Wheeler
Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I honestly didn’t think you would.”
She used to be my everything; I would have done anything for her and tried my best to hand her the world. Now she was surprised I agreed to have coffee with her before I had to be at the shop. It was crazy how quickly things could change, including Kallie.
She’d always been the prettiest girl I had ever seen (until Poppy Cruz came wandering into my garage all golden-eyed and heartbroken). Kallie had the kind of easy and effortless all-American good looks that appealed instantly to a kid that always felt like he was on the outside of normal looking in. Her long blond hair was shiny and thick. Her baby-blue eyes were wide and guileless looking. Her skin was the perfect peaches and cream with a touch of freckles that was the only thing about her that matched her to her redheaded older sister. Dixie was short and curvy, Kallie was tall and thin with legs that went on for day and days. She turned heads then and she made men weak in the knees … not that it was male attention she was interested in attracting.
But there were subtle changes that only someone that had spent years loving her and memorizing every line of her body and every nuance of her expressions would pick up on. For instance, that creamy, carefully made-up face had a hint of ashy green to it. The way she was picking at the muffin in front of her, and clutching the herbal tea I’d ordered for her, made me think she’d entered the phase of her pregnancy where nausea was her constant companion. Her painstakingly maintained mane of blond locks was also looking a little rougher than usual. Kallie wasn’t the type to throw her hair up in a ponytail and head out, but today her silky waves were piled up in a topknot that looked like it hadn’t been brushed or styled. She was also wearing sneakers. In the nearly nine years that we’d known each other, I’d never seen the woman in anything other than designer footwear that cost almost as much as some of the used cars I moved through the shop.
They weren’t huge differences but they were enough that it made the woman I had thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with feel like a stranger. She seemed unsure of herself and nervous, which was also a huge change in the dynamic between us. For the majority of our relationship Kallie had me wound tighter than a string around her little finger. I was so scared of losing her, of losing her family and the only sense of security and normalcy I’d ever known, that I’d let her lead me around by my dick and dictate the entirety of the way we were together. I never argued with her, never pushed back, and that meant she always had the upper hand. It wasn’t a smart move on my part. She was already spoiled as the baby in the Carmichael household and she had some serious princess tendencies that I’d always secretly hoped she would grow out of. As it turned out, having me at her beck and call only intensified her sense of entitlement. I’d literally created a monster, one that had no problem tearing my world apart and feasting on my heart.
I sighed and rubbed a hand over my tired face. I’d slept restlessly last night, caught between satisfaction and guilt at the artful way I’d maneuvered Poppy into agreeing to spend time with me. I wanted to feel bad for manipulating her into a situation she’d obviously wanted to say no to, but I couldn’t. I wanted to be around her and I wanted her to get used to being around me. I knew it was selfish and that I was walking over very dangerous ground, but I couldn’t stay away. She was hiding and I was seeking.
“I told you I was going to be here for you and the baby, Kallie.” I picked up my coffee and took a healthy swig. “I didn’t say I was going to be happy about it.”
She made a noise low in her throat and her fingers tightened on the mug until they were almost white. “I hate how awkward things are between us.” She looked up at me under her long lashes. “I’ve apologized a million times, Wheeler. Are you ever going to forgive me?”
I blew out an aggravated breath. “Have you told your parents why I called the wedding off yet?”
She flinched and as her gaze shifted away I caught a glimpse of guilt in her eyes. She didn’t need to answer my question when her actions answered for her.
I snorted and leaned back in my seat so that I could put as much physical distance between the two of us as possible. “So your mom and dad still think I dropped you for nothing, that I kicked you out of the house that I bought for you, for no reason?” I wanted to scream at her, to tell her to grow the hell up, to shake some sense into her. Instead, all I did was shake my head in disappointment. “They think I left you out in the cold even though you’re having my kid?” It was so disappointing. They were the only real parents I’d ever known. They took me in no questions asked the minute Kallie brought me home. I fell in love with her family almost as quickly as I fell in love with her. The way they’d had no problem believing the worst about me when Kallie and I split hurt almost as much as letting her go. Dixie had offered no less than a hundred times to intervene. She hated the way her parents had turned on me and wanted desperately to set them straight, but I refused to let her get involved. I was used to being let down by the people that were supposed to love me, so if they wanted to think the worst, I was inclined to let them. Plus, it was practically impossible to come clean about why I’d finally walked away without laying all the secrets Kallie wasn’t ready to share out on the table. Too many years being the one that protected her meant I couldn’t sell her out just to gain her parents’ favor.
She exhaled slowly and lifted her sky colored eyes up to mine. “I’m going to tell them. I just haven’t found the right time. Everything has been crazy with Dixie getting hurt and then deciding to move to Mississippi. I don’t want to put any more on them at the moment.”
It was an excuse. She didn’t want to pull the curtain back on the real reason for our split. She wasn’t protecting anyone but herself. “What does Roni think about all of this?”
Roni was the woman that Kallie had been having an affair with, while she was still involved with me. She was the woman that Kallie realized she wanted to be with more than the man she had spent the majority of her youth with. Kallie loved me, but she was supposed to be with Roni more.
At least that’s what she told me when I confronted her after her older sister let the cat out of the bag by accident. Dixie would never have shared such a personal secret but I’d ambushed her one night after Kallie told me about the baby. I needed to vent and there ended up being a whole lot of yelling and confusion, most of it on my part. Somewhere along the line Dixie thought the reason I was upset was because of Roni when she thought I was talking about Kallie’s affair instead of the baby. Dixie felt horrible for spilling her sister’s deepest secrets but I wasn’t sure Kallie would have ever come clean to me if she hadn’t.
Her gaze shifted away again and she chomped down on her lower lip. “She isn’t happy. Since I’ve been staying with my parents, there hasn’t been much time to see her or to talk to her. She wants me to tell them the truth too, but neither one of you knows how hard it is for me.” She shifted in her seat. “I’m already a runaway bride and an unwed mother. I feel like that’s plenty of disappointment for them to deal with right now.”
I sighed and leaned forward in my seat. “They are not going to be disappointed in you because you fell in love with a woman, Kallie. They are going to be disappointed you lied and hurt people that love you and care about you while trying to hide who you really are and who you really love.” I shook my head at her. “That’s why they’re so mad at me right now. They think I hurt you.”
“My parents love you, Wheeler. You’re part of the family and always will be.” She tentatively lowered a hand to her stomach and gave me a surprisingly steady look. “We are in this together, but you have no idea how hard it is realizing your life is never going to be the same. It’s scary enough coming to terms with that on your own … thinking about how my parents might react …” She sighed and shrugged helplessly.
I nodded at her. “We are in this together, but you have someone else that’s in it too, Kallie. If you plan on keeping Roni around, then you need to be honest with everyone, including yourself, about the role she’s playing and will play in our baby’s life.” I wasn’t going to reassure her that her parents were going to be reasonable and understanding again. I’d said the words a million times in a million different ways but it hadn’t done any good. She was going to have to have that conversation with them and find out for herself that they would love her no matter what. She lowered her gaze and her teeth bit even harder into her lip. Knowing well and good those were signs that she was done with the conversation, I changed the subject. “What did you want to talk to me about that couldn’t be handled over the phone?” She’d begged me to meet her this morning, and like a sap, I caved and agreed. “I have to get going soon.” I didn’t really since I made my own hours and I was the boss, but I could only handle so much time around her. It still hurt, being with her but not (with) her.
She shifted nervously in her seat and let go of her tea. She started tapping her fingertips on the table in front of her and I wanted to reach out and put my hand over hers to keep them still. I didn’t want to make her anxious but until we found our way to some kind of new normal with each other, this was how it was going to be. I felt cut open and raw, she was fidgety and unsettled. I’d never realized how deeply we’d relied on each other to keep our worst traits at bay from the rest of the knowing world. She held me together and kept all my jagged edges smoothed out and less dangerous, I kept her calm and quieted all the restlessness in her that made her so volatile and needy.
“I have a doctor’s appointment next week. I wanted to see if you would come with me.” She was heading into the second trimester, so the baby was starting to seem very real. Soon she would be showing and we would be to the point where we would know if we were having a boy or a girl. I’d gone with her to one doctor’s visit but her mother had been there as well and it was a terrible afternoon for all of us. She’d asked me to go a couple more times and I’d refused thinking it would be easier for all involved. Seeing the nervousness on her pretty face right now, I understood that wasn’t the case.
“Did you ask your mom to go this time?” My tone was flat because she could make this all better if she just stepped up to the plate for once in her life. If she took care of someone else instead of expecting everyone to take care of her.
“No.” The word squeaked out and she jolted. “Uh … I talked to Dixie and she sort of mentioned that it’s our baby and that we’re the ones who are going to raise it, not Mom and Dad, so we needed to figure out how to coparent without them in the middle of us. I don’t want to go alone because it’s scary, but Dixie is right. It should be you and me.”
Dixie was a fixer. It’s what she did. She also had the annoying habit of seeing straight to the heart of a situation and knowing the best way to get everyone involved on the right path. Even more, she was the only person in the world that could make Kallie see beyond her own selfishness.
I groaned a little as I nodded in sullen agreement. “I’ll go with you. Just text me the date and time.”
Her lips quivered into a tiny grin. “Thanks.”
I finished my coffee and pushed back from the table. I stopped and went still as stone when her fingers touched the back of my hand. I expected it to burn or for a familiar tingle to shoot along my skin. There was nothing. There was no jolt like the one that had almost taken me to my knees when Poppy’s shaking fingers lightly grasped mine yesterday.
“Um … I know it’s none of my business and I have no right to pry, but Dixie mentioned you’ve been dating a lot recently.” A tight expression pinched her face and her eyes narrowed. “I … ugh … I just want to tell you to be careful. You’re a really nice guy, Wheeler. There are a lot of women out there that will take advantage of that.” She should know. She was one of them.
I shook her hand off. “I’m fucking … not dating.” She recoiled, which made me soften my tone when I told her, “You’re right, it’s none of your business.”
“Rebounds never work out.” There was some of the old Kallie shining through.
I rolled my eyes at her. “I gotta go.” I turned my back on her and headed toward the door only to be brought up short when she called my name. One of these days all those years of conditioning to heel at her command would break. I couldn’t fucking wait. I looked at her over my shoulder, impatience clear in every line of my body.
“I was the wrong one, but the right one is still out there.” Maybe she really did want me to be happy, or maybe she simply wanted me to find someone so that I was less likely to screw up trying to raise our kid on my own. Either way her words weren’t ones I wanted to hear.
“When you figure out where you want to live, you can have all the furniture in the house. I’ll put it in a storage unit and cover the cost. If you plan on staying with your parents for the long haul, or get to the point where you’re playing house with Roni, you can sell it all and use it for whatever we need for the baby. I’ll see you at the appointment, Kallie.”
I heard her quiet gasp as I pushed out the door into the bright Denver sunshine. That meeting had gone as well as could be expected and I was surprised that spending time with her wasn’t as awful as it had been the first few months after we’d split up. She still wasn’t my favorite person to be around, but seeing her and sharing the same air as her didn’t make me feel like I was suffocating and bleeding to death from a broken heart anymore. Things between us had been rocky before the split, so I think the reason everything felt so exposed and sensitive after the breakup was more the loss of what I’d thought I had, rather than the loss of what I’d actually had. She took my stability with her when she walked away and left me with something totally shakey and unsure. She ripped the foundation I’d steadfastly built out from under me, and that left me in the wind … exactly how my mother had. Exactly how the child welfare people had left me each and every time they had to place me in a new home with a temporary family.
Feeling restless and uneasy about just unsteady everything in my existence currently was, I pulled my phone out and pressed a finger to the name of the single thing that put a stop to all the questions and uncertainty. All I had to do was picture Poppy’s wide, timid eyes and everything that was screaming and thrashing around inside of me went quiet. It was so much easier to focus on overcoming her aversion to closeness than it was to think about straightening out my own mess. I was convinced I could prove to her that there were men in the world she didn’t need to be afraid of, that there were men who would do right by her even if that rightness came with a little bit of maneuvering. She said I moved her without using my hands and she was correct. Everything I did around her was me trying to get her to move closer to me. I pushed her to take steps that she needed to take in order for her to be comfortable around me. I wanted to see if there was any way she would be open to something more than our current tense friendship.
I wanted her, but I wanted her to want me back even more. Partly because I knew I was a safe bet for her once she was ready to jump back into the dating pool. I wouldn’t take advantage of her and had every intention of handling her like I did one of my classics that was on the verge of falling apart. I would tread lightly and deliberately until all the parts were in working order and then I would prime her and make her purr the way she was always meant to. I wasn’t scared of the work and I had every confidence that the end result would be a thing of pure beauty and something that was priceless.
The phone rang for a long time, and just when I was about to hang up and send a text, the call connected and her breathless voice rushed out a quick “hey.”
I frowned at my reflection in the side of my car and trapped the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I unlocked and opened the door. “Are you okay?”
She gave a brittle-sounding laugh. “Uh … I’m fine. I ended up alone in an exam room with a male patient for a little longer than I was comfortable with because the doc had an emergency in another room. The guy’s dog could sense my anxiety and had a little meltdown. You actually called at the perfect time.” She exhaled and I could practically hear her entire body shaking in the way her voice quivered. “You gave me an excuse to get out of the room. I don’t usually freak out so badly at work. I guess that near miss with the guys from the apartment yesterday has me a little on edge. My therapist is going to have a field day with me during our next session. I always think I’m getting better, but then the universe decides to show me that I’m not.”
I heard a dog bark and she called to someone that she needed five minutes. I hated that she was so hard on herself when her reactions were totally normal considering everything she had been through. “You let me into your apartment last night even after those guys scared the piss out of you. You voluntarily stood in the kitchen with me and you shook my hand. You wouldn’t have done any of those things a couple months ago when we met.” She was moving in the right direction even if she couldn’t see it because she was still looking over her shoulder.
She breathed out again and her voice was very soft when she told me, “I think that has more to do with you than it does with me.”
Her words made my heart stutter and skip a beat. I wanted her to trust me but her handing that information over so quickly was unexpected. I didn’t think I’d done a thing to earn her trust yet. I had to clear my throat before I could reply. “I was hoping we could meet up after I get off work tonight and start to work on some kind of schedule with Happy.” I couldn’t hold back the grin when I said the puppy’s name. “I’ll order pizza and make sure you eat dinner.” She went quiet on the other end of the phone and I wanted to kick myself for pushing too hard too fast with her. “I can always come to your place if you’re more comfortable with that.”
She sighed. “It’s not that.”
I scowled at myself in the rearview mirror and reminded myself that this was all about the long game with her. She was a good distraction at the moment but I wanted her to be around long after the dust of my currently imploding life settled. “What is it then?”
I could picture her tugging on her lip and shuffling her feet nervously because her nervous habits were becoming as familiar to me as my own. So hurriedly that the words smooshed together and were barely discernible, she admitted, “I don’t like pizza.”
Stunned that she was worried about telling me something as simple as that, I found it was my turn to sigh. “Is that all? I’ll order Mexican or Chinese food. Hell, I can even whip up some sandwiches or some mac and cheese.”
She gave another one of those laughs that sounded shrill and slightly hysterical. “I don’t eat tomatoes. I hate them.”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. “Okay, so pizza sauce is out, but they make white pizza, we can always do that instead.” Getting to know this woman was like walking across a minefield. Every step I took toward her felt like the ground below me might detonate and throw me a thousand steps backward, injured and unable to keep fighting my way toward her.
She whimpered a little bit and I felt it like a kick in my stomach. I hated how hard something as simple as telling someone else what she did and didn’t like was for her. If her shitbag husband wasn’t already six feet under I would have gladly helped put him there.
“Oliver loved pizza. He told me it was unnatural and ridiculous that I wouldn’t eat it. He’d demand that we order it for dinner once or twice a week and I’d have to sit and watch him eat while I sat there starving. He always told me if I didn’t want to eat what he provided then I could go hungry.”
I swore and curled the hand that wasn’t holding my phone around the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles turned white. My voice was gruff and uneven when I told her, “I’ll feed you whatever you want to eat, Poppy.”
She made a strangled noise and then cleared her throat. “I have to get back to work. I have a group meeting after work tonight, so I won’t be by your place until after seven or so.” She hesitated for a second and then quietly handed over, “My favorite is cheeseburgers. I could eat them every day of the week.”
She didn’t look like she’d had a cheeseburger in years but if that’s what she wanted I would make sure she had the best one Denver had to offer. “Cheeseburgers it is. I’ll text you my address and see you later tonight.”
She mumbled a hasty good-bye and I hung up, anger at everything she’d had to suffer through coursing thick and heated through my blood. She deserved so much better and I was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that I really wanted to be the one to give it to her.
Thoughts firmly on Poppy and what other kinds of horrors she’d had to endure through the course of her marriage, I drove through downtown Denver and made my way to my garage.
Back when I was younger and Zeb and I had too much time and too much youthful curiosity on our hands, we’d spent many a night at illegal parties held in this very same building. The place had history, both personal and collective, so it meant the world to me that I’d been able to save it. The ancient brick had been slated for demolition so that some developer could come in and build more trendy condos and shops to cater to the LoDo sprawl. I’d scraped together enough money from the sale of my first full rebuild outside of school. It was a 1970 Barracuda that was still winning medals at car shows across the country, to lease the space for a year. I continued that pattern for five years—build, sell, pay for the lease on the building, barely getting by until I got hooked up with Nash Donovan and Rowdy St. James. It started out as a mutual admiration for muscle cars and ink and turned into something that allowed me to get my hands around a major part of my dream. Those two introduced me to Rome Archer, who came at me with a business offer I would have been a fool to turn down. Rome wanted to be a silent partner in the garage. He helped me buy the building outright and set me up so that instead of bleeding money back into the business, I could actually start earning a real living. Rome was the only reason I was able to finally afford a down payment on a house. I owed those Marked Men more than they would ever know.
I parked in the spot that was designated for my Caddy. There was a small office attached to the garage where customers could wait and where the gal that handled all the paperwork and scheduling of projects worked. I’d tried to set Kallie up in that position, thinking the garage could be ours, that we could make our dreams come true together, but she barely lasted a week before I’d had more than one of my guys threaten to quit if she wasn’t gone. She hated how dirty the garage was and she didn’t give two shits about the classics we worked our asses off to breathe new life into. The girl drove a freaking Audi, for God’s sake, even when I offered to find her and build her whatever she wanted. I should have known then it wasn’t meant to be. It was a beautiful car but it had no soul and no story.
Snorting at the thought, I stopped short when a baby-blue Hudson Hornet came pulling in through the open gates. It was a ’53 if my guess was right, and I was pretty sure that it was. It was an incredibly rare year, so rare that this was the only one I’d seen outside of a hot-rod magazine or a car show. I watched the car roll to a stop next to the Eldorado and took a minute to admire it. I was named after this car, at least that was what my mom told me in one of her few lucid moments when the drugs and demons I couldn’t see loosened their hold on her.
A man stepped out, tall, with salt-and-pepper hair, silver sideburns, and expensive mirrored sunglasses covering his eyes. He was dressed in jeans and a dark canvas coat much like the one Happy had ruined last night over the unofficial almost-winter uniform of all Coloradans, a button up flannel over a thermal. I thought he looked vaguely familiar but so many people came in and out of the garage, a lot of them just wanting to look, that I couldn’t be sure we’d ever met before.
I lifted my chin in greeting. “Nice ride.”
He repeated the gesture. “If that’s yours then I return the sentiment.” He indicated the Eldorado with the flick of his fingers.
I shrugged. “It’s mine. She was the first rebuild I ever did. My high school shop teacher felt sorry for me and let me buy her for a song right before graduation. He helped me finish her up and to this day he stops by once a month to see how we’re both holding up.”
The man made a face that I couldn’t read and shifted his weight on his feet. He seemed nervous but I didn’t have time to stand around chatting about my Caddy. I had a Wayfarer that I was trying to restore and finding parts for the old girl had proven to be a real bitch.
“If you need something specific, go in and talk to Molly, my receptionist. She can point you in the right direction. I can tell you now I don’t have any original parts for a Hudson on hand but I know a guy that is a wizard when it comes to tracking down the unfindable.”
The older guy took a step back and leaned on the side of his car like the wind had been knocked out of him. He had really cherry taste in cars and looked pretty cool for an old guy, but damn, the dude was weird. Everything about him seemed tense and a little bit off.
“The garage is yours?” The question seemed like it was ripped out of him.
I shrugged again. “Yep. All mine.” I motioned toward the door that had the “Open” sign on it and inclined my head, eager to get to work. “Like I said, Molly can give you a hand with whatever you need. I’d be happy to get my hands on that Hudson if you need someone to work on it.”
The guy cleared his throat and shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “Uh, yeah. I might be back. I just rolled into town for a quick visit and your garage came up when I started poking around asking about who might be able to handle a rare classic. I was looking for something specific. I didn’t think I’d find it so quickly.”
I nodded because I knew how hard it could be to come across the original parts you needed to do a whole rebuild. “You can find anything if you look hard enough. I guess I’ll see you around.”
The guy nodded again and this time he grinned. “Didn’t catch your name, kid.”
I lifted an eyebrow at him. This whole exchange was getting stranger and stranger by the minute. “Wheeler, Hudson Wheeler. I’m actually named after your car.”
The guy flinched and the grin on his face died. “It’s nice to meet you, Wheeler. I’ll be back.”
Without offering up his name in return, he disappeared back into his badass car and pulled out of the parking lot in front of the garage like the cops were after him. I waved a hand in front of my face as the hot rod kicked up dust, and wondered what in the hell had just happened.
Today was a day full of loaded conversations and I’d never considered myself much of a conversationalist.