Page 72 of Ace of Spades

She’s my calm. My fuckingrefugein a life that’s been nothing but firestorms and fallout. She walks into a room, and the static in my chest goes quiet. I work better when I know she’s near.

And when she looks at me, not the shop owner, not the guy with too many shadows… I feel seen.

Really seen.

And I’m not ready to let that go.

Not for Theo.

Not for anyone.

But that doesn’t make it right.

Doesn’t make it hurt any less when I see the flicker in my son’s eyes, that fragile, bruised hope he doesn’t know how to name yet.

If I keep going down this path with her, I’m going to break something between Theo and me.

But if I let her go... I’m not sure I’ll survive it.

Chapter18

Sienna

Only a week has passed since the hockey game, but in Breaker’s it might as well be three months.

Time moves more slowly here. There’s no rush to get to the next thing.

And working for Levi makes the days go by even more excruciatingly slow. What started out as us bickering over every little thing has morphed into something else lately.

Whatever game this is, he’s not playing fair.

After the incident with Theo and his bike… something shifted in him.

On Tuesday, he wore a button-down shirt that got some oil on it when he was helping Gramps replace an engine.

He came into the office and, without saying a word, he undid his shirt, a button at a time. The whole time I watched from the corner of my eye.

I could feel my skin heating up as he slipped it off, revealing washboard abs that would make a professional athlete envious.

He made a show of looking for a fresh t-shirt, rummaging through boxes until he found something suitable.

I couldn’t think of the numbers on the stupid spreadsheet in front of me. All I could think about was what he would feel like pressed up against my body.

On Wednesday, he had to leave the shop out of nowhere, something to do with Josie. But before he left, he bent low and whispered into my ear, “I trust you’re going to be good, Sienna.”

I don’t want to admit that I replayed the way those words sounded over and over in my head as I brought myself to the edge later that night, alone in the apartment while Julian was out with his study group.

Yesterday, after the shop closed for the night, it was just Levi and me.

I did all my checks like he asked me to. Making sure the crew put up all the tools. Things were unplugged before getting to work on finishing Theo’s bike.

“Can you come in here a minute?” he called out.

I stepped inside, very aware that we were alone in the shop. “Yeah?”

He sighed heavily, taking off the glasses he only wore when he was on the computer.

“This scheduling software you had me get… it won’t let me breakdown a build by tasks. Wasn’t that the whole point?”

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