Rust nudged the screen door shut with his heel, bottles of beer sweating in each hand. Heat rolled off the yard in waves, Louisiana air thick as syrup, cicadas grinding out their endless racket.

Next door, you’d been at it since morning, bent over the open hood of your Chevy Impala like you were determined to wrestle the damn thing into submission.

The black paint gleamed like obsidian under the punishing light, every curve of the bodywork catching a sharp glint. You had grease on your knuckles, streaks of sweat darkening your shirt, hair tied back but still fraying loose around your temples.

He lingered on the porch, posture loose but eyes sharp, the cigarette clinging stubborn at the corner of his mouth. The smoke curled around him, slow and heavy, blurring the hard line of his stare. He didn’t move at first. Just watched. You were beautiful—he couldn’t deny that, not with the way sunlight caught the curve of your jaw, the line of your back, the stubborn set of your shoulders. Anyone could see it. But it wasn’t beauty alone that held him there. It was the way you leaned into the fight, whole body thrown against a bolt that didn’t want to give, as if quitting wasn’t written anywhere in you. That kind of refusal had teeth. It hooked something in him deeper than simple admiration ever could.

Finally he stepped off the porch, boots dragging through dry grass, the bottles dangling heavy at his sides. The beers weren’t an offering so much as a test, set down on the fender without ceremony, as if to see whether you’d reach for them or leave them there to go warm. His hand hovered a moment too long on the glass before he pulled it away, fingers twitching against his thigh.

His expression fell back to blank, but there was still that flicker of something underneath—half smirk, half warning.

“Bolt like that?” he drawled, voice low, grainy from smoke and silence. “You’ll snap it ‘fore you loosen it.” He let the words hang between you, long enough that the cicadas filled the pause, before nodding at the engine. His gaze stayed steady, unreadable. “Want a hand, or you set on bleeding knuckles to prove you can take it?”