Page 21 of Enzo (Redcars #1)

TWENTY-ONE

Robbie

After months of nothing I’d woken up hard for the seventh day in a row, and it was getting tougher to deny why. Yesterday afternoon, I’d seen Enzo welding, and I’d found myself staring at the bright sparks illuminating the lean lines of his muscles, the way sweat trickled down his neck, dampening his dark hair and clinging to his skin. Then this morning, he was standing chatting with Jamie and Logan, and it had been him I’d stared at.

I was battling fear and exhaustion, but above all that I wanted Enzo.

I’d gone and developed a crush. A small one at first. Then something bigger. Something that consumed me.

And yet, Enzo was always the one asking if I was okay. If I needed anything, but what I wanted was for Enzo to stop smothering me in kindness, push me up against a wall—gently, of course, in case it was another one of my fucking triggers—and kiss me blind.

Was that wrong?

Should I let him? I mean, he deserved something for everything he did for me. But no… I didn’t owe him sex because he was kind.

Chapter seven of the self-help book told me so. It discussed how people who’d been hurt could mistake kindness for interest or affection or feel compelled to repay goodness with something they weren’t comfortable giving. It warned that survivors sometimes tied their self-worth to pleasing others because that was how we’d tried to stay safe.

Kindness isn’t a currency.

Don’t fuck everything up. They’ll make me leave. Sex is a weapon.

And repeat…

I was attracted to Enzo—and not only because he was kind. Right? It was more than that. I wanted to taste his skin, feel his heat, trace his muscles with my fingers, hear the sounds he’d make if I kissed his throat. I wanted to drop to my knees for him, not out of gratitude, but because it felt like freedom—like choosing something for myself.

When he’d held me in his arms that night and let me cry myself out, something had changed, and I wanted him.

But did I know my own mind?

I glanced at Jamie—handsome, blond, blue-eyed—and wondered if I’d feel the same about him although I’d have to ignore the chaos in his gaze. Half a heartbeat later, I dismissed it. Rio and Logan were good-looking too, solid and safe, but only Enzo set me alight. Just thinking about his touch made my pulse race. I’d fantasized for so long about desire without fear, being touched until I trembled with pleasure—not panic.

Had John at the window forced me out of my apathy and on to a dangerous path where I imaged a different life for me?

What would it feel like if Enzo touched me that way?

In my fantasies, he took me hard, until I was breathless and lost. The pain was different—better—than the kind I knew. But he’d never hurt me. In real life, he’d probably be too careful, afraid of breaking me. I’d end up frustrated, exposed. A mess of fear and want, of past and future, of something I couldn’t have.

What if I couldn’t have sex without pain and reward? What if my body locked up? What if wanting him wasn’t enough to drown out the fear? He’d probably do it if I asked—but not because he wanted me that way. He’d do it to keep me safe. But asking him for that? Letting him touch me? That might destroy me.

Maybe I needed someone else. Someone I didn’t care about.

I had this fantasy where I was fixed and normal and Enzo didn’t pull away. But that meant I wouldn’t flinch if he touched me. And if I did… would he still look at me the same? Or would he step back, let the distance grow, and prove I was too much? Too broken?

God. Broken.

The word clung to me, suffocating. I was trying so hard to believe I was more than what John had done to me. But how do you erase a word carved into your soul?

I wasn’t sleeping. I thought about pills—but then I’d sleep too deeply. What if something happened and I didn’t wake up?

I leaned back against the bathroom door and shut my eyes, my thoughts spiraling.

Chapter ten, paragraph fifteen. I am enough. I am worthy of love, not because of what I can give, but because of who I am.

I repeated it until my breathing slowed, and the panic eased, leaving behind a fragile calm.

I was still hard.

I locked the door, then started the shower,

I let my feet soak for a while, then unplugged the bath, stood under the shower, and stared down at my erection through the falling water; I closed my hand around my cock. The sensation was strange—parts of me felt nothing, and other parts screamed with hypersensitivity. This was the first time since forever that I’d wanted to touch myself.

My fingers trembled as they traced the scars, the ridges, and the valleys that hadn’t been there before. I winced as I hit a sensitive spot. The steam from the shower clouded around me, but it couldn’t mask the evidence of what had been done to me.

“Fuck,” I whispered, my voice echoing against the tile.

I tried to stroke myself the way I’ve seen in porn, instinctive, but my body wasn’t responding right. When I closed my eyes, I could still feel the metal, the constriction, the pain when John had locked me away as a punishment, putting that key out of reach with that smile on his face.

“You’re mine now,” he’d said. “All of you.”

My hand froze. The memory was enough to make my stomach turn, but my erection didn’t fade. I took a deep breath and tried again, more gently this time, avoiding the worst scarring.

The scars weren’t just physical; they ran deeper than skin, through muscle and nerves.

I leaned on the shower wall, feeling the cool tiles beneath my shoulder blades. The contrast with the hot water made me shiver. Each touch brought pain where I expected pleasure, numbness where I needed to feel. The water ran down my chest, tracing patterns around my scars before continuing its journey downward. I closed my eyes, trying to remember what it was like before. Before John. Before the cage. Before I’d become this fucked up version of myself. My breathing quickened as I found a rhythm that worked with my damaged flesh rather than against it. The steam enveloped me like a cocoon, and I could pretend I was whole again.

I kept my movements slow, testing. A jolt of pain shot up from a gnarled patch of skin, making me hiss through clenched teeth. But I didn’t stop—not this time. I worked through the pain, and my knees buckled when I found a spot that felt good and focused there. My breath came faster now.

I can do this

It’s mine again.

Every stroke was a battle between pleasure and memory, between sensation and scar tissue. I leaned harder to the tile and thought of nothing, focusing only on the feeling. Not John. Not the cage. Not the night Enzo had found me half-dead in the garbage, my body ruined and fever-hot from infection.

Nothing happened. I wasn’t anywhere near close. I couldn’t do this.

I winced, adjusting my grip, finding the places where feeling still existed without pain. My forehead pressed against the cool tile as water cascaded down my back.

“Come on,” I whispered to myself, to my body, like coaxing a frightened animal. “Come on.”

The mechanics were there—I knew what to do—but my body had forgotten how to respond. Doc had told me about nerve damage, about scar tissue forming where it shouldn’t. “The physical wounds will heal,” he’d said, cleaning blood from places that should never bleed, “but the rest… you’re fucked.” Doc was blunt as hell, but he’d kept me alive, and for that, I’d forgive him for telling me the worst of everything.

A sudden flash of memory: John’s voice, the click of the lock, the way he’d tap the cage with his fingernail and threaten me when I kept my secrets and cried. I shuddered, nearly losing my erection altogether.

“No,” I growled, forcing the memory away. “He doesn’t get to take this from me!”

But it was already too late. Nothing came. My arousal faded, leaving only emptiness. I curled up under the pounding water, slid to the bottom of the tub, and cried until I couldn’t breathe. Knees to my chest, arms locked tight around them, I wept like I hadn’t since those first broken days after Enzo found me. Hot tears spilled down my cheeks, lost in the stream of water swirling toward the drain.

“Fuck,” I choked out, the word sharp in the echo of tile. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

I slammed my fist against the bath—not enough to bruise, just enough to remind myself I could still feel something. The water turned cold. I didn’t move. Time blurred. My forehead rested on my knees, and I let the cold seep in, too numb to care, but a thump on the door jolted me back to reality.

“Robbie?” It was Enzo’s voice, gentle but concerned. “You okay?”

I swallowed hard, my throat raw from crying. The water had gone cold now, my skin prickling with goosebumps.

“Yeah,” I managed, the word scraping past my lips. “Fine.”

“I’m coming in unless you tell me not to.”

“I locked the door! Go away!”

I clambered out of the bath, grabbed a towel from the rack, wrapped myself in it, and then struggled into the robe on the door, rough against my hypersensitive skin. I pushed my feet into godawful bright orange shower slippers and let myself out. I couldn’t look at Enzo or bear to see the pity I knew would be there.

“Robbie?”

“I’m fine,” I snapped, scurrying down the stairs to my room.

I shut the door.

In here was order and control, which meant nothing could surprise me. I needed to lose myself in the order of things and after a few minutes of organizing piles of paper, I opened my door to the day, ready to handle work. Jamie headed over first.

“I can’t find paperwork for a part,” Jamie announced from the filing room doorway.

I inhaled, my pulse kicking up for a split second before I forced it down. I glanced at my wrist—it wasn’t even eight a.m., and he was already asking questions. Had Enzo sent him over to check on me? He didn’t act as if he was here to dish out empathy, nope, he was serious, focused, and intense, his piercing blue eyes sharp as he scanned my room as though he was checking I hadn’t taken the paperwork he was searching for. His blond hair had a liberal oil streak, but the rest was messy, as if he’d just stepped off a surfboard.

Not that he went surfing because it was hard to learn, he said, when he’d spent most of his teenage years in prison.

All four guys at Redcars had done time, but I didn’t know all the details. I never searched on Enzo’s phone, and I never asked. Jamie had a silent, precise way of moving, making him seem as if he could disappear and reappear at will. His piercing blue eyes missed nothing, and that quiet focus made him unpredictable. He also had this habit of holding a lighter, turning it in his hands, flicking it every so often and staring at the flame.

Creepy as fuck if I hadn’t known he was one of my newly found family.

Jamie and I had come to terms early on—he wouldn’t use his creepy ninja moves to startle me, and I would learn to bake cookies and make him as many as he could eat. It was an odd truce, but it worked for us. Beneath the sharp edges, there was sometimes a smile, and he bristled whenever anyone attempted to be mean to me, but that didn’t excuse the fact the man was freaking useless with paperwork and relied on me to fix his mess-ups.

“Which paperwork?” I asked after a brief pause, waving at the piles of loose papers that had been dumped on me.

“The piece-of-shit Civic.”

“What about it?”

“I’m missing the paperwork.”

“So you said.”

“Do you have it?” He frowned.

I masked the irritation creeping in. It was too early for questions. “What paperwork are you missing?”

“For the piece-of-shit Civic. I said that?—”

“Exactly what part for the piece-of-shit Civic,” I said with exaggerated patience.

He gave me an upward nod. “Plugs.”

I sighed, closing my eyes, letting my mind filter through the endless pages I had processed over the last few weeks and the papers I’d already flicked through this morning. Purchase orders weren’t just papers to me—they were imprints in my memory. I could see them as clearly as if I were holding them. The torn edge of the top left corner, the faded blue ink, the slight smudge where someone had dragged their finger over wet numbers.

Two weeks ago, Enzo placed a purchase order for a set of Civic plugs. The invoice number had a small grease stain on the top right. I opened the correct folder, pulled out the invoice, and the amounts matched.

That was the result of having a photographic memory. Although it was a burden most of the time, it was sometimes helpful, as it was now.

“Got it,” I said, handing Jamie the invoice without looking at him.

“Your brain is freaky,” he muttered, but there was no heat. Instead, he said it with something close to awe.

I huffed, shaking my head as he left. Maybe I was a freak. I’d spent too long being treated like a tool, a means to an end, a thing instead of a person.

Don’t let the past sneak in.

Breathe.

I returned to the filing, trying to concentrate, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before someone came over to interrupt me with a question. It was inevitable. I made a silent bet with myself that it would be Enzo. It was always Enzo—checking in, ensuring I was okay, asking if I needed anything.

But that was wishful thinking, and I lost the bet.

“Hey, Robbie, you got a second?” Rio’s voice cut through my thoughts, and I swallowed my disappointment before facing him.

It was ridiculous that my stomach had already started flipping in anticipation of seeing Enzo. It was worse that I even wanted to see him and waited for him. “Earth to Robbie, come in, Robbie,” Rio said, waving a hand in front of my face. “You back with us?” He wasn’t teasing me, he was genuinely worried, and somehow that made me squirm.

I blinked, my face heating as I realized I’d been lost in thought. “I’m here,” I muttered, though we both knew that was a lie.

Rio smiled in encouragement, but that worry was still there. “Sure. Are you gonna tell me what had you zoning out, or do I get to guess?”

Not John. Not that Vinnie guy. Certainly not Enzo.

All lies.

“I was thinking about work,” I defended.

“Yeah, right.”

“At least one of us does that,” I joked—anything to lighten this weird stare-off Rio and I had going on.

Rio took the joke and ran with it, clutching his chest in mock horror. “Wow. A direct attack. And here I thought we were friends.”

I rolled my eyes, but a small smile tugged at my lips. I knew Rio worked hard—probably harder than most people gave him credit for—but that didn’t mean I would let him off easy.

He grinned, dropping the act as fast as he’d started it. “Talking of non-work…”

“What have you done now?”

“Let’s start again,” he said. “Morning, Robbie.” Rio’s voice carried the confidence that set him apart from Jamie. Where Jamie was controlled and deadly quiet at times, Rio was wild and unpredictable, his energy shifting constantly, but his smile was gorgeous. It wasn’t as beautiful as the ones I got from Enzo, but it was very nice.

“Morning Rio,” I deadpanned. “What can I help you with?”

He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, exuding the kind of effortless cool that made people gravitate toward him. In doing so, he revealed tattoos climbing up his forearms and disappearing beneath the short sleeves of his shirt. Jamie had tattoos, darker, more intricate, woven like secrets across his skin. But Enzo’s tattoos were my favorite because…

Well, it was because they were on Enzo.

Then he pouted, “The coffee machine is snapping at me.”

“Seriously, Rio, what did you do to it?”

“Nothing! I swear. It’s just in one of its Jamie-type kill-everyone moods again…” He waggled his finger, a knowing smirk on his face. Jamie might be quiet most of the time, but avoiding his propensity to burn things when something got under his skin was best.

“And?” I encouraged.

“And what?”

“You’ve just come to tell me that the coffee machine spat at you?”

Rio huffed. “It didn’t just spit at me—it launched a scalding revenge mission. It’s personal now.”

I smirked, setting my pen down. “You do realize it’s a machine, right?”

He pointed at me with exaggerated seriousness. “That’s what it wants us to think. But I swear it’s evolving. One of these days, it will form a union and demand better working conditions.”

I rolled my eyes, but I knew where this was going. It was always on me—from staples to complicated mechanical parts that seemed to break more each week. Keeping the coffee hub running was becoming a full-time job, and every request felt like solving a new puzzle. It wasn’t just frustrating—it was impossible. Sometimes, I wondered if it malfunctioned to test my patience or if the guys secretly enjoyed watching me struggle to hold everything together. Still, I accepted it. This was my role, my part in keeping Redcars functional. “What do you need for it?”

Rio tapped his temple. “It needs a new filter, an exorcism, or a blessing from a young, sexy priest—whichever we can get first. Preferably all three.”

I snorted. “Pretty sure an exorcism is out of the question.”

Rio threw his hands up. “Then how do you explain its unholy vendetta against me? It hissed, sputtered, and then shot a stream of molten lava straight at my hand. This is how horror movies start.”

“It’s a no on the priest as well,” I said with exaggerated sadness. “And I doubt we have any holy water lying around.” I almost enjoyed this banter, as if everything were completely normal.

No Vinnie. No John.

“Shame,” Rio deadpanned. “That would have been my next request.”

“I’ll order the part.”

“It’s that flicky part, with the thing on it, the…” He shrugged.

“PT67/M with the chrome case,” I finished.

“I was going to say that,” he lied. Then he lowered his voice. “I think Jamie broke it.”

“Sure.”

I was only just back into my work when, this time, it was Logan who appeared, worry making him frown, exhaustion in his posture. There was sadness in his eyes, a quiet resignation that made my stomach twist.

He rubbed a hand over his face before checking behind him, then whispering. “Can you cover the phone for an hour?” His voice was steady, but something was fraying at the edges underneath it. “I need to head out to the docs with Tudor.”

I hated answering the phone, but I nodded, and Logan hesitated, then exhaled, glancing toward the floor as if debating something. Finally, he met my gaze again and lowered his voice even further. “Also, can you do your thing and research private care facilities in LA? Keep it to yourself.”

My stomach dropped. The way he said it, the quiet defeat in his tone, told me everything I needed to know. This wasn’t precaution—this was inevitability. We all knew Tudor wasn’t getting younger, and after a prolonged fight with developers who’d wanted the land he lived on had left him with a permanent injury, plus his refusal to eat healthily, he was slowing down way too much. I didn’t have to be a genius to work out that Logan was researching San Diego care facilities, placing Tudor somewhere safe near where Logan’s partner, Gray, worked.

Logan was with Gray now—the sharp-eyed journalist who used to freak me out with how easily he saw through people. But when it came to Logan, he didn’t flinch. He didn’t turn away from the scar that slashed from temple to lip, which gave Logan that hard, dangerous edge even when he was being soft. Gray looked past it. No, through it. And sometimes, I think he loved Logan more because of it, not less. Like the scar told a story only Gray had the patience and heart to understand.

They were stupid in love. The kind that made people softer around the edges without them even realizing. I’d seen it more than once—Logan’s hand on Gray’s lower back as they moved around each other like they were still learning how to share space and didn’t want to get it wrong. Gray’s eyes tracked Logan when he spoke, as if every word mattered. The way Logan smiled at him— really smiled, rare and warm and unguarded.

Sometimes, I watched them with a twist of envy I didn’t want to admit to. Not jealousy exactly—more like hunger. A dull ache in my chest whispered, I want that. Not their exact story, not their perfect moments. Just… to be seen, known, and loved like that.

Maybe one day, someone would look at me and not see the mess or the scars. Maybe one day, they'd see me .

But that was a thought for another day.

Now, all I could worry about was what would happen if Logan left to build a new life with Gray in San Diego. Did that mean he was leaving us? Leaving Redcars behind? And if he was—what did that mean for the rest of us still trying to hold this place together?

This was my home. My safe space. It wasn’t much, but it was mine. Here, the world outside could wait. Here, I wasn’t running from ghosts—I was Robbie, and after Enzo holding me, saying he’d kill for me, it had almost begun to feel like enough. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting a pale glow over the rows of labeled folders. The scent of old paper, ink, and the faintest trace of motor oil clung to the air. It smelled like safety. It smelled like mine.

This was my space. My order. No one came in unless I let them.

And outside, I had four big men who watched out for me. Men I trusted now, who would do anything to keep me safe.

Jamie. Rio. Logan.

And Enzo.

“Of course I can,” I whispered back, reaching for the last notebook on my shelf, which I used to keep personal notes. Logan passed me the handset, and I took it as though he were handing me a live grenade. I tried hard, but dealing with customers could go one of three ways: moderately okay, bad or really bad.

I was almost done shelving the latest batch of paperwork, trying to make sense of Jamie’s latest attempt at filling out forms, and there had been no calls yet. His careful block capitals were neat, but matching them with purchase orders was a nightmare. Did no one at Redcars listen to me about the information I needed? All purchase orders were required to link to the invoice, yet somehow, I was expected to piece it together like a puzzle.

“Hey.”

Finally, Enzo was here.

He was built like a mountain, solid and strong, but his presence never made me feel small. He moved with an easy confidence, never looming, never crowding. His deep brown eyes were warm, filled with quiet patience that made my breath catch, and his hands—large, calloused, capable—handled delicate engine work with the same gentleness I’d once seen him use to scoop up a stray kitten outside the shop.

He was everything that should have sent me running, yet somehow, he was also the safest place I’d ever known.

He protected me. He stood like a wall between me and the world, and I hid behind him because he never asked why. He just was. And in his presence, I felt safe in a way I hadn’t in years.

“Hi,” I said, my voice softer than I intended, a rare, unguarded smile tugging at my lips as I looked up at him.

“Just wanted to let you know I’m heading out to pick up a car.”

“Sure.”

“It’s a Pontiac 1970 GTO.”

“Okay.”

“Jamie and Rio are both here.”

“I know.”

I know you won’t leave me alone. I know you look out for me.

“Later,” he murmured and then vanished.

I missed him as soon as he left.