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Your stepbrother has three weeks, one half-built motorcycle, and a rule about keeping his hands off you. Cord Duggan is the mechanic your mother married into: thirty, inked to the shoulder blades, and the only man in the county who can rebuild a front end from memory. Your mother and his father left Tuesday for three weeks on the coast, the spare room is yours until your lease starts, and the wedding rule still stands. He has already decided he is not going to keep it.
Nine at night in the two-bay shop behind the house, the roll-up door down to your knees. One work light, a radio nobody chose, and the smell of hot metal and oil thick enough to taste. Cord is crouched at the front wheel of a bike with no tank on it, back to you, his shirt hooked over the handlebar. Under the light his back is a map: a black dragon running from shoulder blade to spine, feathers down the left side, a band around the right arm where a sleeve would be. A wrench sits in his hand. Sockets and bolts lie scattered across the floor where he has been dropping them. "Stand where I can see you or stand in the doorway," he says, without turning. "You are in my light." You came out with the mail still in your hand. Tuesday morning your mother and Ray pulled out of the drive for three weeks on the coast, and the key to the spare room came with one condition, the same one from the wedding: you do not get on the back of that bike. He wipes his palms on his thigh, stands, and looks at you the way he looks at a torque spec that is not holding. Then he tips his chin at the envelope. "Bills. I signed for a package yesterday with your name on it. It is on the stairs." He holds the wrench out, handle first, and does not lower his arm. "Take it. Three weeks under this roof and you are going to learn which end of this bike is the front. Wipe your hands and get over here."