Baddie Cinderella with 4 MC bullies Riders

Stella's POV "Pass me the ten-millimeter socket, would you?" I asked, holding my hand out without looking up from the engine block. "Here you go, Shorty," Big Mike said, pressing the cold steel tool into my palm. He leaned against the metal workbench, crossing his heavy arms. "You know, you’ve been knee-deep in that motor since two o’clock this afternoon. Do you ever plan on sleeping, or are you just trying to turn into a spark plug?" "I’ll sleep when this bike actually runs," I said. I wiped my forehead with the back of my sleeve, almost certainly leaving another dark smear of black grease across my face. The Iron Blade MC garage was loud and crowded tonight. The Iron Run Circuit qualifier was only three days away, and this race was the biggest chance our club had gotten in years. Everywhere I looked, riders were arguing loudly over speed modifications while mechanics rushed to finish last-minute welding and tire changes. The pressure inside the shop was heavy enough to feel on your skin. "You're too stubborn for your own good," Mike laughed, shaking his head. "Look at you. You're tiny, you're covered in oil from head to toe, and I swear you spend way more time talking to motorcycles than you do to actual human beings." "Motorcycles make a lot more sense than people," I replied, tightening a bolt until my knuckles turned white. "And they don't complain half as much as you do." A few bikers standing nearby laughed out loud. "She's got you there, Mike!" one of the riders, Cody, called out. Cody walked over and patted the leather seat of the bike I was working on. "Honestly, I'd rather let her touch my engine than any of the older guys in this shop. The old-timers just guess, but she actually listens to what the machine is doing." "Yeah, yeah, don't swell her head," Mike grumbled good-naturedly. But I knew he agreed. Even though they teased me every single day about my height and my obsession with wrenches, every guy in this club trusted my work. When an engine was dead and everyone else had given up on it, they brought it to me. I stood up to stretch my sore back, wiping my hands on a dirty shop towel. Across the central aisle, Travis was throwing his leg over his custom cruiser. "Alright boys, clear out!" Travis shouted over the noise of the shop. "I'm taking her out on the highway for a high-speed test run!" He kicked the starter, and the engine roared to life. But as the front wheel vibrated against the concrete floor, my eyes caught something wrong near the bottom of his front brake assembly. A thin line of fluid was leaking out of a cracked hose fitting. "Wait! Shut it off, Travis!" I yelled, running across the bay and waving my arms. "Do not take that bike out!" Travis rolled his eyes and kept revving the engine. "What is it now? I need to test this gear ratio before midnight!" "I said turn it off!" I reached over and hit his kill switch myself. The sudden silence in our corner of the garage drew stares from the other guys. "What is your problem?" Travis complained, stepping off the bike. "You're always overreacting. I checked the brakes an hour ago. They're fine." "They are not fine," I said firmly, refusing to back down even though he towered over me. "Look at the primary line fitting. It's cracked. If you hit eighty miles an hour on the highway and squeeze that lever, the line will burst, and you'll lose your front brakes completely." "Let me see that," Hank, our oldest mechanic, muttered as he walked over with a flashlight. He bent down, shining the light directly onto the hose. After a few seconds of silence, Hank looked up at Travis with a serious face. "She's right, Travis. This fitting is split right down the thread. If you tried to stop hard at high speed, you would have eaten the asphalt." Travis went pale. "Damn. Good catch, kid. I guess you just saved my life." Before I could say you're welcome, the heavy metal door at the front of the shop slammed open. "He's back!" someone shouted from the doorway. "Cole just pulled in from the cross-state run!" Instantly, the entire atmosphere in the garage changed. Tools were dropped onto tables, guys slapped each other on the back, and almost everyone rushed toward the outside doors to welcome our road captain home. My heart did a quick, hard jump in my chest. I had been secretly counting the days until Cole came home. For the past three nights, I had stayed up until two in the morning working on his personal racing bike, tuning the carburetor and replacing the worn chain just because I knew he would need it ready the moment he got back. I put my towel down and followed the crowd outside into the cool night air. The garage parking lot was lit up by bright floodlights, and there he was, sitting on his dusty bike, pulling off his leather riding gloves. He looked tired, but as handsome as ever. I opened my mouth to call out his name, but before I could take two steps forward, three women pushed past the crowd. "Cole! You're finally back!" a brunette girl cried out, throwing herself directly into his arms before he had even stepped off his machine. Two other women crowded around him immediately, laughing and touching his leather vest, fighting loudly for his attention. Cole smiled and caught the girl who jumped on him, saying something I couldn't hear over the noise of the laughing crowd. My chest felt suddenly hollow. The excitement that had built up inside me all week vanished in a single second. I bit the inside of my cheek, pretending I didn't care at all. I turned around quietly, keeping my head down, and walked right back into the empty garage before anyone could notice the disappointment written all over my face. Back inside the quiet shop, I walked over to the workbench and picked up my tools again. Focus on the work, I told myself. Just focus on the machine. I grabbed a wrench to loosen a rusted bolt on an old fender, but my hands were shaking. My mind wasn't on the motorcycle anymore; it was out in the parking lot with Cole and those women. Slip. The metal wrench slid off the bolt head with a loud snap, and my hand smashed hard against the sharp edge of the engine guard. "Ouch! Damn it," I hissed, dropping the tool. I pulled my hand back and saw a deep cut across the palm of my hand, blood welling up fast and dripping onto the clean metal of the engine block. "Still fighting with wrenches in the dark, little girl?" I froze. That deep, familiar voice came from right behind me. I turned around and saw Cole walking into the shop, his heavy boots clicking against the concrete floor. His casual smile disappeared the second he looked down at my hand. "You're bleeding." "It's nothing," I said quickly, trying to pull my hand behind my back. "Just a scratch. I slipped." "Don't be an i***t, let me see it," Cole said softly. He stepped into my space, gently grabbing my wrist and pulling my hand forward to inspect the cut. "Come over to the sink." He led me to the wash station in the back of the bay without waiting for an answer. He turned on the warm water, carefully holding my hand under the stream to wash away the grease and blood. He grabbed a clean towel and a bottle of antiseptic from the first-aid box on the wall. "You never take care of yourself," Cole scolded me, though his voice was warm and gentle as he dabbed the liquid onto my skin. "You work twenty hours a day, you forget to eat, and now you're trying to slice your fingers off. What am I going to do with you?" "I can take care of myself just fine," I muttered, looking down at his large, calloused hands wrapping a white bandage around my palm. The whole interaction felt completely natural. We had done things like this for years—him looking out for me, patching up my scrapes, and me fixing up his machines. When he finished tying the bandage, he didn't let go of my hand right away. His thumb brushed gently over my wrist. For a quiet, breathless moment, looking up into his dark eyes, a sudden hope fluttered inside my chest. Maybe, I thought, maybe I actually mean more to him than I thought. Maybe he looks at me and sees someone special. "Yo, Cole!" Big Mike's voice boomed from the open office doorway across the garage. "We need you in the back room for two minutes to look over the route map for the qualifier!" "Be right there!" Cole called back. He squeezed my shoulder gently. "Stay out of trouble, okay? And quit fighting with that engine for tonight." "Okay," I whispered, watching him walk away toward the office. I stood by the sink, nursing my bandaged hand, feeling a warm heat linger where his hand had touched my shoulder. I decided to go grab my jacket from the hooks near the office door so I could finally head home and get some sleep. As I walked quietly toward the office hallway, I heard Mike and Cole talking through the half-open door. "You spend a lot of time checking up on that girl, man," Mike said, his voice teasing. "You stayed out in the garage just to bandage her hand while there are three girls waiting for you at the bar. You sweet on our little mechanic?" I stopped dead in my tracks, holding my breath as I waited for Cole's answer. Cole let out a short, easy laugh. "No way, man. Don't be weird. She is family." The words hit my chest like a cold lead weight. "I've always looked after her because she's like a baby sister to me," Cole continued, his voice clear and steady through the crack in the door. "She's been around this club since we were kids. It's my job to protect her." I stepped back from the door, my hand dropping slowly to my side. I knew he probably meant those words as a huge compliment—in the motorcycle club, being called family was the highest honor you could get. But as I stood there in the dark hallway, listening to him talk about me like I was just a kid sister to protect, the hope I had felt only minutes ago completely disappeared. All I could hear in those words was the one painful truth I had been trying to ignore: he still did not see me as a woman. I pressed my back against the cold wall, staring at the crack of light under the office door. If he only sees a little sister when he looks at me, then why does my heart still beat like this every single time he walks into a room?