Racing into his heart

First day in the Garage Together

MILA

Okay, so here's the thing nobody tells you about walking into a garage early. You think you're gonna get five minutes of peace. Five whole minutes to stand there, breathe in that brake dust smell that used to mean home, and just exist without some reporter shoving a mic in your face asking if you "earned" your own job.

Yeah. No. Didn't happen.

Because guess who was already there.

Tall guy, dark hair, standing by the second car like he owned the whole building, holding a data sheet and reading it with the kind of focus most people save for, I don't know, defusing a bomb. He hadn't clocked me yet. I had maybe two seconds before he did, and I used every one of them staring at him like he was a pothole I needed to swerve around.

Nice watch. Probably cost more than my first car. Shoulders for days. And this stillness about him that wasn't calm, not really, more like a guy who'd learned the hard way that showing anything on your face just gives people ammo.

Then he looked up and my whole world went mute for a second.

I knew that face.

I'd spent two years dodging that face. Changing the channel. Skipping the articles. One time a well meaning physical therapist sent me a highlight reel thinking it'd help, and I deleted it before I even got ten seconds in. And now here it was, three feet away, looking exactly like trouble in human form.

My hands went ice cold first, like always. Brain's slow, body's fast, that's just how I'm built now. Then it all slammed into me at once, not even like a memory, more like my body just remembered on its own: metal screeching, the whole world flipping sideways doing a buck forty, my own scream getting swallowed by the crash, then nothing but white light and silence so loud it felt like dying.

"You're Duarte."

His voice yanked me back into the garage. Flat. Even. Giving away absolutely nothing, typical.

"And you're Cross."

I hadn't planned on saying that. It just came out, sharp, on purpose, like I'd been sitting on that little dig for two years waiting for the chance to use it.

Something flickered across his face. Not guilt exactly. More like, yeah, he knew exactly what I was doing and he wasn't gonna pretend otherwise.

"Sterling," he said, quiet. "It's been two years."

"Trust me, I know how long it's been." I know it in scar tissue. I know it in my knee aching every time it rains. I didn't need a reminder, thanks.

I hadn't planned on sticking around for a whole conversation either. Honestly I figured someone would've warned me first, given me a heads up, a briefing, something, instead of just letting me walk into this cold with nobody in my corner.

He set the data sheet down slow, careful, like he didn't want it looking like a weapon in his hand. Giving me an out if I wanted it.

I didn't take it. Not yet. I just stood there, hands balled up and freezing, letting the silence stretch out long enough that it started saying stuff neither of us was brave enough to say out loud.

"I know what you think happened," he said finally.

"I know what happened," I shot back. "I was there."

He didn't flinch, but something in his jaw tightened, just barely, like he was holding something back that wanted out.

Here's the thing though. I could tell he wasn't trying to pick a fight. He had this whole vibe going, this careful, controlled energy, like a guy trying really hard not to make things worse. I didn't get it at first. Why would he care how I felt about him? We're teammates for a season, not friends, not anything. But looking back, I think even then some part of him already knew we couldn't survive a whole year of me treating every single word out of his mouth like it was another cross examination.

Didn't matter though. Not that day. That day I just wanted out of that garage and away from him as fast as my legs could carry me.

So I turned around and walked.

Behind me, quiet, almost too quiet to catch, he said one more thing.

"So was I."

I stopped. Just for a second. Just long enough for those three words to land somewhere in my chest and set up permanent residence.

So was I.

What was that supposed to mean? He was there too, obviously, duh, he was literally driving the other car. But the way he said it, there was something underneath it, something that made it sound less like a fact and more like a confession he hadn't finished making yet.

I didn't turn back around to ask. I wasn't ready for whatever answer came with that. Instead I kept walking, past the transport trucks, past some poor mechanic who called out a good morning I barely heard, until the garage shrank down to just a rectangle of light behind me and all I could hear was my own shoes hitting concrete.

And underneath that, quieter, annoying, refusing to leave me alone, those three words kept replaying over and over like a song stuck on repeat.

So was I.

Two years. Two whole years I'd built this entire story in my head about what happened that day. Him, reckless, careless, taking a corner he had no business taking at that speed, not caring who was in his way. That story kept me moving. Kept me angry enough to get back in a car after six weeks in a hospital bed, angry enough to grind through two years of rehab nobody outside a clinic ever saw.

And now this guy's standing there with that same careful, guarded face, basically telling me there's more to it. Like my whole story, the one I built my comeback on, might be missing a page.

Great. Love that for me.

I didn't know what he remembered from that day. Didn't know if it played out in his head the same way it played in mine, screeching metal and white light and nothing, or if it looked completely different from where he was sitting.

All I knew walking out of that garage was that something had cracked open that I wasn't ready to deal with, and he was the one holding whatever was behind it.

Didn't love that. Didn't love it one bit.