Chapter 1
1031 Words
Noah Carter wiped the grease from his hands with an old rag, squinting as the late afternoon sun dipped low over the dusty lot of Weston’s Garage. The day had been long three engine rebuilds, one blown transmission, and an elderly lady who insisted her rattling sound was “definitely a ghost.”
He’d just started locking up when he heard a low, sputtering groan followed by a sharp metallic clank. A black Rolls-Royce Phantom, glossy as wet ink, limped into the lot like a wounded animal.
Noah arched a brow. That’s about four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of car, begging for a mechanic in the roughest part of town.
The driver’s door swung open and out stepped… her.
The girl looked like she’d stepped straight out of a magazine ad long chestnut hair spilling over the shoulders of a white summer dress, gold sandals catching the dying sunlight. She didn’t belong here any more than a diamond belonged in an oil drum.
“Uh… hi,” she said, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. Her voice was smooth, but there was a hint of fluster in it. “I think something’s wrong with the car. It just… started making noises.”
Noah tried to keep his tone even, even though she looked like trouble wrapped in silk. “What kind of noises?”
“The… bad kind.”
He smirked. “Good thing that’s my speciality.”
She handed over the keys, and Noah slid into the driver’s seat. A quick listen to the engine told him the problem before he even popped the hood. “Loose belt. Nothing major.”
She let out a sigh of relief. “So it’s not going to explode?”
He chuckled, grabbing his tools. “Only if you want it to.”
As he worked, she wandered the garage, glancing at the clutter of wrenches, license plates, and old coffee mugs. “You fix these cars yourself?”
“Most days,” he said. “Though if it’s a spaceship, I might have to call for backup.”
Her lips curved into a smile, and he noticed the faint dimple in her right cheek. “I’m Isabella,” she said.
“Noah.”
A beat of silence. She studied him like she was cataloguing him in her mind the dark hair that always fell into his eyes, the rolled-up sleeves revealing strong forearms streaked with grease. Most girls from her world didn’t look at him twice. This one? She wasn’t looking away.
“You don’t seem like a mechanic,” she said finally.
Noah raised a brow. “What do I seem like, then?”
She hesitated, as though she wasn’t sure if the truth would offend him. “Like you should be… I don’t know… running a company or something. Giving orders. Wearing suits.”
“Yeah, well.” He tightened the last bolt and straightened. “Not all of us get to choose the life we start in.”
Something flickered across her face curiosity, maybe guilt. She opened her mouth, but he shut the hood before she could speak.
“All fixed,” he said.
She took a step closer. “How much do I owe you?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Her brows lifted. “No, really”
“Consider it a welcome-to-my-side-of-town discount.”
A slow smile spread across her face, one that felt more dangerous than any broken-down engine. “Then at least let me buy you coffee. As… repayment.”
Noah hesitated. Every instinct told him she was from a world that could chew him up and spit him out. But something about the way she looked at him like she wasn’t here for charity or amusement made it impossible to say no.
“Alright,” he said. “One coffee.”
Two hours later, they were sitting in the corner booth of a tiny café across from the garage, two empty cups between them.
Noah had learned that Isabella liked her coffee black but with sugar, hated early mornings, and was studying art history at a university that charged more for a semester than Noah made in a year.
She learned that he had been working at Weston’s since he was sixteen, that he’d never known his father, and that his mother had passed when he was nineteen.
He didn’t usually open up to strangers. But Isabella wasn’t just anyone.
Somewhere between her laugh and the way she leaned forward when he talked, he forgot about the oil stains on his hands or the holes in the soles of his boots.
“Do you always talk to strangers like this?” she asked, tilting her head.
“Only the ones who drive broken Rolls-Royces into my life,” he said.
She laughed, soft and unguarded. “You’re… different.”
He wanted to ask different good or different bad, but the answer was already in her eyes.
It was nearly midnight when he walked her back to her car. The street was quiet, the air heavy with the scent of summer rain.
“Thanks for the coffee,” he said.
She smiled. “Thanks for fixing my car.”
They stood there for a moment, caught in that space where goodbye feels like the wrong word.
Then she stepped closer.
Noah could smell her perfume something soft, expensive, and completely foreign to his world. Her eyes searched his, and before he could think better of it, he leaned down.
The kiss was slow, hesitant at first, then deepening into something that felt like a promise neither of them had spoken.
When they finally pulled back, she whispered, “I hope this isn’t the last time I see you.”
Noah didn’t trust himself to speak.
She slipped into her car, the purr of the engine drowning out the sound of his heartbeat, and drove away into the night.
Noah stood there long after the taillights disappeared, a strange certainty settling in his chest he didn’t know her world, but he knew one thing: he wanted to be part of it.
And he had no idea just how much it would cost him.
- Writer
