The van hated mornings almost as much as she did, groaning like a hungover animal every time she tried to coax it awake.
Harper lay half-upside-down in the driver's footwell, her body contorted to reach the wiring. Her shoulders were pressed to the floor mat for stability, hips wedged against the edge of the driver's seat, and her boots hooked over the seat's backrest for leverage. Her copper hair clung to her sweaty cheek in the city's thick humidity.
Lena was leaned back in the passenger seat, one boot propped high on the dashboard, tapping her nails against the window in a restless rhythm.
"You sure you're not just bad at foreplay?" Lena crooned, leaning over the center console to peer at Harper's contorted face in the footwell.
"Keep talking and I'll make you walk." Harper muttered, unsuccessfully trying to blow a strand of hair from her face. Her hand slipped free long enough to flip Lena off before diving back under the dash. The panel rattled under her touch, loose as every other salvaged piece of the van.
The hard plastic caught as it shifted and bit a hot line across her middle knuckle. Harper hissed under her breath, more offended than hurt, and dug her fingers back into the tangle of wires.
"Oh, look at you, getting feisty," Lena chuckled, a bright, easy sound.
"I'm feisty," Harper snarled, jamming her elbow against the floor mat. "Because I'm wedged in the footwell of this fucking van that's a decade older than me."
She jerked her head out from under the dash long enough to glare at Lena.
"On a Sunday morning, when I should be—" she ducked back in, smacking the steering column for emphasis, "sleeping!"
Harper released the wires and shoved herself up, dragging her torso out from under the steering column. She unhooked her boots from the backrest and twisted, dropping into the driver's seat with an ungraceful thump. She took a deep breath and grinned, all teeth and triumph.
"See?" she said. "She just needed a little patience."
Lena grinned back, lifting her foot from the dash. "Atta girl, Firecracker. Took you long enough. Now get us rolling before some rent-a-cop decides to check the time on his rounds." She leaned down, snatched up the shattered plastic of the steering column shroud from the floor, and tossed it into the back seat.
Harper shifted the van into drive. It shuddered in protest, a low mechanical complaint that rattled through the floorboards, but it moved. She eased it out of the alley and the city unfolded—East Halworth, gray and grimy in the dawn light. Half the streetlights were still burning, sickly yellow against the pale sky—the city too broken to turn them off on schedule. Steam curled from storm drains, clinging to the cracked façades of old warehouses that leaned toward each other like tired men. A delivery drone buzzed overhead, its red beacon sweeping across graffiti-stained brick and broken glass glittering in the gutters. Somewhere, a siren yawned itself into existence and gave up halfway through.
The engine suddenly stuttered, coughing hard enough to rattle the steering wheel in Harper's grip. She glanced down at the gauge cluster, her gaze snapping to the fuel indicator. The needle twitched, bouncing between a quarter tank and empty in erratic jerks. The temperature gauge hovered just shy of the red, the needle trembling like it was deciding whether to commit.
"Don't you dare," Harper muttered, more to the dash than to Lena. "You just have to make it a few more blocks."
Lena leaned forward, squinting at the dancing gauges. "She'll make it," she said with lazy conviction. "She likes you."
"I don't like her," Harper said. "I like not pushing this heap down the street."
"That's where you and she disagree," Lena said, unfazed. She patted the dashboard—once, twice—like she was coaxing life back into a stray. "You've got this, sweetheart. Couple more blocks."
The van hit a pothole, the impact jarring through the frame and rattling the loose panel under the dash. For a split second Harper was sure the engine would give up entirely. Instead it smoothed out again, settling into its familiar rough idle, as if Lena's encouragement had actually worked.
Harper shot her a sidelong look. "Did you just—"
"Told you," Lena said, grinning as she leaned back in her seat. "She's got spirit."
Harper shook her head, something between amusement and disbelief tugging at the corner of her mouth, and turned her focus back to the road. The van rumbled past a derelict building whose windows were boarded up with sheets of rusted metal, the façade tagged with overlapping gang symbols she'd long since memorized.
The road narrowed, the van's mirrors nearly brushing the walls on either side. This stretch of East Halworth was a patchwork—warehouse beside tenement, a half-collapsed auto shop wedged between offices that hadn't seen power in years. Rusted signage swung on single chains. Across the street, a three-story apartment block leaned toward the road, its windows patched in plywood and tarp.
Harper eased the van toward a freight building on their side, its corrugated siding streaked with rust and patched where someone had tried, badly, to keep the weather out. A dented loading bay sat flush with the street, beside it a set of metal stairs climbing to a sagging door. The whole place looked like it should've been condemned years ago.
Which was exactly why it worked.
Harper rolled to a stop, and the engine settled into a tired idle. Heat bled off the hood, carrying the tang of oil and exhaust. Beside her, Lena cracked her knuckles, shoved the door open, and dropped to the curb. Her boots rang against the pavement as she crossed to the loading bay, tugging on the pull chain that hung from the frame.
The chain clattered and the bay door groaned its way upward, spilling a slice of yellow light onto the street. Harper eased the van forward, headlights sweeping over cracked concrete and a mural of a coiled red viper painted across the bay's back wall. The serpent's fangs were chipped where the paint had peeled, its eyes two bullet holes in the plaster.
The van rolled fully inside and idled while Lena stepped in out of the weak gray morning and the flickering spill from a streetlamp, fingers finding the chain again. Metal links rasped through her grip as she hauled down; the bay door answered in a long, complaining grind as it ground its way shut. The outside world narrowed to a thinning strip of gray, then vanished with a final hollow clank that shivered up through the frame.
Harper killed the engine. The van shuddered once, a last exhausted complaint, and then silence folded in around them—heavy after the rasping idle, thick with the echo of the closing door and the insect hum of overworked fluorescents.
Lena cut a path past the nose of the van, heading deeper into the bay, her silhouette slipping between stacked tires and the bones of a stripped-down bike like she'd walked this route in worse light and worse hours.
Climbing down from the driver's seat, Harper dropped to the floor, boots grinding into a skin of grit and rubber dust.
The garage unfolded around her in layers: a low ceiling crossed with rust-flecked beams; concrete walls glazed with the sweat of old oil; air dense with diesel, solder, and the ghosts of cigarettes smoked down to the filter. Fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead, washing everything in tired yellow.
Metal slipped and went clattering—
Harper's gaze tracked the sound. From deeper in the bay, someone cursed softly—Wedge, probably, wrestling with whatever he'd dropped. Pegboard sheets bowed under hanging tools to her right; stacked tires rose like black columns to her left. A half-gutted sedan sat up on stands, hood yawning open, wiring hanging like veins.
"Careful with that," a voice drawled from behind the sedan, low and amused, the sound cutting through the hum of the fluorescents. "That's the one that tried to take my knuckle off last week."
Dante came up into view over the open hood, then rounded the fender toward Harper, dragging a grease-blackened rag through his hands. His leather jacket sat open over a dark tee, collar skewed, dark curls shoved back from his forehead in a way that said he'd done it with his wrist mid-job. Grease lived in the lines of his knuckles and along the heel of his palm, but his grin was clean and immediate when his eyes found Harper—bright, unguarded warmth that hit like a porch light flipping on.
A stool scraped. Harper's eyes tracked the movement—Skiv, uncoiling from behind a stripped-down bike frame with that lazy, unbothered economy he wore like a second skin. He shrugged his hood back as he came to settle just off Dante's shoulder; his hair was longer, falling in uneven waves that brushed his jaw, his gaze steady under dark brows, weighing the scene without hurry. Oil smudged his fingers; the same workshop grime streaked his sleeves and the front of his zipped-up hoodie, like he'd been elbow-deep in this place since before dawn. He bent to hook the runaway wrench off the floor with two fingers.
"Told you she'd drag that corpse home," Skiv said, flipping the wrench once and catching it with an easy snap of his wrist before tossing it onto the top of the tool chest.
"About time," Dante added, eyes never quite leaving Harper. "Thought you two eloped."
Lena snorted from somewhere near the stacked tires, the sound bouncing off concrete and metal. "Eloped in that thing? She wouldn't survive the honeymoon. One pothole and it'd die on the altar."
"Wedge is gonna love that mental image," Skiv said, still spinning the wrench. "Van dies before he's done with her, he'll make us all hand-deliver parts across the city."
Dante closed the distance in a few unhurried strides that still landed like a straight line drawn to her and nowhere else. His hand came up, warm and rough, fingers sliding into the hair at the back of her neck as his other arm folded around her waist and pulled her in. The kiss he gave her was unhurried but certain, the kind that didn't ask permission because it had been granted a hundred times before—coffee on his breath, gum and smoke and sweat and something that was just him, familiar enough to unknot something tight in her chest.
"Hey," he whispered when he finally broke for air, the word softer than the grin curving his mouth. "You good?"
A quiet huff of a laugh slipped out of her, unguarded, her forehead resting against his. "Better now," she said, not bothering to hide it.
"Yeah," Dante said, his thumb stroking once at the nape of her neck like he was memorising her all over again. "Thought so."
When he let her go, her hand stayed an extra second, fingers flattening over the crimson serpent on his chest—the patch worn soft from wear. She turned to Skiv.
"Tell me it wasn't you who picked that absolute hunk of garbage," Harper said, tipping her chin toward the van squatting in the middle of the bay like a guilty dog.
Skiv had been watching them with that loose, half-amused focus of his, wrench still dangling from his fingers. At the accusation, his mouth tugged up and he glanced over his shoulder at the van like he was genuinely offended on its behalf.
"Hunk of garbage?" he echoed. "Harper, that is a 1996 Chevrolet SportVan." He said it like reciting scripture. "She's not garbage. She's a classic. And," his brows lifted as he looked back at her, "she is very easy to lift."
"Mm." Harper lifted her hand between them, extending the middle finger just far enough to show a raw scrape along her knuckle where the hard plastic had bitten skin. "Tell that to my hand."
"That's operator error," Skiv laughed, the sound low and unbothered. "She treated you real gentle compared to most."
Dante caught Harper's wrist before she could fire back, tugging her hand toward him. His thumb brushed the reddened skin, turning it into something small and important in his palm.
"C'mon, Harp," he chuckled, bringing her scraped knuckle to his mouth. "Gotta stop letting these old girls bully you."
He pressed a slow, exaggerated kiss to the sting, eyes flicking up to hers as he did it, grin tucked into the corner of his mouth like he knew exactly how much of a show he was making for Skiv and Lena and didn't care in the slightest.
Harper laughed under her breath, tugging her hand back and giving the worn patch on his jacket a quick, familiar tap. "Okay, showboat. Miracle on four wheels is in one piece. What now?"
"Now," a voice called from deeper in the bay, "the real work starts."
Wedge shouldered his way out from between two shelving units, boots scattering a path through a sprawl of hoses and discarded engine parts. He wore exhaustion like another tattoo, ink climbing his forearms in faded coils and teeth, his light hair yanked back, grease streaked across his jaw. The grin he slung at them was wide and wolfish.
"She needs work," Wedge said, circling the van with a critical eye. "They always do. But we've got two weeks to get her ready for the next run. I'll tear her down tomorrow, see what we're dealing with."
Lena stepped in beside Harper, looping an arm around her shoulders, weight warm and familiar. "Two weeks," she echoed, sing-song. "What a coincidence."
Harper side-eyed her. "Don't."
"What?" Lena blinked, all fake innocence. "I can't be excited for your birthday?"
"About the van. Be excited about the van."
"I am excited about the van." Lena squeezed her, lowering her voice. "And about your big day riding its tail."
Dante's arm slipped around Harper's waist again, easy and sure, drawing her in against his side as the others peeled off toward the work. "Two weeks and change," he breathed against her temple, just for her. "C'mon, Harp. It's not every day you turn eigh—"
"I know what day it is," Harper cut in, her voice flatter than she meant. "I don't need a countdown."
He stilled, the teasing knocked out of his expression in an instant. His arm didn't drop, but the hold eased, less of a pull and more of a steadying weight at her back.
"Okay," he said quietly, close enough that only she could hear it. "No countdowns. Just coffee."
Guilt pricked, quick and mean. He hadn't earned that bite; the date had. Harper nudged her hip into his, a deliberate little peace offering, and tipped her head briefly against his shoulder.
"Coffee sounds perfect," she said, softer. "With you."
Dante huffed a quiet laugh, brushing his mouth over her hair. "Then let's get it before Lena drinks the decent stuff."
Across the bay, Wedge barked something about stripped bolts; Skiv answered with a foul suggestion and the metallic clatter of tools. Lena was already climbing up onto a stack of tires to supervise, boots thudding, voice carrying.
Harper let the noise wash over her—the bickering, the scrape of metal, the low hum of tired lights, Dante's hand warm at her hip. Concrete under her boots, the bullet-holed viper staring down, her people exactly where they were supposed to be.
For now, it was enough.