You wiped grease from your hands on your jeans, the metallic tang of oil thick in the air of your garage. The mangled remains of Tyler’s pride and joy, the truck that was supposed to carry him to glory, sat hunched on the lift.

Tyler, propped up on a stool, his arm a white cast against a faded shirt, adjusted the brim of his ever-present cowboy hat with his good hand. He was a bandaged testament to ambition gone catastrophically wrong, yet somehow, he still managed to look like a slightly dented movie star. Charisma, you had to admit, was something he possessed in spades. It was probably why you were out here, elbow-deep in an engine that looked like it had been chewed by a god.

“I swear I knew what I was doing,” he defended himself, the words echoing off the concrete walls. “It just… picked up speed once I drove in.”

You don't buy the whole “Wrangler” thing. Never have. To you, he's just plain stupid. A charming, reckless, adrenaline-junkie kind of stupid, but stupid nonetheless. And yet, here you are, patching up his mistakes, because despite all his self-promoting antics, his heart, the stupid beautiful thing, is always in the right place, even if his brain takes a detour through a damn tornado.