by Layla Reyne
“And you know about most of mine.”
Helena’s stretch collapsed, her chest falling onto her knee, and her hair fell forward again. “Cee, I can’t…”
Celia acted before she could second-guess herself, using her index finger to draw back the curtain of blond on one side. “My brother was a fed, and now he works for your family. I get there are things you can and can’t tell me.”
A flicker of a smile. “Always did like that about you.”
“But I mean it. The friend thing goes both ways.” She withdrew her hand and levered up, waiting for Helena to do the same. “If you need someone to talk to—on a nonincriminating meta level—or just someone to spar with, I can be there for you too.”
Helena’s smile widened. “Especially while trapped in my house.”
Celia laughed. “And after.”
Helena pulled her hair into a ponytail, then pulled herself to her feet. “For now,” she said, offering Celia a hand up, “let’s just work out the ohmigod-we-were-shot-at-tonight stress.”
“I feel like that’s my internal monologue. Not so much yours.”
Helena shrugged. “Closer than you might think.”
Celia doubted it, but Helena didn’t give her time to dwell, assuming her usual position on the mat. As they circled each other, Helena moved like she was out for a weekend stroll, her limbs loose and posture confident, but her eyes were sharp, tracking Celia’s steps. Celia tried to mirror her, tried not to telegraph her maneuvers, but it was hard not to revert to the defensive position she’d spent much of her adult life in.
Helena kicked out first. Celia blocked the kick. A bevy of jabs and hooks followed, and Celia blocked and dodged, spinning and using her momentum to return a jab. Helena blocked. Celia countered with a kick. Another flurry of motion—hits, kicks, blocks—all while circling. Nothing landed, but the rapid-fire exchange and constant movement had Celia breathing heavy, starting to sweat, and smiling more than she had all day.
Helena was likewise grinning though not the least bit winded. “So, about that Bentley…” Her smile morphed into a crooked, tempting smirk. “When does she get her new brakes?”
“Monday,” Celia replied with a smirk of her own. If Helena wanted to word play some more, Celia was down. “She’ll still go plenty fast, though.”
Celia considered her next attack, then unleashed a sequence of swings and kicks that Mel had taught her. The new moves allowed her to skirt Helena’s shoulder with her knuckles, Helena’s side with her toes. More than she’d ever landed before. The victory, however, was short lived. Lightning fast, Helena grabbed her by the ankle and took her to the floor. Closing her eyes, Celia caught her breath and smiled as the good kind of adrenaline lit her up from the inside. Fuck, this felt good.
A shadow fell over her. “You’re good, yeah?” Helena asked.
Celia opened her eyes and counted the tendrils of blond hanging her direction. Lots of little victories. “Yeah.” She clasped Helena’s offered hand and bounded back up. “Gotta try that move.”
“Good,” Helena said. “And good attack, but no brakes next time. Don’t hesitate. Don’t give me or someone else that extra second to adjust. Just go.”
They began to circle again, trading jabs and blocks, as Celia shared a little of herself with her friend. “Been trying to put the brakes on Mia and Ethan, but that’s a different story.” A relatively normal and mundane topic of conversation. No less worrisome, though. “Only the promise of unlimited Lily time got her on board with the weekend at Casa Madigan plan.”
“Ah, young love.”
“Young love resulted in me having her, my first kid, at her age and spending half my life in an abusive relationship.”
Helena halted on a dime, her fingers twitching at her sides and her icy blue eyes cutting to the knife strip. “If he steps out of line…”
Celia spun, distracting Helena from her murderous intent. She hadn’t meant to put Ethan in her sights. “None of the warning signs are there. I’m just being hyper vigilant. Dex was always on his best behavior around Mom. Fooled all of us.”
Helena swept her leg low, and Celia hopped over it. “Despite Dex, you raised two great kids.”
“I know.” She was proud of Mia and Marco and of the job she’d done raising them, effectively as a single parent. She’d kept them out of Dex’s line of fire and had strived to give them everything they needed to succeed, day by day and in whatever future they chose. She’d made mistakes, but she’d done her best to keep her kids shielded from them. “I just want better for them.”
She and Helena traded upper cuts, jukes, and high knees in another speed round, retreating to their corners after an intense two minutes. “I get that,” Helena said. “It’s why we made certain changes last year. For Lily and others of her generation to come.”
They met again in the center of the mat, and this time Celia didn’t hesitate. She sliced a jab across her body, aiming for Helena’s opposite shoulder. The hit landed—triumph—but then Helena’s other arm came up between Celia’s still extended arm and her chest—caught.
Helena hauled her in close. “That’s what took me away the past couple months.” Her hold remained firm, but her voice and expression softened. “We’re trying to make things better. I’m sorry if I hurt you doing so. That was never my intent.”
“You don’t have to apologize, but thank you.”
Neither moved to break the hold, and this close, Celia could see the beads of sweat glistening at Helena’s hairline, could smell her lavender-scented shampoo amplified by the moisture. As good as nectar, drawing Celia closer and sending a rush of heat south to where only Celia’s fingers and a vibrator had been in years.
“You two still going at it?” Chris’s voice and trudging feet echoed from the stairs.
Helena unlocked their arms and stepped back to the edge of the mat. Bending, she grabbed the water bottles off the floor and tossed one to Celia. “You should put on a demo for Ethan,” she said. “Pretty sure that’ll slow him down.”
“Not a bad idea.” Celia cracked the lid on her bottle and took a long swallow, letting the cold water quell the heat that had flared between them.
Chris appeared from around the corner, quelling it further. “What’s not a bad idea?”
“Making sure Ethan knows his girlfriend’s mom can kick his ass.”
“I like this plan.” Chris’s gaze swung from Helena to her as he pushed up his sleeves. “Want to show me what you’ve got?”
Celia wasn’t a petite woman—both she and Chris had inherited their father’s height, and she their mother’s curves—but comparatively and objectively, Chris was massive. Ripped and trained, nowadays with experts far more skilled than her.
She cut a glance at Helena, who stared back at her like a proud, confident teacher. “You can take him.”
Helena, of all people, would not blow smoke up her ass. If she thought Celia could take Chris, then she could. And if Celia could match up with Chris—hell, if she could even hold her own against her brother—then she had no doubt that when Dex reappeared, because he would, she could kick his ass right back out the door. With all the chaos of earlier, it was comforting to think she could at least protect her family from the danger they did know.
She screwed the cap on her bottle, dropped it on the floor, and stepped onto the mat. Confidence infused her movements and stance, helping her keep her limbs loose and at the ready. Like her teacher and friend had taught her.
Dark eyes clashed with dark eyes, and she raised an arm, curving up her fingers and egging her brother into making the first move. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Helena howled with laughter behind them.
Chapter Five
Celia blinked once, twice, a third time. Didn’t help. She took a giant gulp of coffee from her mug. Still didn’t help. She closed her eyes and focused a good ten seconds on the sound of pouring rain on the other side of the garage door, then reopened them. Clear eyes and caffeine failed to change the sight
in front of her or help her make any sense of it. “How the hell did this get here?”
“Holt.” Chris circled the rear bumper of the black Charger parked in the Madigans’ garage. A car that looked suspiciously like the one that had shot up the shop yesterday. “He was scanning traffic cams and surveillance footage for it all night. Found it abandoned in an alley in the Mission.”
She drained the rest of her coffee, set the mug on the workbench that ran the length of the back wall, and pushed up the sleeves of her Henley. She approached the open passenger window and peeked inside. Everything looked in order, not even wet despite the monsoon outside. No broken glass, no torn seats, no missing electronics. No signs of prior life either. No change in the ashtray, no residue in the cup holders, no food or straw wrappers on the floorboards. The car smelled clean too, like it had been recently washed and detailed. “Abandoned? Are you sure?”
“Car was left unlocked, windows rolled down, tags removed.”
“In the Mission?”
He tapped a gloved finger against the bottom corner of the windshield on the driver’s side. “VIN’s partially scraped off. Ditto the other VIN stickers.”
“That’s why no one touched it.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, it was abandoned. Intentionally.” Using the rubber band around her wrist, she yanked her hair into a topknot to match her brother’s. “But why’s it here?” She tapped the heel of her combat boot on the polished cement floor. “It’s not wet, inside or out, so it’s been here a while already.” At least a few hours. “Shouldn’t the cops be handling this?”
“It’ll be back in the alley for the cops to find by midday.”
She quirked a brow. “How’s that legal?”
Chris offered her a pair of gloves. “Do you want me to answer that question?”
She was curious by nature, but she wasn’t dumb. This was another of those Madigan-related limits. She could push—and Chris would answer—or she could leave it be. Did she need to know more in this case? Not for what she was fairly certain Chris needed her help with.
She lowered her brow and accepted the gloves, snapping them on. “We checking parts for ID?”
“Yep.” Chris lifted the car’s hood. “And anything else we can use to identify the owner or driver.”
It had been years since she and Chris had worked on a car together, but they fell into it with ease, just like when they were teens working summers at the garage. Within an hour, the Charger’s headlamps and taillights, brake pads, custom nose badge, and a dozen other parts were spread out on the workbench. Chris sat on one stool, examining each part and scribbling serial numbers on a notepad while Celia sat on the other stool, attaching the car’s electronic control unit to the MaxiSys tool she’d retrieved from her SUV.
“A smarter criminal would have fried the electronics,” she said. “Or wiped them.”
“Means one of two things. Either they wanted us to find what’s on there, or they were low-level thugs who didn’t think that far ahead. The latter is better.”
“Better?” Celia bobbled the ECU. “Helena and I were shot at.”
“The latter scenarios mean you or the shop were the likely targets. Not Helena.”
“I don’t…” Words failed her.
“Fuck, that didn’t come out right.”
“You think?”
He put down the part he was handling and angled toward her, a foot braced on the bottom rung of her stool. “I don’t want either of you to be shot at, but trust me, it’s a much simpler situation if Helena wasn’t the target.”
She disconnected the MaxiSys, set the ECU aside, then hooked the MaxiSys to the separate tablet Holt had left for them on the workbench. “Meaning Dex or someone he’s connected to. That’s the simpler answer.”
Chris nodded. “The more serial numbers I find”—he flipped over the nose badge—“the more likely that scenario becomes.”
“What a fucking idiot.” She ignored the gibberish flying across the tablet screen, assuming Holt would make sense of it, and picked up the nose badge, turning it end over end with her gloved fingers. “And what a fucking idiot I was for making that mistake too.”
“You were young, Cee.” She opened her mouth to protest—she wasn’t young last summer when she’d foolishly considered giving Dex another chance… until he’d hauled off and hit her—but Chris spoke first. “And you weren’t an idiot. Without Dex, we wouldn’t have Mia and Marco, and let’s not forget, he fooled us all and trapped you in a cycle of abuse that wasn’t easy to break out of, but you did.”
“With your help.” It had been touch-and-go when Chris had first returned. She hadn’t trusted he was back for good, and she’d still carried a truckload of misplaced guilt over the death of Chris’s daughter ten years prior, but they’d talked, to each other and together in therapy, something they should have done a decade ago. Having her brother back in her and her kids’ lives had helped make the final break from Dex possible.
“But you did it,” Chris said, “and I’m so fucking proud of you.” He catalogued the last part and laid down his pencil. “That’s all of them.”
She returned the nose badge to the parts collection and disconnected the MaxiSys from Holt’s tablet, which had gone dark. “You could have just taken pictures of the serial numbers with this.”
“Nah.” He slapped his notepad against the edge of the workbench. “This will make Holt twitch more.”
Laughing, they stood from their stools and began carrying parts back to the car.
“You’re making better choices now,” Chris said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what that’s supposed to mean.” He tilted his wobbly topknot toward the training room on the other side of the garage wall. “I know what I walked in on last night.”
She snatched the wrench from him and got to work on the headlamp closest to where she stood. “Fucking PI.”
Chris leaned a hip against the opposite fender. “Come on, Cee, spill.”
She peeked through her lashes at her smirking brother, then lowered her gaze back to her task, feigning casual disinterest even as the fluttering started again in her stomach. “Nothing to tell,” she said. “I’ve been legally single for less than a month, and if we’re counting the years Dex and I dated, for the first time since high school. I’m not in a hurry to start anything. I’m focusing on the kids and the shop.” That was her mantra, and she was sticking to it.
Chris, however, wasn’t letting the idea go, seemingly intent on blowing her mantra to smithereens. “You’re allowed to have a life too,” he said. “You’re allowed to move on.”
“Like you did?” The words were out before she could stop them, and she regretted them immediately. “Shit, Chris, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fair.” He pushed off the fender and began working on the opposite headlamp. “I didn’t. For way too fucking long. I almost missed my chance because I was clinging to the past instead of reaching for the future.”
She moved to lay a hand on his arm, then stopped herself short. The gloves weren’t for keeping grease off her hands; that battle had been lost long ago. “I’m happy for you,” she said with a smile, infusing it with all the warmth she normally would a hug. “And I’m happy to have you home again.”
“Thank you. I’m happy too.” He finished with the headlamp and moved to the taillights while she reattached the ECU. “And I don’t mean to pressure you,” he continued. “I just want the same happiness for you.”
“With Helena?”
“She’s one of the best people I know.”
Celia poked her head out from under the hood to make sure it was still her brother back there.
“Snark notwithstanding,” he added.
Now that was more like him. She chuckled as she finished reinstalling the ECU and closed the hood.
“Whether there’s something there or not,” Chris said, “she could use a friend, and I think you could too.”
He wasn’t wrong about that either. Her domestic violence counselor and support group had helped her recognize all the ways Dex had abused her, not just the one time with his fists, or the other instances of flying objects, but also the years of emotional manipulation, like isolating her from friends. She’d lost touch with classmates, despite living in the same town as many, and had avoided interacting with the school parents, not wanting to expose them to Dex for fear of what he might say or do to them or in front of the kids. She needed to start putting herself out there again, but she couldn’t snap her fingers and wipe away a decade and a half of learned behavior.
Helena, though, was safe in that regard. She knew all about Celia’s history and seemed more than capable of accepting and handling it. She was helping Celia handle it too.
“I think friends is a good place to start,” she conceded.
“I’ll take it,” Chris said with a victorious smile.
Then an amused one as Mia’s shout rang from upstairs. “Mom! Come retrieve your evil spawn. He’s talking over the Bake Off judges.”
Celia wondered if her children bickered more lately because Marco was now officially a teen or because Chris was home and they were mimicking what they saw. Though Celia liked to think it was more banter than bicker between her and Chris these days. Case in point… “Are you sure Hawes is going to want to marry you after this weekend?”
Her brother’s smile grew wider and he waggled his brows. “We get to run away to the condo at night.”
“Lucky you.” She retrieved the nose badge off the workbench. “As nice as this house is, I’m definitely looking forward to tomorrow’s outing.”
“Mom!” came another, more desperate shout.
“Go on.” Chris closed the trunk and met her at the hood of the car. “I’ll finish putting this back together and get it back where it belongs.”
“Thank you for the advice.” She handed him the nose badge. “And thank you for including me in this as much as you can.”
“I know what it feels like to have no control.” He flipped the metal piece over in his hand. “And Helena was right, you’re a better mechanic than me.”
