Anvil novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Grease

Lizzie's POV

On Saturday morning Birdie's bike chain slipped for the third time on the riverside path.

She stood over the pink frame with her arms crossed and her chin out.

"It's broken," she announced. "Mom, it's totally broken."

"I'll look at it," Tucker said.

He had walked the half mile from his motel with no bike and no vest, in jeans and the gray flannel.

He had been on time, and he had been on foot, and I had hated how much I had noticed both.

He crouched in the gravel and turned the bike over on its seat.

Birdie squatted beside him and watched his hands.

"You hold the wheel and I'll hold the chain," he told her. "Together."

"Together," she said seriously.

I stood three feet away with a thermos of coffee and my back against a maple tree.

All night I had thought about the scratches on that lock.

I had gotten up at two and checked it with a flashlight.

The padlock had held, and the box was where it belonged, and I still could not sleep.

I had not told Tucker.

I did not know yet what he was to me, and I knew exactly what the box was.

"Lizzie, you have a rag?"

I dug one out of my bag and held it out.

He reached up for it.

His fingers were black with grease, and they closed over the cloth, and they missed.

His thumb dragged across my cheekbone and stopped there.

It was warm. It was rough. It left a streak I could feel from my eye to my jaw.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Anvil from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.