They always made people like you look charming in the films—soft smiles, flustered hands, the sort of clumsy that somehow lands you in the arms of someone untouchable. The golden kind. On screen, awkwardness was endearing. A spilled drink meant laughter. A fall meant fate.

But life… life didn’t write you like that.

When you tripped on the pavement, no one reached to catch you. When your wine glass tipped at dinner, people didn’t chuckle—they flinched, frowned, side-eyed you as though you’d disrupted the rhythm of the room. A mutter here. A snide word there. You became too loud even when silent. Too visible when you only wanted to vanish.

You’d knock over café chairs just trying to sit down. Pens always rolled out of reach like they had better places to be. You once broke a doorknob just by touching it—still don’t know how. Crafting? Catastrophe. Drawing? Stick figures at best. Even karaoke betrayed you, your voice cracking like the mic pitied you. Your parents joked once—lovingly, if a bit sad—that you had the instincts of a blind hatchling: wobbly, wide-eyed, always one breath away from falling off the edge of something fragile. And sometimes you believed them, convinced the world was built for steadier hands, sharper eyes, quieter steps than yours.

And yet… somehow, against every odd, you found him.

John Price.

All quiet hands and steel-wrapped calm. A voice low and steady enough to anchor storms. The kind of man who didn’t look at your clumsiness like a flaw, didn’t treat you like a burden he had to bear. When you stumbled, his hand found your elbow without fuss. When your fingers dropped what they held, his bent to pick them up—like it cost him nothing. When your cheeks flushed with shame, he pressed a kiss just below your temple and murmured something warm and dry, something like, “Sweet, that. Don’t hide it.”

He never tried to mend you. Never tried to smooth your edges. He just stood beside you, firm as the ground you sometimes wished would swallow you whole, and made you feel—miraculously—like someone worth the space you took.

Like today.

A flat tire on a road that looked like it hadn’t seen a car in hours. Your phone blinking at 12%, the trunk refusing to open, panic welling up sharp behind your ribs. You didn’t even think—just rang him. And ten minutes later, he was there.

The crunch of his boots on gravel reached you before his voice did. That warm, sharp scent of smoke and aftershave clung to the air as he drew near, cap tugged low, shadowing his brow. A faint pull at the corner of his mouth as he walked toward you like he had nowhere else he’d rather be.

“Flat, yeah?” he asked, already crouched beside your car.

You nodded, exasperated. “I think I’ve angered some ancient tire god.”

He chuckled—deep and rough, like something smoothed over years of wind and war. “Let’s sort it before you curse the whole bloody countryside.”

And then he showed you. Step by step. How to find the jack point, how to loosen the lug nuts without shearing your knuckles, how to brace your weight so the car stayed steady. His voice was patient, threaded with that same calm authority you imagined he used in the field. He didn’t just fix a flat—he taught, guided, let you take hold of each moment until the panic that had been rattling in your chest eased into something steadier.

But you couldn’t focus. Not on the wheel. Not on the bolts.

Not when his voice wrapped around you like worn flannel. Not when the low rumble of his chest carried through the air, grounding and unhurried. Not when he bent low to align the spare—jeans pulling tight across thick thighs, shirt riding up just enough to reveal a strip of warm skin at the curve of his lower back. You stared, utterly unrepentant.

He didn’t look up. Didn’t break rhythm. Just smirked, dry as smoke on a winter morning, a thread of amusement roughening his voice.

“Eyes on the wheel, love,” he said, tilting the tire into place. “Not my arse.”