Page 10 of Buried Dreams

“I would love to catch up,” she states, her voice hopeful, “but I understand if you still?—”

“I would like that.” I think even I’m shocked when I say the words. “Are you working at the bar?” I ask, and she nods.

“I’m going to be on tonight since the bartender who is usually on has a family thing,” she answers. “So I’ll be working, but you could drop by.”

“I think I will.” She just smiles at me, the big smile I’ve loved since we were kids.

The smile she would give when she was really, really happy. “Perfect,” she says as she wipes away her tears. “I’ll see you then.” I nod as she turns the stroller and heads to the door. “It’s good to have you home, Everleigh.”

Chapter Five

BROCK

I look up from the transmission part I’m putting back together while sitting down on the stool. The sun wasn’t even up when I walked into the shop this morning, but I knew I had a few more days until Saige returned home. Last night, I was able to pick her up after work and take her out for ice cream, which was not what I asked for, but it was also better than nothing. So I didn’t make a big deal out of it. However, I am getting a bit pissed, and I know I will eventually have to go to the lawyer to have Karla take me seriously. I just wish we could figure it out like mature adults.

The music plays in the background so softly I don’t even know it’s playing. I stop what I’m doing to look out the window, and everything halts when I do. Everleigh is walking by the shop again, something she’s done for the past few days. It started three days ago when I was working, and it was as if a magnetic force made me stop what I was doing and look up, and that was when I saw her. The pit of my stomach burned, and that feeling moved up through my body, and I wanted to scream out my rage. But she didn’t deserve my rage. She deserves nothing from me. She did what she needed to do, and I did what I needed to do. I never thought she would leave me the way she did. Never thought she wouldn’t understand why I did it. I watch her pass with her head down, heading to the bakery and walking in the door. Only when she’s inside do I turn back and focus on the parts in front of me.

Now here I am, working in my father’s garage and keeping up with the legacy of it. It was not what I ever wanted to be doing. I thought I would have my own architecture firm at this point. My goal was always to do my internship and then just start small at first and build it up, but fate had other plans for me. Plans I said I would never make, but when everything went to shit, I knew I had no choice but to try to save the only thing I could, and that was my father’s shop. He taught me everything I knew, and when I was ten, I would come out on the weekends and help him out until I turned thirteen, when he saw I could do an oil change and not fuck things up. But when I turned fifteen, I started tinkering with transmissions.

I was also really good at designing car details, which is why I went into architecture. I loved drawing and designing things and then seeing them all come together. After drawing, building things was always my favorite part. I’m the transmission specialist in the area, obviously, but more than that. A couple of us focus solely on transmissions, and I’m one of them. Something the Cartwrights couldn’t bury was my name in other counties. I have a waiting list of people to work with me, all of which are old cars that need rebuilding. This list has grown even more in the past couple of years.

The phone rings beside me, and I look down to see it’s Saige. I press the FaceTime button and wait for her face to fill the screen.

“Good morning, baby girl.” I smile at her face and see that it looks like she just got up. “How did you sleep?”

“Good,” she mumbles as she rubs her eye with her palm.

“That’s good.” I grab the cup of coffee that has grown cold since I got here. “Did you have good dreams?”

“Yeah, I dreamed of the beach,” she says, as if her hints are subtle, and I laugh. “You know, like the one we went to the last time.”

“I remember,” I say of the trip we took this year on her spring break when it was my week. We spent a week in St. Thomas, and she loved every single second of being on the beach. She would wake up and be ready. She even learned how to surf and then wanted to go scuba diving, but I drew the line at that and instead just let her snorkel.

“Can we go there again?” she asks.

“I think I can maybe see if we can go when I get you at Christmas,” I say, and her face lights up.

“Saige, let’s go,” Karla says in the background, and my dick cringes. “I’ve called you three times already.”

“I’m talking to Dad.” She looks over at her.

“Your breakfast is on the table, and it’s getting cold,” she scolds, and Saige sighs.

“Okay, Daddy, I love you.” She puts her whole face on the camera and gives me a kiss.

“Love you too, baby girl,” I say. “You have a good day at school and then call me later, yeah?”

“Okay,” she agrees and disconnects with me. I finish the cold coffee when the front door opens, and I hear the sound of the bells.

“Morning,” Ryan says from the front as he walks into the garage on his way to the break room, his cooler in his hand. “What time did you get here?”

“About five,” I mumble as I take my tools out.

He doesn’t say anything until he returns from the break room. “You almost finished with that?” he asks, and I nod.

“I’m almost done with the paint job also,” he informs me. I hired him when he came to town a couple of years ago. He didn’t know how to fix anything but could do a mean paint job on a car. He is also great at design, which is something he’s getting more and more comfortable doing.

“Once we get this in and Eddie finishes the engine, it’ll be done,” I say of the Camaro someone brought to us a couple of months ago. It was literally just a shell of a car; weeds were growing between the steering wheel and the front window.

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