A Restored Man

by Jaime Reese

  "I'm sorry," Cole repeated.

  "No. What did you say that earned you the punch?" Julian asked, inspecting the side of Cole's face.

  "I'm not sure."

  "He didn't break the skin, so that's a positive. It looks like he hit your cheek more than anything. You'll have a bruise, but that'll heal in a week or two. How do you feel?" Julian asked, releasing Cole's chin.

  Cole shrugged and turned away. "It's fine."

  Julian raised his hand and held up some fingers. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

  Cole squinted back at him. "That depends on how many hands you have up?"

  Julian smirked. "I see the blow to the face didn't knock out your sense of humor."

  Cole shrugged again. "Tell me what I did wrong."

  "Sit down," Julian said and gestured toward one end of the couch as Matt returned with a towel and ice.

  "Here, sit and put your head back," Matt said and nudged Cole to take a seat between him and Julian. He gently put the ice on Cole's cheek and held it there.

  "Ow," Cole said quietly. He held the towel with ice to his face and turned to Julian. "You're not mad at me?"

  Julian raised an eyebrow. "Not at you. I'm pissed at Aidan. He should have had more self-control. I know you can drive someone to the brink of insanity, but I also know it's not something you set out to do. And you would never intentionally hurt anyone."

  "I wouldn't," Cole mumbled.

  "Wow, someone finally clocked you for that mouth of yours," Luke said, coming down the stairs.

  Cole glared upward at his fellow housemate. "Not funny, Luke."

  Luke stared down at him with a hint of a smile and sat on the coffee table in front of him. He grabbed Cole's chin and turned his head. "Just the cheek. No broken nose. Sadly, no broken mouth either. You should be fine in a week," he finished, releasing him.

  "Glad I'm surrounded by the doctors of HH."

  Luke and Julian simultaneously smacked Cole's legs.

  "What the hell, guys? Why is everyone hitting me today?" Cole grumbled and clutched at the towel with ice against his face.

  "I'm going back to bed," Luke said, then stood to return upstairs. "Keep that ice on it."

  "Yes, doctor," Cole mumbled.

  "So what did you say?" Julian asked in a tone that was softer than usual.

  "I don't know."

  "Tell us what happened," Matt said.

  "I met Ty, Aidan's brother. He's hotter than Aidan. I think it's because he doesn't have the asshole vibe seeping out of his pores and—"

  "Stop." Julian rubbed his eyes. "Please tell me you didn't say that."

  "No, I paused," Cole said earnestly.

  Julian smiled. "Good. What happened next?"

  "I was nice. I said 'it's a pleasure to meet you.' He tried to say the same but stuttered. I wondered what was wrong and he said 'see you tomorrow' and walked away. Then I turned and Aidan punched me."

  "Go back. You wondered what was wrong or you asked?" Matt said.

  "I asked."

  "Were those your exact words?" Julian asked, cautiously.

  Cole stopped and thought back to that moment, replaying the exchange. "No, I asked Ty 'what's wrong with you?'"

  Julian rubbed his shaved head and Matt exhaled heavily.

  Cole looked back and forth between them. "What?"

  Julian sighed. "Do you realize you implied there was something wrong with him as a person…as a man?"

  Cole slouched into his place on the couch, processing what he had said and how it could have been translated so badly. "Shit, I deserve the black eye," he mumbled. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "I just wanted to know why he stuttered. He looked upset when he did it. I didn't see anything wrong with him, he looked as close to perfect as a guy can get. I was curious."

  Julian sighed heavily. "You have to stop and think before you fire off that mouth of yours."

  "I'm trying, dammit!"

  "Try harder," Julian said sternly. "You stopped yourself at least once by pausing. Look what happened when you didn't."

  Cole crossed his arms and pursed his lips. "I liked it better when I was stealing cars and didn't have to worry about always being so fucking perfect," he grumbled.

  Matt rose from the couch and stood in front of Cole. Cole looked up and saw Matt's blue eyes staring down at him with an uncharacteristic controlled anger. "I'm going to pretend you didn't say that." He grazed Julian's fingers on the armrest and made his way upstairs.

  Cole threw his hands up in the air. "What the hell did I say now?"

  Julian tracked Matt as he went upstairs. "You said you preferred to be stealing cars," he said absently.

  "Well, yeah. I do," Cole said. Sometimes Julian could be a little dense.

  Julian turned and gave Cole a piercing glare. "You said that to the two people who are responsible for you so you don't do that anymore."

  "So you want me to lie to you then?"

  Julian leaned back in the couch and closed his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose and waited a few seconds before speaking. "No, I don't want you to lie. I want you to think about how your words would hurt someone's feelings before you actually say them. If it's hurtful, then don't say it."

  "Not saying what you're really thinking is too close to a lie," Cole said, crossing his arms again.

  "I'm not having this conversation with you anymore. Stop being so fucking stubborn and man up. You can't cruise through life and leave a shit-ton of hurt people in your wake. Keep that ice on your face." Julian rose from the couch with a sideway glance. "Good night," he finished and made his way upstairs.

  "But—"

  "Make sure you lock everything up," Julian said, without turning back, leaving Cole mid-thought.

  Cole threw his head back on the couch and grabbed the ice again. "Ow," he moaned to no one when he rested the towel against the side of his face. He never lied. That was the one rule growing up in his household. As soon as he knew he was gay, he came out to his family. There was no resentment or hardship from his parents. They always stood by him as long as he was honest and up front with them. Period. The one thing they would not condone was a lie, regardless of how bad the situation may be. When he had been arrested, even with the pain he knew he would cause, he called his mother to inform her of what he had done. He remembered the call as if it had happened yesterday.

  "Mami, I'm in trouble."

  "Que pasó, mi amor," she had responded, the worry overpowering the sleep still thick in her voice.

  He closed his eyes as he remembered his mother's tone. First, the loss of his father, then his brother in the war two years later, he couldn't stand to hear the hurt in his mother's voice, or see the pain in her eyes when something happened to him or his family.

  "I got arrested."

  "Do I need to call Vanni?" she had asked. He hated to pull the big brother card but he didn't know anyone else who could help.

  "Yes, please."

  "Are you okay, mi amor?"

  "Yes. I'm sorry, Mami. I'm sorry."

  "I'll call Vanni. You sit tight and wait for him."

  "Okay, Mami. I'm sorry."

  Julian's comment irritated him to no end. Cole may be a lot of things, but he was not the type of person to leave hurt people in his wake. The night he was busted, all he could think about was how he had disappointed his mother. Her youngest son was now, officially, a criminal. All his brothers and sister were respected members of the community. His oldest brother, Marco, had been a decorated soldier, then Giovanni, an attorney, followed by Carmen, a doctor, Demetrio, an engineer, and Gus, a chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

  Cole, youngest of the bunch, a criminal with an official record.

  If it wasn't because he looked so much like his brothers and sister, he'd swear he was switched at birth. They never did anything to make him feel less than, but somehow, he just never really fit. And whatever he did, it never seemed to meet the bar that they had set so high.

  He remembere
d his brother arriving at the police station at three in the morning. "Are you okay?" Vanni asked, concern evident in the crease between his brows.

  Cole nodded.

  He corralled Cole into a private meeting room at the station where the arrested met with counsel. "What have you said?"

  "Nothing," Cole said, his hands fidgeting.

  Vanni responded with raised eyebrows. "What do you mean, nothing?"

  Cole looked up. "I'm not a snitch."

  Vanni rubbed his face and sat. "Tell me what happened."

  "I stole a car."

  "I saw the charges. But tell me what happened," Vanni insisted.

  "That's all I'm going to say. I got caught stealing a car."

  "Were you with anyone? Is this something you and friends—"

  "Just me. Tell me what happens next," Cole said. There was no way he was taking anyone else down with him. His crew understood him and accepted him as is. He never worried about being anything other than who he was with them. He was the one stupid enough to have gotten caught. He had always been careful, but he screwed up. He should have known better and now he had to deal with the consequences.

  In hindsight, his biggest regret was his failure and the disappointment to his family. His mother knew he worked with cars at a body shop. All she had asked was if he was happy with what he did.

  "Yes, Mami. Very happy."

  "Are you doing the best you can do at your job?" she had asked.

  "I am the best, Mami." Cole could lift any car he needed to steal in record time. It was the reason he was able to pick and choose his contracts. He was the person people went to when they needed a particular exotic to export without waiting the traditional months for the factory to build it. He didn't feel sorry for the person who had waited anywhere between six months to a year for a car then left it easily accessible.

  Luckily, he had been caught stealing a sleeper, not an exotic. The one perk of a sleeper was that it looked harmless, average to the regular person, but under the hood, that was where the value was. He had successfully stolen a worn out six-year-old car that had seen better days and was on his way to the stripping warehouse. He was almost there when the sirens came out of nowhere. Fucking LoJack. Who would have thought someone would LoJack that piece of crap car?

  He should have known.

  The car was worth a few thousand dollars—if that—but that wasn't the prize or the reason for the boost. Under the hood was an elusive prototype engine easily worth a hundred times the value of the car. Rumors had spread like wildfire in the black market about the missing prototype. How the guy had managed to get that engine was crystal clear: he had stolen it from someone who worked in the development team.

  Rather than risk leading the cops to the warehouse and his team, he pulled over and surrendered. No way was he getting his crew arrested.

  Vanni had managed to get Cole a charge of grand theft in the third degree—a felony punishable with a term of up to five years and a fine up to five thousand dollars. Thankfully, no one truly appreciated the value of his prize. Kelley Blue Book and NADA Guides for the actual car placed the market value at just under eight grand. The stolen prototype engine, which hadn't officially hit the market yet, couldn't be used to value the theft even though the cops tried. The owners of the engine, thankful to have finally found the prototype, refused to blame Cole, they preferred to go after the original thief. Lucky him. Cole walked out of there with a two-year prison term and an official criminal record. He had gotten off easy.

  Here he was now, sitting on a couch rewinding everything that had been said in the last hour. Julian's words left him more numb than the ice on his face. For some reason, the flash of some dark thought that crossed Aidan's brother's eyes for a moment seemed to stick the longest with him. The thought that Cole had hurt him with his words felt like a punch to the gut. People thought he was a cocky son of a bitch and an asshole in many cases, but it wasn't something he took pride in. And intentionally hurting someone, well, his mother would not have been proud of him.

  He just wanted to feel as though he actually belonged for once in his life. To know what it was like to just be himself without having to worry about every fucking little thing he said or did.

  He rose from the couch and walked into the kitchen. He threw the remaining melted pieces of ice in the sink and wrung the towel before setting it out to dry. He'd show up for work on time and try to make things right. Without a doubt, he could do the job in his sleep. Now he just needed to figure out a way to avoid screwing up everything else.

  "I stuttered again," Ty said absently as he stared out the large office window at the rising sun. He loved to people watch and the mobs of pedestrians in the nearby sidewalk racing to their morning downtown Miami commute provided enough entertainment to distract him from the conversation.

  "When?" Dr. Samantha Knox asked.

  He looked over to the psychologist he had been seeing for the past eight months. "I'm sorry?"

  "When did you stutter?" Dr. Knox asked with her notebook sitting idly on the side table.

  She always seemed to listen to him rather than focus on jotting down notes. Maybe that stupid recorder she kept on during their sessions was the reason. Even still, he felt comfortable with her, far more than the other two psychologists he'd cycled through before her to deal with his survivor's guilt and the endless list of other issues he had been working through since the accident. "When I met the new hire for the shop," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  She cocked her head to the side. "What did you feel when you met him?"

  "I'm not sure," he said, returning his focus to the window. There was something about this new guy. Cole. Ty remembered following the sound of unfamiliar footsteps in his shop. Then he saw Cole down on his knees as if worshipping the Yenko. He remembered almost mirroring that exact same action when he first saw the car. He couldn't believe the owner had called a salvage yard to junk her. The elderly woman didn't have a clue the rare gem she had decaying away in her abandoned shed. Her husband had wanted to restore it himself—a project he had been unable to complete before he died the previous year. She refused to take any money for it, but he insisted, giving her several thousand dollars for letting him take it off her hands. Aidan didn't understand Ty's passion for cars. How the love for the automotive industry skipped Aidan entirely always baffled Ty and their father. His shop—his dad's shop before him—was Ty's passion, his place of solace, and what kept him sane during his recovery.

  "I think we need to explore that a bit more. We're trying to pinpoint what triggers your stutter. There's no medical basis for it, so it—"

  "It's all in my head. I know," he said, stating the obvious.

  "Ty, you've been through a significant amount of trauma, so remnant issues to work through, both physical and mental, can be expected."

  Ty sighed. "I know. I just hadn't stuttered in a while, I thought…I don't know…that it went away or stopped."

  He heard Dr. Knox flipping through her notes. "Two months since your last stutter."

  "Yeah, it sorta took me by surprise."

  "Were you angry or upset?" she continued to probe.

  "No. Not when I had stuttered."

  "But you were?" she asked, picking up on his careful use of words.

  "After. At myself. I was embarrassed." He didn't mind admitting that. The good doctor knew he hated the stutter that had suddenly appeared during his recovery. He had managed to survive the car accident that took his parents' life and spared his…barely. Although the doctors were skeptical of his survival, he somehow came out of a six-month coma without any medical head trauma visible in an MRI or CAT scan. His follow-up doctors' visits for his other issues were finally down to once a month and his physical therapy down to checkups once every three weeks to make sure he stayed on track with his at-home regimen. The prognosis of a relatively normal life was positive, his recovery paralleled a miracle.

  His stutter, the curse no one could figure out. It wa
s mild, rare, and always seemed to come up when he needed to be most focused.

  "If we could figure out the trigger, you can prepare for it and learn to overcome it."

  "And if I had the right numbers, I'd win the lottery," he said, looking over his shoulder.

  She laughed and shook her head. "There's nothing wrong with you, Ty."

  There it was again. That phrase. He hung his head and inhaled deeply. There was something wrong with him…a lot of things. He was no longer the man he once was and no amount of therapy would ever change that. Now, he just needed to accept the new Ty and deal with it. He was a survivor, a fighter. He was lucky.

  But sometimes, he had a hard time believing it.

  * * * * *

  Cole stood by the door inside the shop and waited, thankful to be out of the Miami morning heat and humidity. He felt like a moron standing by the entrance, watching the workers arrive, but he knew better than to start exploring the shop without permission. No need pushing things so soon, he was lucky his new boss hadn't fired him last night before he even began. Maybe his early arrival would score points in his favor. He was certainly punctual, had to be if your talents focused on sticking to a well-organized plan.

  He saw a young woman, probably mid-twenties, briskly walking toward him with a clipboard in hand. "Hi there, you must be Cole. I'm Stacie," she said, finally arriving by his side at the entrance.

  He extended his hand in greeting and smiled. He could do charming. "Hey there. Yeah, that's me."

  She pointed to his face. "That looks like it hurt."

  "It's fine. Gives me character."

  Stacie smiled broadly. She stood about an inch or two over five feet and wore a blue business pantsuit. Her long dark hair hung loosely to the middle of her back and boldly offset her pale skin, blue eyes, and bright red lipstick. "Great. Follow me, we'll walk and talk," she said, turning and guiding Cole through the bays. "I work with Mr. Calloway. He asked me to give you a quick tour then work on the uniform and other details until he arrived."

  "Okay," he said, figuring one word answers were a hell of a lot safer than embellishments.