Salvaged

by Jay Crownover

  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t put my finger on why I was so sure I knew him from somewhere. I figured it had to be my imagination because this was the second time he’d sought me out and he hadn’t indicated that our paths might have crossed before. I could see my own puzzled expression in the reflection of the mirrored sunglasses he didn’t bother to take off.

  “I understand that, but this is an opportunity I doubt you’ll want to pass up. I know someone that’s getting rid of a ’52 Hudson convertible. The original body and chassis are intact but the motor is all tore to hell and patchworked together from different years and different makes and models. It’s scrap. I don’t have the space or the time to take it on since I’m sort of in limbo at the moment, but I thought you might.” His dark eyebrows lifted and his teeth flashed as he gave me a knowing grin. “I mean a guy named Hudson should own one … it only seems right.”

  I blew out a whistle and rocked back on my heels. That was an offer that was practically impossible to say no to. “That’s quite a score. Why would you want to pass it on to a guy you don’t know?”

  He lifted a silver-and-black eyebrow as he told me, “I have eyes and I know my shit, kid. You take care of your cars regardless if they are a classic or a daily driver. You’re putting out beautiful work, and honestly, I’m dying to see what you could do with the ’52. I know the seller really well, so I can probably get a few grand knocked off the asking price.”

  I watched him, still trying to place where I could know him from, when it occurred to me I didn’t even know his name. He’d taken off after I told him I was named after his car the last time he visited.

  “I didn’t catch your name the last time you stopped by. Seems like I should know it if you’re offering me a score and a deal.” I cocked my head to the side and considered him through narrowed eyes. “Are you famous or something? I can’t shake this feeling that I’ve seen you somewhere before. You look very familiar.”

  The man let out a rusty-sounding laugh and shook his head. He offered a hand and his grip when we shook was firm and confident. I wasn’t sure if it was my overly tired mind playing tricks on me or not but I could have sworn the guy gave my hand an extra squeeze there at the end before letting go.

  “Name’s Zak Brady.” He waited a second to see if I would have any reaction to the name and when I didn’t he sighed and shifted his weight uneasily on his booted feet. “I’m not famous but I’ve made a decent name for myself in certain circles where horsepower is king. I’m not sure anyone would be familiar with it outside of California, but if you ever head out to the West Coast, people will point you in the direction of my garage the same way they pointed me toward yours.” He grinned at me and I found myself staring stupidly because I knew that face was one that I was familiar with. It was making me bonkers that I couldn’t place him. “I must have one of those faces, the kind that reminds someone of someone they think they know.”

  He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed over a business card that had a bunch of shiny silver car parts embossed on it. His name was stamped in black and there was contact information as well as the address for a garage in Orange County. “You can reach me at the number on there and the website is up-to-date if you want to check it out so you know I’m not trying to scam you. Figure out what your bottom line on the Hudson is and if it’s reasonable I’ll see what I can work out. If you decide to pass, no hard feelings. We both know that kind of car will find a buyer in a hot second. I’d like to see it go to a guy who appreciates what he’s got and what it could be, but I learned early on in my career that I can’t save every beauty that comes my way.”

  He looked away and I had the distinct feeling we weren’t talking about cars anymore. Every time this guy showed up at my shop it got weird and I wasn’t really sure what to do with that. I tucked the card in my pocket and told him, “Let me look at some things. I’m not going to tell you that I’m not tempted but I also have my first kid on the way so anything that’s going to cost a mint has to be carefully considered. I’ll give you a call in a few days after I crunch some numbers.” Before Kallie had dropped the bomb that we were going to be parents I would have snapped up the Hudson without a second thought, but now I had someone else I was responsible for making good choices for, even if that someone wasn’t quite here yet.

  The older guy made a noise that sounded a little like he was choking and rubbed his hand over his mouth.

  “You’re going to be a dad?” The words wheezed out and he loudly cleared his throat to cover the obvious strain in his words. “Congratulations, kid. That’s great.”

  His reaction was so bizarre that I decided I’d enough of the conversation. There was something about this dude that was a little too intense for me. “Well, it wasn’t exactly planned and the circumstances could be better but I’m gonna do my best by the kid.” I snorted a little bit and looked down at the worn toes of my boots. “I had a shit example set for me by my own parents, so if anything, I know what not to do.” The guy made that choking noise again and I hooked a thumb over my shoulder at one of the open bays. “Thanks for stopping by and for having faith in my ability to handle the Hudson but I gotta go pay the bills. The minivans and SUVs are what keeps the lights on, and the guys who work for me paid. There’s no shortage of them waiting to be fixed.” I patted the pocket where I stashed his card and assured him, “I’ll let you know which way I’m gonna go in a few days.”

  The guy seemed to shake himself out of a stupor and flashed me that friendly and familiar grin. “Sounds good, kid.” He ambled back to his car.

  I roughly scraped a hand down my face and tilted my head back so I was looking up at the clear Denver sky. “I’m too tired for this. All I wanted was a cup of coffee.” The sky didn’t offer any kind of sympathy but Molly had a fresh pot of coffee in the office when I finally made my way inside. If I wasn’t so wrapped up in pretty Poppy and wasn’t too smart to court a sexual harassment lawsuit, I could have kissed the girl in gratitude.

  The rest of the day dragged on much as I expected it to. I was chugging Red Bull at two in a desperate bid to keep going, with lackluster results. I wanted to cry when I called it a day for the rest of the crew at the end of regular working hours but knew I still had to stay to make up for my wasted hours during the morning. All I wanted was a beer and a soft bed … well, a softer woman wouldn’t hurt anything, but I didn’t want to be greedy.

  I was shoulders-deep in the engine of a Jeep Cherokee when my phone started ringing. I knew it was Poppy by the bright, cheery ring tone I’d assigned to her. I was always the one that reached out to her, so the fact she was calling me, especially when I told her I would be in touch after work, had everything inside of me going on alert.

  “Poppy?” I couldn’t hear what she was saying because she was crying and her voice was so shrill and high I was pretty sure only dogs could understand her. She was incoherent and I could practically feel the way she was sobbing through the phone line. “Honey, I need you to slow down and tell me what’s wrong. I can’t understand you.”

  She wailed again but I heard her take a calming breath, and even though her voice cracked, she managed to get out, “I dropped Happy’s leash when we were out walking. He’s gone! He’s going to get hit by a car or attacked by a bigger dog! I can’t find him anywhere!” She started sobbing again and I pictured her collapsing in on herself in the middle of the sidewalk, falling apart with no one there to hold her together. I wiped my dirty hands on the legs of my coveralls and started shutting down the garage before I was really aware of the fact I was moving. The task usually took an hour but I didn’t bother to sweep the floors or shut off the lights. I made sure all the machines were shut off and that there was nothing left on that could burn the place down as I raced out to my car.

  “Give me twenty minutes and I’ll come find him.” I kept my voice calm but on the inside I was just as scared as she was. Happy might be a pit but he was still a baby and he had no idea what was out
there in the big bad world. He was so small that I didn’t want to start thinking about all the bad things that could befall him if I couldn’t find him.

  “It’s too late. I ruin everything.” She sounded heartbroken … no strike that … she sounded broken period. It made everything inside of me tie itself in knots and had my heart kicking double time with worry and in fear.

  I almost dropped my keys getting into the Eldorado and swore loudly, which made her cry even harder. “Poppy where are you?”

  She didn’t reply for so long that I strongly considered hanging up and calling 911. She sounded like she needed help and I was still too far away to offer it to her. I was terrified of what I was going to find when I finally made it to her.

  “Poppy?” I barked her name with more force and that seemed to get through.

  She wheezed through the line and told me she was walking up and down the blocks near her apartment complex off Downing. She was looking in the decorative bushes that lined the walkways leading up to most of the converted Victorians in that part of Capitol Hill. She said she was also checking under cars and in the alleys that passed between buildings, which led me to scolding her to be careful. I was worried about her wandering the streets in her obviously hysterical state. She was as much at risk as the puppy was.

  I found a spot on the street to leave the Caddy and bolted up and down the side streets calling both the dog’s name and the woman’s. I was out of breath by the time I found Poppy. She was walking up the opposite side of the street from where I was jogging, looking lost. She still had on the lightweight sleepwear she was wearing this morning with no coat and nothing but a pair of flip-flops on her feet. Obviously, she hadn’t been planning on keeping the dog out long and whatever had distracted her into letting go of that leash must have been pretty serious. I hoped like hell it wasn’t something as simple as someone crossing her path on the sidewalk, because if that was the case, she had much further to go on her path to recovering from her trauma than I thought.

  I rushed across the street and wrapped my arms around her as she immediately threw herself into my chest. She tucked her head under my chin and against the front of my T-shirt where my coveralls were opened, and the shirt immediately got soaked through from her tears. I palmed the back of her head as her lithe frame shuddered uncontrollably against mine, and whispered that everything would be okay in her ear. I needed to get her somewhere safe and then I needed to find our dog.

  “Let’s get you inside so you can warm up. I’ll look for Happy until the sun comes up if I have to. He’s tiny, he couldn’t have made it very far.”

  She shook her head back and forth, her entire body moving as sobs ripped from her chest. “I can’t believe I let him go. Everything that loves me, I let go.”

  I didn’t understand what that meant but I didn’t think she was in the right frame of mind to have a heart-to-heart about it. “Honey, you’re freezing. You have to go inside.”

  She pulled her head back from where it was burrowed into me and blinked up at me. “I have to find Happy.”

  “You will, but you won’t do him any good if you freeze to death.” We stood there staring at each other for a long time and I realized she wasn’t going to move. She was stuck on the spot, lost in her own grief and trapped by whatever had started this mess in the first place. I didn’t have a coat since I was still wearing my coveralls from the garage, so I decided the next best thing I could do to warm her up and get her to move was to hold her close and cradle her in my arms like she was a baby. I knew if she hadn’t been lost in the throes of her meltdown, she would protest because there was no part of her that wasn’t touching me, but since she was numb and practically catatonic, I swung her thin legs up into my arms and marched with her back to her apartment like she was my bride and I was carrying her across the threshold on our wedding night. She was so light, barely any kind of burden in my grasp. I vowed to bring her doughnuts every single morning until the day I died if it would give her the sustenance she obviously needed.

  When I rounded the corner of the block where her apartment building was located, I almost dropped her when I saw a furry little blur dart around the side of her building. There was no mistaking that brindled coat or the excited way the puppy moved. Even though he was just a baby, he obviously knew where home was. He’d found his way back to love and shelter. Smart dog.

  I put Poppy on her feet by the front door and told her I would be right back. I hated to leave her in the state she was in but I figured the best way to snap her out of it was to get the puppy back in her arms, whole and healthy.

  Happy thought we were playing a game. Every time I got close enough to grab him he darted the opposite way. He barked and yipped, having a grand old time. Finally, I figured out if I crouched down on my haunches and just stayed still, the goofy little guy would come over to me looking for his head pats and tummy rubs. When I scooped him up I couldn’t believe the wave of relief that washed over me. I had to take a second to pull myself together because I didn’t want Poppy to see how upset I had been. She was already a mess, I wasn’t going to add any more to it.

  When I got back to the front of the building she predictably lost her mind when she saw I had the dog safely in my grasp. She started crying in earnest again and couldn’t seem to make her words work. I handed the dog over without a fight, waved her off as she babbled her thanks over and over again, and felt my heart squeeze as Happy tried to burrow into her chest the way she had burrowed into mine.

  Now more than dead on my feet, I decided I was done for the day. I needed a few hours of shut-eye and I needed to know both my dog and my girl were safe. The only way to accomplish all of that was to pile all of us into the same bed. I didn’t know if Poppy was ready for that yet, but I was too tired to ask. I picked her up, Happy delighted to be in her arms again, snuggled close. I made my way down the hallway into her apartment, and trudged along until I found her bedroom with no help or protest from her.

  I set her on the bed, pulled off her flip-flops, and bent to tug off my boots. I didn’t want to crawl into her bed with my dirty coveralls but I didn’t have the mental fortitude to deal with another emotional breakdown once she realized she was in bed with a half-naked man.

  I pulled her to me so that her back was plastered to my chest. I rested my arm around her thin waist as she continued to cuddle against me and coo at the dog. My eyes drifted shut as I felt her press more fully into me. I tightened my hold on her and inhaled the floral scent that clung to her hair. It had been a long day but I would do it all over a hundred more times without a single complaint if it ended me up exactly where I was right now.

  Poppy

  Most nights I woke up shaking and frozen all the way down to my bones. I couldn’t remember the last time I woke up feeling warm and safe, not to mention rested and refreshed. I blinked my eyes and waited for them to adjust to the thick darkness that was coating everything in my room. Happy was standing in front of my face, paws on my pillow, little tail wagging. I wrinkled my nose as his tongue shot out to lick the tip, waking me the rest of the way up. I had no recollection of getting into bed and I definitely didn’t remember falling asleep with the weight of a heavily tattooed arm locked firmly around my waist.

  I waited for the panic. I anticipated the terror and the anxiety that would typically rise up and choke me when I fully realized I wasn’t, that there was a man behind me, breathing deep and even. I expected my skin to crawl, my eyes to tear up, and my heart to stop beating. I predicted the fear that would paralyze me and render me helpless … but none of it came. I was still rattled and unsettled from the phone call that had blindsided me and caused me to drop Happy’s leash, but all the icky, awful things I thought I would feel when I ended up in bed with a man again were nowhere to be found and I was pretty sure it was because it was this man I was cuddled up to. I might not know if I could trust my own judgment, but when my defenses were down, and when my mind was all tangled up in memories and mistakes from the past, ev
erything inside of me decided it could trust Hudson Wheeler. All my barricades tumbled down and crumbled the instant he showed up to take care of me. I couldn’t let him hold me and comfort me fast enough when the past showed up with its gnashing teeth and inescapable grasp. I didn’t keep the pain from him … I welcomed him inside of it with open arms and let him take the brunt of some of it.

  I’d spent every second since Oliver had pulled that trigger making sure no one ever got close enough to hurt me physically or emotionally. I was determined to make myself unbreakable and unmovable. I wanted to be strong and definite like Salem was. I wanted to be untouchable and unattainable like Sayer was. But I wasn’t. I was still too soft, too easily wounded. My armor was made of feathers and fluff and all it took was that voice on the other end of the phone to pierce right through it. If Wheeler hadn’t shown up when he did, I would still be wandering up and down the streets calling Happy’s name, and he was right: I would have been frozen and of no use to anyone because I couldn’t think. That phone call had launched me right back to a place I never wanted to be again, and instead of facing it head-on and confronting my fear, I let it overwhelm me and cripple me … just like I always did. Fear was familiar and it was far too easy to let it take over all the other things I’d allowed myself to feel as I moved on from my abduction and attack.

  Happy started to playfully growl and jump around in front of my face, pawing at my hair and butting his soft head against my chin. I had no clue how long we had been curled up in bed but I bet it was long enough that the puppy needed another trip outside. He was ready to play but it was well past both of our bedtimes. I didn’t want to wake Wheeler up but he had me pinned tightly to his front. I could feel his chest rising and falling steadily behind me and there was no give in the iron band of his arm where it rested firmly across my middle. I was also lying on one of the sleeves of his coveralls, I could feel the snaps digging into my legs, which, now that I was awake, was totally uncomfortable.