I lean over the workbench, the paper's edge curling under my fingers. The grease on his thumb has left a dark crescent on the clause about collateral, like a bruise forming on the page. "She wants the garage," I say, reading it back to him. "That's the whole game."

Derek's jaw works once, twice. He pulls the burner phone from his back pocket—a cheap thing, scratched screen, the kind you buy with cash and throw away. The draft message glows at the top: *Mer. We need to talk terms.* Unsent. Waiting.

"She doesn't know what I'm willing to burn," he says, and his voice drops into that low register that makes my stomach tighten. "She thinks the garage is the leverage. She doesn't know it's just the thing I'd set on fire to keep you out of her office."

"Her office." I let the words sit. "That's where this goes. Not here."

He doesn't answer. That's the answer.

The bulb buzzes overhead, a thin fluorescent whine that fills the silence. I can smell the coffee gone stale in the pot behind him, the motor oil worked into the floorboards, the sweat on his skin from a morning spent under someone's engine. And underneath it all, that other scent—the one that followed me off the bus and into my dreams. It's him. It's always been him.

"You want me to walk into her office alone."

"I want you to walk in like you're the one holding the cards." He steps closer, close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his blue eyes. "She's expecting Derek Vance's girl to be scared. She's expecting someone who'll fold the second she mentions Vince's name."

"And what am I supposed to be instead?"

His hand finds my chin, tilts my face up. The calluses on his fingers scrape softly against my skin. "You're supposed to be the one who burned her best offer before she even made it."

I hold his gaze. The heat in the room is thick, but it's not just the weather. It's the way he's looking at me, like I'm a piece of the plan he's already assembled in his head. "Tell me the rest," I say, my voice steady even as my pulse kicks against my ribs. "Or I walk out that door and make my own deal."

His thumb traces my lower lip, a slow, deliberate drag. "You won't."

"Try me."

Something flickers in his eyes—respect, maybe. Want. He drops his hand and turns to the desk, spreading the documents flat. "Mer's office is on the third floor of a building on Halstead. No security worth the name. She runs the whole thing out of a back room with a filing cabinet and a bottle of cheap whiskey."

"You've been there."

"Once." He taps the collateral clause. "She'll offer you a deal. She'll say the garage stays in my name but she gets a cut of every job, every tow, every dollar that comes through the bay doors. She'll make it sound reasonable. Like a partnership."

"And what do I say?"

He looks at me then, and there's something raw in it. "You say you need to think about it. You take her card. You walk out. And then you come back here, to me, and we figure out the next move together."

"That's the whole plan? I go in, I look pretty, I leave?"

"That's the first move." His voice roughens. "The second move is hers to make. And whatever she does, whatever she offers, you remember one thing."

He steps into me, his chest against mine, his hand sliding to the small of my back. "You're not her line item. You're not collateral. You're the reason I'd burn all of it down."

My breath catches. The paper crinkles between us, forgotten. His mouth is close enough that I can feel the heat of it on my cheek, and I know—I know—that whatever walk I take into Mer's office, I'm walking out of it the same way I walked onto that bus.

His.

I pull away from him, my skin prickling where his hand was. "I need a minute."

His eyes narrow, reading me the way he reads engine trouble. "You okay?"

"Fine. Just—" I gesture vaguely toward the back of the garage. "Bathroom."

He lets me go, but I feel his gaze on my back the whole way, sharp and knowing. The bathroom door clicks shut behind me and I stand there in the dark, my heart hammering, my hands cold.

The light flickers on. A single bulb, same as the office. The mirror is cracked in the corner, and the sink has a brown stain that won't scrub out. I don't look at myself. I look at the cabinet under the sink, where I hid the test this morning, wrapped in a plastic grocery bag like it was something shameful.

I crouch down and pull it out. The box is small, pink, familiar from the pharmacy aisle I've walked past a hundred times. I'm late. Three days late. The same three days I've spent here, letting him fill me again and again, never pulling out, never once asking if I was sure.

The first pee of the day is the most accurate. It's afternoon now. I don't care.

I tear the foil open with shaking fingers, my nails catching on the plastic. The stick is white, clinical, indifferent. I hold it under the stream and count the seconds, watching the little window like it might tell me my whole future.

One line. Two lines.

I stare at the second line. It's faint, but it's there. A pink ghost that rearranges everything.

The test clatters into the sink. I grip the porcelain edge, my knuckles white, and I can't breathe. Three days late. Three days of him inside me, his cum dripping downd my thighs, his voice in my ear saying he's never pulled out on purpose. My pills are in my bag, untouched since Tuesday, because I thought—I thought I had time.

I look at the test again. Two lines. Positive.

My reflection is pale, my hair a mess, my lips still swollen from his mouth. I look like someone who just got fucked against a workbench. I look like someone who might be carrying a mechanic's baby.

I don't tell him.

I wrap the test in toilet paper, bury it at the bottom of the trash can under a crumpled paper towel, and wash my hands until the water runs cold. When I open the door, Derek is leaning against the wall outside, arms crossed, his blue eyes tracking me like he already knows.

"You took a while," he says.

"Stomach's off." I brush past him, my voice steady, my pulse a lie. "The coffee here is criminal."

He doesn't push. He lets me walk back into the office, lets me sit down in that cracked vinyl chair, lets me pick up the collateral clause like it matters. But I feel the test burning in the trash can behind me, and I know—I know—that whatever I walk into with Mer, the real secret I'm carrying isn't the garage.

It's the second line I buried.