television is scantily clad. The lottery sells sex, along with hope and fantastic dreams. It is a stupid tax, but it’s a fun one. I can’t help myself.
The next number she aligns in the little plastic tube is a 2. With that, I toss another ticket to the floor. I’m down to one ticket and it’s not looking good. There are still eight numbers to go.
8 is the next number up. Hanging in.
4 appears. Okay. This is getting interesting.
9. Holy shit, halfway there.
The pretty blond on the television pauses for the next ping-pong ball to lift, making half of America wait.
It’s a 6.
What the ever-loving hell? Still in.
My heart rate quickens. I look at Drake, and for a second, his rocking is still.
They pause the drawn-out production a moment to display the final, Triple Mega-Powerball cash payout. It’s up to 2.67 billion dollars; the biggest in history.
My palms start sweating.
The blond on TV straightens another ball in its slot. It’s an 8.
Oh shit. This is too close. This is gonna give me a stroke.
The background music builds, including a low, rumbling drum roll as they work toward the last three digits.
The next one up is a 1.
Fuck! What the hell? I’m still in.
Every number matches so far. I know there is no way this can keep going.
The next one is bound to scratch.
> “Breathe,” Drake says, his voice low, concerned. I glance at him over my sole lottery ticket. He’s looking straight into my eyes, which he never does.
“I will in a second,” I say.
The number 2 pops up.
Shit. Holy fucking shit.
“And the last number for the annual, lower 48 Triple Mega-Powerball lottery, with a payout of two, point six-seven billion dollars is…”
It’s an 8.
I stare at the television screen, then down at my ticket and back again. I move back and forth between the two images, second guessing my own perception, believing I must be imagining what my eyes show me.
“You won,” Drake says, his voice even and calm. “Now we have pizza every night.”
What the ever-loving fuck?
I lay my hand on the ticket, feeling the cool paper under my grease stained fingers. The leaf of computer issued digits measures barely six inches in length. The numbers are dot matrix, printed from a machine manufactured decades ago.
This small piece of paper is worth a billion dollars.
My head spins. My heart skips beats.
“We won,” I say. “Holy fucking shit.”
In a second I have Drake on his feet, holding him in a bear hug, swinging him around the room, laughing, screaming at the top of my lungs “We won! We won! We won!”
Both of us are beside ourselves, then I feel Drake pull back. He starts swaying, flapping in agitation.
“Big, big, big, big problems,” he says, scowling. “You’re cursed. You’re cursed. Cursed. Cursed. Cursed.”
I have no idea what Drake is talking about—my head is in a whirl—yet I follow as he drags me down the hall to his room.
His fingers dance over the computer keyboard. It’s amazing that when he plays video games or goes online, he can stop flapping, typing faster than a keyboarding instructor. In a second he’s landed somewhere he feels it’s important for me to see.
“Sit!” he insists, giving up his chair.
I sit down, considering the web page he’s pulled up. It’s a blog site. The headline reads, ‘You Just Won the Lottery. Now What? (You Are So Screwed.)’
