They stood there, inches apart, both smiling at the absurdity of discussing soup temperature when the air between them crackled with enough electricity to power the entire valley.
“Eat your dinner,” Aidan said finally, stepping back with visible effort. “Fix the Ferrari. I’ll lock up the front.”
Dylan unwrapped the soup—still warm despite their debate—and ate while working, her mind spinning faster than any engine. Victoria was back. Beautiful, polished, historically significant Victoria who’d shared two years of Aidan’s life before Dylan had even known Laurel Valley existed.
But Aidan had sent her away. Had stood in his own garage and chosen the present over the past, had moved closer to Dylan rather than toward his history. That had to mean something.
The McLaren’s harmonic revealed itself finally, a loose heat shield vibrating at exactly the wrong frequency. Dylan fixed it with three well placed welds, solving in minutes what had puzzled her for hours. Sometimes the answer was simpler than expected. Sometimes it was right in front of you, waiting to be discovered.
She finished near midnight, the garage silent except for the tick of cooling metal and the whisper of snow against windows. Her phone buzzed as she cleaned her tools.
Aidan—Home safe? The roads are getting slick.
Then another—Thank you for listening tonight. For not running when Victoria showed up.
And finally—Saturday. No more excuses. We find the next clue. We figure out what we’re doing. Both things. All things.
Dylan typed back—Saturday. Bring rope.
Rope?
In case we need to escape through windows when your ex-girlfriend shows up at the cemetery.
That’s morbid. Also hilarious. Also possible knowing Victoria.
Saturday, Dylan typed again, then added, Partner.
The word carried new weight now, loaded with possibility and promise and the particularly terrifying hope that some things might be worth the risk of wanting them.
She locked the garage and walked home through the falling snow, her footsteps the only marks on Main Street’s white canvas. The town had dressed itself for November while she’d been working—Thanksgiving wreaths glowing warm in windows, cornucopias spilling abundance onto doorsteps, the pumpkins of Halloween replaced by the deeper satisfaction of harvest home.
Her apartment welcomed her with terra-cotta warmth, the walls she’d painted now feeling less like commitment and more like embrace. Dylan stood at her window, looking down at Main Street’s empty perfection, and let the doubts she’d been holding back flood in.
Victoria Pemberton. Even the name sounded like it belonged in a different world than Dylan Flanagan. Victoria probably had childhood photos on horses, debutante balls, the kind of education that taught you which wine went with which course. She definitely didn’t have grease permanently embedded under her fingernails or a father who’d died leaving nothing but debt and a collection of motorcycle parts.
Dylan caught her reflection in the dark window—tired eyes, hair escaping from its ponytail, the shadows of old oil stains on her jaw that never quite washed clean. She looked exactly like what she was: a mechanic who’d gotten lucky. Meanwhile, Victoria looked like what Aidan should have on his arm at charity galas and family Christmas cards.
Seven years. They’d been apart seven years, but history like that didn’t just evaporate. First loves lived in your bones, shaped the way you loved everyone who came after. And Victoria had been Aidan’s first real love—the one everyone expected him to marry, the one who’d fit into his world like she’d been custom-made for it.
What if his rejection tonight had been about pride, not preference? What if seeing Victoria again reminded him of what he’d given up, what he could have had? Beautiful, sophisticated Victoria who knew about cars and probably spoke three languages and definitely never had to google which fork to use first.
Dylan moved to her bathroom mirror, studying herself critically. She could clean up well enough—Sophie had proven that with a few shopping trips—but underneath the surface polish, she was still the girl who’d run from her father’s funeral, who’d spent thirteen years never staying anywhere long enough to matter. Victoria had roots, connections, the kind of deep belonging that Dylan was only just beginning to attempt.
Her phone sat silent on the counter. Aidan’s texts glowed on the screen, sweet and reassuring. But texts were easy. Words were easy. Tomorrow, in daylight, when Victoria probably stopped by the garage in some perfect outfit with some perfect excuse, would Aidan still stand closer to Dylan? Or would he remember what he’d lost, what he could have again?
Dylan turned away from the mirror, unable to bear her own reflection any longer. She was building something here—a business, a life, maybe even a future with someone who made her heart race. But Victoria’s arrival felt like a reminder that some people were meant for permanent things and others were just passing through, no matter how much paint they put on the walls.
Change was coming—it always did when old lovers returned and new possibilities emerged. But standing in her painted apartment, with partnership papers on her table and Aidan’s texts on her phone, Dylan felt something she hadn’t experienced in the thirteen years since her father’s death:
Ready.
Ready for whatever Victoria’s presence might stir up. Ready for the restoration shop to open. Ready to find the next clue and the one after that. Ready to stop running from the possibility that some things—some people, some places, some feelings—might be worth the risk of staying still long enough to see what grew.
Outside, November continued its patient work of transformation, covering everything complicated with simple white, hiding all the broken places under beauty. By morning, Laurel Valley would look like a postcard, the kind people sent to prove that perfect places existed.
But Dylan knew better. She knew perfection was overrated. What mattered was the willingness to restore what was broken, to see potential in damage, to believe that with enough care and skill and patience, anything could be made beautiful again.
Even hearts that had forgotten how to trust.
