Page 65 of Gather the Storm

I didn’t see him, but a minute later I heard the clink of metal and the sound of music and knew exactly where he was. It was one of those familiar sounds from childhood and I was suddenly transported backward in time, sitting on the porch at my dad’shouse, pretending to read while I listened to Blake out front with his best friends, all of them giving each other shit while Otis worked on someone’s car.

I expected to find him under his Corvette, or maybe working on Benji, but when I followed the sound of the music, I found a portable speaker set up on top of the Mustang, Otis’s denim-clad legs emerging from under the car.

I was glad the gravel crunched under my feet as I approached. I didn’t want him to hit his head in one of those slapstick movie moments. “Hey.”

He rolled out from under the car on one of those sliding panels mechanics used and appeared at my feet.

And goddamn. I guess I was going to have to get used to seeing Otis bare-chested because he was sans shirt again, his muscled pecs glistening and smeared with motor oil, a smell I’d always found weirdly intoxicating. It might as well have been $200-an-ounce cologne on a sweaty, oily Otis because my lust was in overdrive just looking at him.

He grinned up at me. “Hey, doll.”

“Why do you call me that?” I blurted.

I felt like an idiot, but the question was preferable to all the other thoughts running through my head, thoughts like,How much do I have to pay you to fuck me?and,Is it weird that I’d like to fuck both you and your best friend?And also, how do you feel about virgins?

He jumped effortlessly to his feet, then looked away, like he was considering the question. It was something I’d gotten used to with Otis, the way he’d either say something straight with no filter or think long and hard about it first.

No in between.

Finally he looked at me and shrugged. “That’s how you’ve always seemed to me.”

“Like a doll?”

His brown eyes looked almost gold in the sun. “Yeah. Like a doll.”

I studied him. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or offended.”

“Why would you be offended?” There was no annoyance in the question, just the genuine curiosity that was a hallmark of Otis Cole.

“Because I’m not a doll.” I wasn’t actually offended — hearing Otis call me “doll” made my chest feel all weird and warm — but this conversation was better than climbing his chiseled body like a ladder, and right now it was my only alternative. “I’m a person.”

“I know that, but you look like a doll. You look… perfect. Small and perfect.”

I shook my head and looked at the ground. “I’m not perfect.”

I didn’t have major self-esteem issues or anything, but I knew I was on the curvier side. When Otis saidsmallhe didn’t mean light, just short. My big tits came with a price.

“You are,” he insisted.

He’d crossed his big sweaty arms over his big sweaty chest and I had to force myself not to look at the Adonis belt leading under the waistband of his faded jeans.

“Well… thanks,” I hurried to change the subject because this one? This one was a recipe for disaster. The orgasmic kind. “What are you doing out here?”

“Heard a tick in the engine the other day when you left for work,” he said. “Wanted to check it out. I already mapped the pool and stuff in the back.”

“I saw,” I said. “But you don’t have to work on my car.”

His stare was intense, his gaze like warm honey. “I know.”

I nodded. It felt ten degrees hotter than it had felt when I’d first stepped outside and I wasn’t stupid enough to think it was the sun. “So what is it?” I asked. “The ticking.”

“Come here,” he said, pushing off the car. “I’ll show you.”

I joined him at the front of the Mustang and tried not to stare at his bulging biceps when he popped the hood.

He leaned into the engine and fiddled with something, then straightened. “Take a look.”

I tried to follow his lead, but looking at the engine was like staring at the puzzle pieces of an image my brain couldn’t compute. “What am I looking at here?”

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