Changed by Dylan.

DYLAN

Dylan walked from his house to the warehouse, where the rest of the team was still working on the engine. They weren’t gods yet, but they were getting close.

Yet instead of contemplating improvements on the bit slopes, he was thinking about vibrators.

Specifically, sending one to Layla.

And maybe some lingerie. Expensive, classy stuff. He had a thing for black lace, but he could send her something in every color. But he didn’t know what size she was, so that made it tricky.

He’d go with the vibrator.

It wasn’t hard to imagine her shocked; she’d be shocked. But then she’d be interested. Very interested.

The thought made him smile. And hard. An entirely new and weird sensation. But one he was getting used to when he thought about Layla.

“Dylan!”

Margaret was waving him down from the door of his house. She was actually waving a kitchen towel at him. As if he were a plane, or a soldier leaving for war.

“What?”

He’d spent too much time arranging to send cake and talking to Layla. His team—Blake, actually—was getting pissed, and he really needed to get to the warehouse or he’d have a mutiny on his hands.

“There’s a call for you on the landline,” she said.

“Take a message.” He turned, folding and putting away thoughts of Layla and vibrators, and tried to get his head to focus on the work.

“It’s from the hospital down in Cherokee.”

That made him pause and Margaret took advantage, coming at him with the cordless phone. “I think you should take it,” she said.

Dylan stared down at the phone she was holding out to him. Layla wouldn’t use this number, so it couldn’t be her.

“Everyone on staff is here, right?”

She nodded.

Which meant it was someone in his family.

“What do they want?” He didn’t touch the phone.

Margaret’s sympathy vibe was turned way up and he realized whatever was waiting for him on the phone, it was bad.

When he was a boy and Mom was using again, he and his brother would hide all their nice shit. Anything that might be worth some money that she could sell. Bikes got buried beneath the weeds behind the apartment. Swiss Army knives and video games, shoved beneath a floorboard in Max’s room. When Dylan started racing, bringing home hundreds of dollars, Max got him a cash box and they buried it in the side yard. He’d been sixteen years old and making more than Dad as some petty soldier in the Skulls. Sometimes they didn’t see it coming until it was too late, and shit was gone before they had a chance to hide it, but they got better. Faster. Started hiding everything they got the second they got it.

Just in case.

In his head, in his gut, he was doing the same thing. Hiding everything that made him happy. Everything that made him soft. Anything that might hurt when it got ruined or driven away by whatever was waiting for him on the other end of the phone.

I’ve been an idiot, he realized. He’d let down all his guards.

“Give me that,” he said, grabbing the phone from her hand, too rough. Too mean. Margaret didn’t deserve it, but he was sharpened to an edge and anyone that got close got hurt.

“What?” he said into the phone, braced for impact.

“Dylan Daniels?” a woman asked. A nice-sounding woman, which only made him colder. Sharper.

“Speaking.”

“Are you next of kin to one Ben Daniels?”

He shifted his foot in the dirt. Widening his stance. Bracing himself for impact. “Is he dead?”

“No,” the woman rushed to say. “Gosh, no. I’m sorry I led you to think that. He’s not dead—”

“Is he dying?”

“No,” she laughed. “The man is tough as nails. I’m calling because—”

“He’s not dead and he’s not dying?”

She paused. “No, he’s not.”

“Then don’t call me until he is.”

He pressed the end button and handed it back over to Margaret.

“I need to get to work,” he said and headed back toward his garage. Toward his work. It had saved him from his family once before and he could count on it to do so again.

Pop used to do this thing when he was drunk, when Dylan and Max were young. He’d take those big fists, with the tattoos across the knuckles, and pound them against their shoulders, as if Dylan and Max were stakes and he wanted to drive them into the ground.

Remember who you come from, he’d say with every punch. Remember who you little bitches come from.

Dylan used to wobble under the force, fall to the side. His knees buckling.

Max never did. Not once.

All of Pop’s friends…his brothers, would laugh and get Max a drink. A shot. A joint. A girl. Whatever reward for toughness was available. Dylan never learned that toughness from his dad. He wanted his pop to be like other dads, his mom to be like other moms. He wanted them all to be a family, like the ones on TV. The ones that did nice things for one another.

Sweet things.

It wasn’t until he got sent away that he learned how to be tough. The toughest, actually.

He was forged steel.

And he was forgetting. Layla was making him forget.

He came from a long line of villains. And that shit couldn’t be forgotten. Couldn’t be erased with cake.

You need to remember who you are, he thought. Because you told her not to go building any fantasy around you, and now look at you.

Cake. What the fuck was he thinking?

He’d send another package. More honest this time.

Dylan Daniels was still the beast. The bad guy in the stories. Layla just didn’t know it yet. And he was forgetting. He was letting himself forget. Because he’d somehow gotten addicted to the sound of her voice. The way her voice made him feel.

Sometimes it was nice pretending to be the hero.

But it was time to stop.

ANNIE

Another package arrived from Dylan the next day.

“What are you doing, girl?” Kevin asked, handing me the package. He’d brought it out to me as I was locking up the shed after work. It was a perfect, hot day. Bright sun. Cool breeze. I’d jumped back in the swimming hole today and felt cool and sleek all the way through.

“Nothing, why?” I had no experience playing it cool and I failed miserably at it.

“Seems to me like you got yourself a long-distance admirer.”

“And so what if I do?” I asked, laughing. Because I did! I had myself a long-distance admirer! Blood rushed to all of my skin, a full-body blush as I thought of yesterday. How I couldn’t say no to him. Wouldn’t say no. Why would I?

“You…sure that’s smart?” he asked. I blinked, surprised he would ask. “It’s just…you know when you showed up here, you looked like you’d—”

I stiffened and turned away, horrified by the memory. That he would bring it up. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, I hear that a lot from people and they’re lying to me,” he said.

“I’m not lying.”

He looked like he was about to say something else. Something about the box. Maybe about the guy who gave it to me and I was touched, I really was. But I didn’t need his concern.

“Thank you, Kevin,” I told him. “But you don’t need to worry about me.”

I walked away from him, back to my trailer. But I felt his eyes on me the whole way.

—

Once inside my trailer, I tore open the box. On top was a folded-up piece of paper, two twenty-dollar bills, and a sticky note.

If you still decide to go,buy yourself some drinks at that strip club, the note said.