Page 89 of Rebel Summer

“You’re a violent little thing. Does your dad know this about you?”

Our faces were so close. For a long moment, we stared at each other until I sucked in a breath and turned my face away. “There’s no such thing as a punch.”

“Twenty hours.” He leaned into my space, tilting the toolbox on my stomach to see better while giving my nose a shot of his cologne. I didn’t know what it was called, but I had to force my eyes not to roll to the back of my head in pleasure. He found what he was searching for and held up a small, smooth tool. “This is a punch.” He dropped it back into the box. He didn’t even need it.

“You’re such a punk.”

“Punk? What year is it?”

“According to your playlist? 1970.”

He busied himself adding and tightening more bolts above our heads.

“Okay, if this is how we’re playing it, let’s see if you can answer a few of my work questions.” I became distracted in attempting to think of something while the muscles on Dax’s forearms strained to twist a bolt.

“Tick-tock,” Dax mumbled before he moved his roller closer to me. His leg pressed against mine before he maneuvered himself out from under the car, only to roll back under again, this time on my other side. Before I could think or blink, his hand was on my thigh, rolling me closer to his side in a way that left me a mess of flutters, tingles, and a pounding heartbeat.

“Now I’m going to do the same thing with this end,” he explained, as if he hadn’t just grabbed my leg and destroyed me. He aligned the other side of the five-foot pipe just right and asked me for the 9/16ths socket wrench once more.

I handed it to him, to which he said proudly, “Look at how much you’re learning.”

“Alright, smart guy, 9/16ths is what point of an inch?”

“Huh?”

I smiled. “What is 9/16ths in decimal form?”

“Why would anybody know that?”

“You can’t figure it out?”

“Can you?”

“.5625.” I smiled at him. “Twenty-one hours.”

He blinked at me before a smile tugged at his lips. “I’ll give that to you. That was pretty hot.”

His words rumbled low in my ear, and my cheeks burned at his compliment. I had to look away.

“Okay,” he said, “hand me the punch and a hammer while I pound this into place.”

This was why he invited me here. He did actually need an extra pair of hands. Glad to know my coveralls weren’t going to waste.

His coveralls.

I pushed that thought aside while I very capably reached into the box, pulled out the tools, and held them out to him.

“Twenty-two hours,” I said proudly.

“I’ll even let you take one for that. I’m so proud.”

We settled into a routine. I now knew every tool he needed, so he couldn’t trick me. Instead, Dax quizzed me on car knowledge. Questions like, what is a driveline? What does the transmission actually do? And I quizzed him on mathematics, ranging from easy to theories. Between his questions and mine, we each got very few right, but we worked seamlessly for the next twenty minutes. Much to the sinking in my stomach, I didn’t delight in the questions as much as the accidental touches. My skin burned where his leg pressed against mine. My heart pounded like I’d run a marathon, but my feet hadn’t touched the ground.

Finally, we settled on a score of eighteen and a half hours, thanks to a two-part math question Dax actually knew one answer to.

The popping sound of fireworks nearby greeted us as we crawled out from under the car. Dax slid out easily. I enjoyed a more scoot-awkwardly-and-bang-my-head-on-the-bottom-of-the-car kind of approach.

“Easy there, Caroline,” he said, grabbing my roller and helping me slide out without further injury.

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