Gravel & Grace

The grease was permanent.

Mateo De La Cruz had accepted that truth years ago, the same way he'd accepted the scars that carved through his skin like a roadmap of every fight he'd ever won—and the few he'd lost. The black grime lived under his fingernails, in the creases of his knuckles, embedded so deep in the whorls of his fingerprints that no amount of scrubbing with that orange industrial shit could pull it out. It was part of him now. Like the ink. Like the metal through his eyebrow and tongue. Like the weight he carried in his chest that felt heavier than the Harley Softail he was currently lying under.

The concrete floor was unforgiving against his spine, but he didn't move. Didn't shift. Just stared up at the undercarriage of the custom bike, at the chrome and steel and the modifications he'd spent three weeks perfecting. Sweat rolled down his temples, soaked through the black tank top clinging to his torso. The Texas heat didn't give a shit that it was only April. The garage was a furnace—metal walls holding in the oppressive warmth, the smell of oil and gasoline thick enough to taste.

His knuckles throbbed.

The split skin across three of them was still raw, still weeping a little where the scabs kept cracking open every time he gripped a wrench. He'd gotten into it two nights ago outside the bar. Some drunk asshole with more mouth than sense had taken one look at Diego's scar—the one that carved from his hairline, over his eye, down to his cheekbone—and said something about junkyard dogs and whether the pound knew one got loose.

Mateo had put him through a table.

Worth it. Every goddamn time, it was worth it.

The Virgin Mary on his chest seemed to watch him with sad eyes as his breath moved the ink, her hands pressed together in eternal prayer. She'd been there since he was nineteen, inked over his heart by a man who'd told him she'd protect him. Mateo wasn't sure what the hell she was supposed to protect him from, but it sure as shit wasn't himself.

Across the garage, Diego worked in silence.

The sound of metal on metal was rhythmic, almost meditative. A socket wrench clicking. The hiss of an impact driver. Diego didn't talk much when he worked—never had. He let the engines speak for him, let his hands do what his mouth couldn't. Mateo understood that language better than English half the time. Better than the Spanish their mama still spoke when she was angry or worried or trying to keep secrets from the younger kids.

They'd built this place together. This garage, this sanctuary that smelled like gasoline and possibility. Concrete floors stained with oil that would never come clean. Work lights hanging from chains, casting harsh shadows across every surface. Tools organized with the kind of precision that came from two men who needed control over something, anything, in their lives.

The Harley above him was a masterpiece. Candy apple red with black flames licking up from the fenders, chrome so polished it looked wet. Custom exhaust that would sound like thunder rolling through the hills. He'd poured himself into this bike the way he poured himself into everything—completely, obsessively, until there was nothing left but the work and the ache in his muscles.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

Mateo closed his eyes, didn't reach for it. He already knew. Could feel it in his bones the same way he could feel a storm coming across the mountain. The same way he'd felt every other woman pull away, flinch back, decide that the reality of Mateo and Diego De La Cruz was too much for her delicate sensibilities.

The phone buzzed again.

Chingada madre.

"You gonna get that?" Diego's voice cut through the garage, rough and low.

"No."

"Might be important."

"It's not."

Silence settled back over them like dust. Mateo listened to his brother work, to the familiar sounds that meant home in a way nothing else did. Not the main house up on the mountain where Mama ruled with an iron fist wrapped in tortillas and threats. Not the town below where everyone knew their name and crossed the street anyway. Just this. This garage. This grease. This darkness they shared.

His phone buzzed a third time, and he finally rolled out from under the Harley, his back protesting, his shoulders tight with tension that never really left anymore.

Mateo grab his phone from his jeans pocket, leaving black fingerprints on the screen.

Three texts from her. Vanessa. The woman they’ve been seeing for six months who still flinches when Mateo touches her.

Hey babe, not feeling great. Can we raincheck dinner?

Sorry, I know you guys were looking forward to it.

Maybe this weekend?

Mateo stares at the messages, his jaw tight enough to crack teeth. Diego’s wrench has gone silent across the garage. He knows. He always knows.

“She cancel?” His voice is rough, deeper than Mateo's, shaped by the scar that runs from his hairline through his eyebrow, bisecting his eye, and down to his cheekbone. The scar that makes women cross the street. The scar that makes children stare and mothers pull them close.

“Yeah.” Mateo doesn’t look at him. Doesn’t need to.

The wrench clangs against metal again. Harder this time.

He should text back something understanding, something supportive. Feel better, baby. Let me know if you need anything. That’s what a good boyfriend would say.

He deletes the messages instead.

He knows she’s not sick. She’s never sick. She’s just done pretending she can handle them—handle him. Done pretending his scarred hands don’t make her skin crawl. Done pretending she doesn’t see a monster when she looks at his brother.

Mateo grabs the beer he left on the workbench and takes a long pull. It’s warm and tastes like piss, but the bitterness feels appropriate.

The cigarette he bummed off Rafael that morning is still tucked behind his ear. He lights it with the Zippo he’s carried since he was sixteen—silver, engraved with a skull and crossbones, a gift from Diego on their birthday. The smoke fills his lungs, harsh and familiar. Mama would smack him if she saw him smoking, but Mama’s not there.

Mateo leans against the workbench, his arms crossed over his chest, and he lets himself remember.

Her name was Jessica. Or Jennifer. Something with a J. They'd met her at a bar in Austin, six months before Vanessa. She was pretty in that generic way—blonde, blue-eyed, tight dress, heels she couldn’t walk in.

She wanted dangerous. Wanted the thrill of fucking men who looked like they’d just walked out of prison. Wanted to tell her friends about the tattooed twins with the piercings and the motorcycles and the scars.

She went home with them. Drank their whiskey. Let them undress her.

He remembers the way her skin felt under his hands—soft, too soft, like she’d never worked a day in her life. He remembers kissing down her neck, her collarbone, her breasts--the way she moaned, arching into him.

And then he'd touched her thigh, his palm rough against her smooth skin, and she flinched.

“Your hands,” she said, her voice small. “They’re so... rough. It feels like sandpaper.”

Mateo had pulled back like she’d burned him. Diego froze beside him, his hand on her hip, his eyes on his brother's face.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, sitting up, covering herself with the sheet. “I didn’t mean—it’s just—”

But she did mean it. Mateo could see it in her eyes. Disgust. Revulsion. The realization that the fantasy was better than the reality.

She left twenty minutes later. Didn’t even finish her drink.

The memory sits in his chest like a stone. Mateo takes another drag of the cigarette, blow smoke toward the ceiling where the industrial fan does fuck-all to move the hot air.

His hands are a roadmap of violence. Scars from fights, from engines, from broken glass and split knuckles and the general wear of a life lived hard. The skin is thick and callused, rough as tree bark in places. His fingers are long and strong, capable of precision work on an engine or breaking a man's jaw with equal ease.

Mateo used to be proud of those hands. Used to think they made him a man—capable, strong, able to protect what was most important to him. Now he just sees what women see: proof that he's not meant for soft things. Not meant for gentle touches and tender moments.

Diego's hands are the same. Scarred and rough and wrong for the kind of women who want romance and flowers and men who work in offices.

The phone buzzes again.

We need to talk.

Mateo stared at the words until they blurred, until the letters stopped making sense. He should've seen this coming. Had seen it coming, if he was honest. The way she'd stopped touching him first. The way her eyes would skip over his scars instead of tracing them the way she used to. The way she'd started flinching when Diego walked into a room, like his face was something she had to brace herself for.

She used to like the danger. Used to get off on it, on the reputation, on the way people looked at them when they walked into a bar together. Two massive, tattooed, scarred men and one pretty girl between them. She'd liked being the center of that attention. Liked the way other women looked at her with envy and fear.

But she'd never liked them.

Not really. Not the parts that mattered.

She hated their rough hands, their calluses catching on her soft clothing and skin. She hated the grease that never fully washed out, the smell of gasoline that clung to their clothes. She hated their boots, their drawl, the Spanish that slipped into their sentences when they were tired or angry or fucking. Said it made them sound uneducated. Like they were something she had to apologize for.

She'd loved Mateo's motorcycle right up until he'd asked her to ride it with him. Then suddenly it was too dangerous, too reckless, like she didn't trust him to keep her safe. She'd loved Diego's truck—the old square-body Ford their Abuelo had left him—right up until she decided it was outdated and embarrassing. A waste of space in the driveway.

And the sex.

Christ, the sex had been a nightmare from the start.

She'd wanted them, wanted the fantasy of two men, but the reality was too much. Too rough. Too intense. They needed things she couldn't give, needed to take control in ways that made her uncomfortable. Needed to share her in ways that went beyond just being in the same room.

Mateo had tried to be gentler. Had tried to soften the edges of himself, to file down the parts of him that were too sharp, too dark, too hungry. But you couldn't change your nature any more than you could change your scars. And he was tired. So goddamn tired of trying to be something he wasn't.

"She's done," Mateo said, the words tasting like metal. "Not even pretending anymore."

"Good."

Mateo pushed himself off the workbench, his back protesting as he straightened. Sweat dripped down his spine, soaked into the waistband of his jeans. He looked at his brother—his twin, his other half, the only person in the world who understood what it was like to be too much for everyone else.

"We're not meant for this," Diego said quietly. He wasn't looking at Mateo. Was staring at something in the middle distance, at ghosts only he could see. "The kind of shit these women want. The soft kind. The kind that comes easy."

Mateo didn't respond. What was there to say?

They stood there in the garage, surrounded by the smell of grease and oil and gasoline, by the machines they could fix and the parts of themselves they couldn't. The heat pressed down on them like a living thing, like the mountain itself was trying to crush them into the concrete.

Mateo's Virgin Mary watched with sad eyes.

His knuckles throbbed.

The grease under his fingernails was permanent.

And somewhere out there, another woman was fixin' to walk away because the reality of loving the De La Cruz brothers was more then she could handle.

Diego moved first, walking back to his workbench with that slight hitch in his step he'd had since the knife fight. Mateo watched him go, watched the way his brother's shoulders carried weight that had nothing to do with muscle. They were built the same—huge, broad, covered in ink and scars and the kind of damage that came from living the way they lived. But Diego carried it quieter. Carried it deeper.

The impact driver whirred to life again.

Mateo stared out into the distance a moment. He should text Vanessa back. Should say something, end it properly, do the decent thing. But he couldn't find the words. Couldn't find the energy to pretend he gave a shit about a relationship that had been dead for months.

So he turned back to his own workbench, to the engine block he'd been rebuilding for the past week. A 1970 Shovelhead that had been sitting in someone's barn for thirty years. He'd brought it back to life piece by piece, cleaning decades of rust and neglect, replacing gaskets and seals, making it whole again.

He wished he could do the same for himself.

His phone buzzed again. He ignored it.

Outside, the sun was starting to set. The light coming through the open bay door turned orange, then red, painting everything in shades of fire. The mountain loomed beyond, dark and ancient and full of secrets. The De La Cruz property sprawled across it like a living thing, dozens of family members in houses and trailers and cabins, all of them connected by blood and loyalty and the kind of bonds that went deeper than law.

He and Diego had been sharing women since they were old enough to know what that meant. It was common in their family—two men, one woman. The town whispered about it, called it scandalous, called it wrong. But it was just how they did things. How they'd always done things.

Most women ran when they realized it was permanent. That Mateo and Diego came as a package deal, that there was no choosing between them, no having one without the other. They'd tried dating separately once, years ago. It had lasted three months before they'd both been miserable, before they'd realized that sharing wasn't just a preference—it was a need.

They needed to share. Needed to know the woman between them belonged to both of them equally. Needed to feel that connection, that bond, that went beyond just sex. Needed to know that if something happened to one of them, she was still taken care of by the other.

But finding a woman who wanted that, who could handle that, who wouldn't eventually decide it was too much?

That was the impossible part.

Mateo's knuckles split open again as he gripped a wrench too hard. Blood welled up, mixing with the grease. He didn't stop working. Just let it bleed, let it add to the stains already covering his hands.

"You good?" Diego asked without looking up.

"Yeah."

"Mentiroso."

Mateo almost smiled. Almost. "Yeah."

The sun finished setting. The garage grew darker, the work lights casting harsh shadows that made everything look sharper, more dangerous. Mateo could see his reflection in the chrome of the Harley—distorted, stretched, more monster than man.

Maybe that's all they were. Maybe that's all they'd ever be.

But at least he had Diego. At least he had this garage, this mountain, this family that understood what it meant to be too much for the rest of the world.

At least he had that.

Even if it wasn't enough.