Page 162 of Dial F for Finance

Ten days of insomnia will do that. Carburetor rebuilt. Wiring harness rerun. Oxblood tank cut, buffed, and mounted—four years of stalling undone in under two weeks, because it turns out a man who can’t sleep, can’t drink, and can’t chase his wife to Queens will eventually fix the last thing he still can.

She’s beautiful. She’s nearly done. And when she’s done, I’ll have run out of things to fix, and then God only knows.

The stairs creak behind me.

I don’t turn around. There’s only one person left who overrides my gate code without calling first, and he’s been doing welfare laps all week with the subtlety of a drone program.

“I’m fine, Logan,” I say, torquing the last engine mount. “Not drinking myself into a stupor. Not liquidating my life. You can log the visit and tell Audrey the patient is stable.”

“Good,” says the last voice I expected to hear. “Because we need to talk, and both of those things would make it harder for you to listen.”

The wrench stops. Everything stops—my hands, my lungs, the whole rebuilt engine of me, seized in one clean beat.

I turn around.

Jenna is standing at the bottom of my workshop stairs in jeans and a gray hoodie—mine, the one she liked to put on after a shower, the one I packed and shipped to Queens with tissue paper like an idiot with hope. Her hair is up in the usual bun, her chin at boardroom altitude, and that manila folder in her hands. She looks exhausted.

She also looks like a hallucination. My brain’s final, cruel trick before the sleep deprivation fully shuts down my organs.

I wipe my grease-stained hands on a shop rag, moving deliberately so I don’t spook her. Or maybe so I don’t shatter the illusion.

“You’re in Chicago,” I state, brilliantly. My voice is gravel, rough from disuse.

“I am,” Jenna says, her tone clipped, holding the folder like a Kevlar shield. “My flight landed an hour ago. I came straight from the airfield.”

She doesn’t step further into the garage. I drop the rag onto the workbench and fold my arms.

“You’re wearing my hoodie,” I point out. I can’t help it. The sight of my worn gray fleece swallowing her frame is doing dangerous things to my heart rate. It softens her edges, making her look entirely too domestic, entirely too mine.

Jenna’s fingers tighten on the folder. A faint flush rises on her neck, visible even in the dim, fluorescent light of the shop. “It was . . . pragmatic. One of the few things I had left that was clean.”

“Right. Pragmatic.” I lean against the freshly buffed tank of the Bonneville to keep from crossing the room and pulling her into me. “And those rings on your fingers? Did you pragmatically put those on too?”

“I’m not here to discuss my fashion choices, Dominic.” Her hazel eyes narrow, the familiar combative edge cutting through her visible exhaustion. It’s the first time I’ve heard my name from her lips in weeks, and the syllables hit me squarely in the chest.

“Then what are you here to discuss, Jenna? Is there something wrong with the paperwork? You only have about two weeks left to file the annulment papers before the ninety-day window closes.”

“I’m aware.”

“Then why the in-person visit?” I ask, keeping my voice dangerously level. “FedEx works wonders, Jenna. You could have saved yourself a flight and a trip through Chicago traffic.”

She finally takes that last step off the stairs, her white sneakers silent against the concrete floor. The fluorescent light catches the gold of her wedding band again, and it feels like a punch in the center of my chest.

“I prefer to handle important matters face-to-face,” she says. “You know that.”

“I know you prefer to handle business face-to-face. Which is what this is, right?” I gesture with my chin toward the folder. “The final nail. Hand-delivered by the executioner in my favorite fleece.”

Jenna’s jaw tightens. She bridges the gap between us, stopping just outside my immediate orbit. The scent of her—bergamot and that underlying, purely Jenna scent—cuts straight through the heavy grease and exhaust fumes of the garage. It hijacks my nervous system, flooding the engine of my brain with a spark I’m too exhausted to manage.

“Stop managing me, Dominic,” she snaps, the pristine corporate veneer cracking just enough for the real, infuriated woman to peek through. “Stop trying to anticipate my moves so you can have a snappy comeback ready.”

“I’m running on fumes, sweetheart. My snappy comebacks are operating at forty percent capacity.” I push off the Bonneville, unable to maintain my casual lean. I take one step toward her, my heavy boots scraping the floor. I want to grab her hips, pull her against me, and bury my face in her neck, but my hands are coated in a layer of grime and I don’t have that right anymore. “Tell me what’s in the damn folder so I can figure out if I need to go back to rebuilding carburetors.”

She looks up at me, searching. I watch her eyes track the dark circles under mine, the harsh hollows of my cheeks, the erratic pulse beating a frantic rhythm at my jawline. Her fingers twitch against the folder, a subtle tell she’d hate that I noticed.

“You look terrible,” she whispers. The clipped professionalism is gone, replaced by something entirely too soft.

“You look fucking stunning,” I reply automatically. It’s the absolute truth. Even exhausted, even practically drowning in my hoodie, she’s the only thing in this room that makes any sense.