“Most people just get on and ride,” he observed.
“Most people aren’t mechanics. “
They set off across property that seemed to expand with every hill they crested, following trails worn by generations of O’Hara adventures. The freedom of it—racing through private land with no witnesses except mountains and sky—loosened something that had been twisted tight in Dylan’s chest since Victoria’s appearance. When Aidan took a trail that launched them over a rise, she followed without hesitation, both machines leaving earth for a moment that felt like flight, landing hard enough to jar teeth but laughing at the sheer joy of controlled recklessness.
They stopped at a creek to rest, sitting on sun-warmed rocks that November hadn’t yet stolen heat from, watching water write stories over stones.
“Haven’t seen you smile like that in days,” Aidan said, pulling off his helmet to reveal hair standing in every direction like he’d been electrocuted by happiness.
“Haven’t had much reason to.”
“Victoria really rattled you.”
It wasn’t a question, but Dylan answered anyway. “She’s everything I’m not. Polished, sophisticated, from your world?—”
“Stop.” The command in his voice made her look at him fully. “Victoria is from a world I was supposed to want. You’re from the world I actually want. There’s a difference between choosing what looks right and choosing what is right.”
Before she could parse that declaration, another ATV’s growl announced company. Duncan appeared through the trees, his grin promising trouble or gossip or both.
“Thought I heard engines,” he said, pulling up beside them. “Hattie sent me to find you. She said I’m getting too moody because I’m having trouble with a commissioned piece. I don’t get moody.”
He scowled and Aidan laughed. “Whatever you say, brother. What’s the news?”
“Hattie wanted to warn you. She said Victoria’s been making rounds in town, asking subtle questions about Dylan at various shops. Everybody remembers Victoria and the way she left, so I’m not sure she’s being met with a lot of warmth, but you know how people here like to talk.”
“Like it’s fresh air?” Aidan asked.
Dylan’s stomach performed an unpleasant maneuver. “She’s investigating me?”
“More like fishing for information. But Sophie and Raven are onto her. They’re telling her how famous people from all over the country are clamoring for you to restore their cars.”
“It was only one famous person,” Dylan said.
“I’m sure there are more where that came from,” Duncan said. “Raven told her about how the Smithsonian asked you to consult on a vintage restoration project.”
“Oh, God,” Dylan said, covering her face with her hands.
“You do good work,” Duncan said. “Be proud. And you’ll get used to Raven and Sophie. That’s what family does. We protect our own.”
After he left, they continued to the moon garden, but Dylan’s mind kept circling back to Victoria’s reconnaissance mission, the way she was gathering intelligence like this was some kind of campaign for territory that had already been claimed.
The garden, when they reached it, temporarily erased all thoughts of Victoria. It was magnificent in its architecture—geometric beds outlined in boxwood that had survived for decades, paths of stone and gravel, and in the center, a sundial on a pedestal that had been marking time since long before Dylan was born.
“She designed it herself,” Aidan said, moving through the space with the respect of someone in a museum. “Every plant chosen for how it looked in moonlight. They’d sit out here summer nights, just watching stars and each other. My mother has kept it up since Grandma passed, though she’ll tell you she doesn’t have as green of a thumb.”
“It’s beautiful,” Dylan said, already seeing the potential beneath the ruin.
They settled on a bench near the sundial to wait for four o’clock, time stretching before them like an unmapped road.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” Aidan said, his thigh warm against hers on the cold stone bench.
“Like what?”
“Anything. Everything. Why you became a mechanic. What you dream about. What you’re afraid of.”
Dylan pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them in a defensive posture she hadn’t needed in years. “My father was a mechanic. After my mother left—I was ten—working on engines was the only time he seemed truly alive. Not happy, exactly, but…purposeful. I learned by watching, by handing him tools, by being useful in the only way that seemed to matter.”
“She left you both?”
