Page 82 of Veil of Ashes

His arms are streaked with grease to the elbow. His shirt is damp around the collar, unbuttoned enough to show the new scar above his ribs. The one that didn’t quite heal straight.

It’s been two months since the bunker.

Two months since we stopped running.

Two months since we chose names that didn’t echo. That didn’t carry blood in the vowels.

Inside the office, the fan ticks lazily in the corner. I prop the front door open with a cinderblock and wipe my hands on a rag, fingers stiff from holding the brush too tight.

The license in the window reads:

Owner/Operators: Ana Ramirez & Cole Mercer.

I stare at it longer than I need to.

The names don’t belong to us. But they fit like clothes broken in just right. Not lies—just the last names we hadn’t been born with. The kind that don’t get whispered in criminal records or shouted in alleyways.

People here don’t ask questions. They don’t care about our tattoos, or the fact that neither of us has a clean medical history or a paper trail older than three months. They care that we fix cars fast, that I draw clean lines, and that our invoices are exact to the dollar.

The desk inside is split in two: half covered in manila folders, parts lists, and clipped keys; the other half is mine. A leather-bound sketchbook, a coil machine still in its foam cradle, and a clean, unused ink cup tray.

I haven’t tattooed anyone yet. But the first appointment’s tomorrow.

Guy named Mitch. Wants a compass inked just below his collarbone. Says he spent twenty years trying to find himself. Smiles like he still hasn’t.

I think about asking Kieran to let me tattoo him first. Something small. Just for us. I haven’t said it aloud yet. But the thought’s planted. Deep.

By the time I walk back outside, Kieran has his head tilted back toward the sky, a rag over one shoulder, engine off.

The Mustang sits quiet. Smug.

“She’s purring now,” he says, stretching his back. “But she makes me fight for it every damn time.”

I grin. “You always did like a challenge.”

He looks at me then.

Really looks.

And smiles.

Just once.

But it’s real. And it doesn’t look foreign anymore.

We don’t talk much during the workday. Not because there’s nothing to say. But because the quiet between us doesn’t need filling.

He knows how I take my coffee now. I know which wrench he always leaves on the side of the tool chest even though he pretends to put it away.

He locks up the bay doors when I forget. I keep the ledger in order when his handwriting falls apart halfway through a phone call.

It works.

Simple.

Clean.

Real.

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