maniacalmuse beta's, and I mess with it until I'm satisfied, lol. All mistakes are mine ;)
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Go check out Wild Creatures by littleashes17, it's going to rock your world!

I wake up to my phone's alarm clock. It vibrates against my back as I get up, startled as fuck, my neck stiff.

There are no messages on my phone, and the rest of the apartment is still dark. I rub my face and stretch my arms. Sleeping on the couch is always a bad idea. The television is still on, some kind of wildlife show.

I yawn. My entire body feels heavy;; my eyes prickle and feel puffy from crying. Last I checked the time, it was almost four in the morning. I feel wrecked, tired, and my muscles ache. I'm not going to be of much use today.

As David Attenborough yaps in the background, I walk over to the kitchen, the tiles cold against my bare feet. I press the machine to start a coffee, the scent of ground beans already making me feel more alert. Grabbing a rag, I take it to the living room and wipe the coffee table clean. I return with the empty beer bottles and put them in the cardboard box with glass under the sink. As my coffee pours into the biggest clean mug I can find, I lean against the counter, debating whether or not I'll take a sick day.

I decide against it and bring my coffee to the couch, sitting back and watching baby sharks swim alongside their mother. There's no way I want to be here when Irina drops by.

Natascha. I huff. That's all I know. I don't even know where the skank lives. God knows how long this has been going on. No wonder Irina spends so much time on this case. She's a fucking liar, accusing me of cheating while she's the one staying with a woman I don't know. A Russian woman. Like her.

I take my coffee to the bathroom and get ready for the day. No way I'm showering again; I'm just gonna get all greased up anyway. Instead, I wash my face and slap some makeup on so I look halfway decent by the time I'm finished. I pull the sweater I wore to sleep in over my head, pick a T-shirt that's already got oil stains on it, and finish my coffee. After I put my empty mug in the dishwasher, I take my bag and keys and run out to my car.

Traffic is a bitch and I get to work twenty minutes late. Garrett looks at me like he wants to say something, but he doesn't. I have a feeling that my eyes could be like lasers, shooting at anyone who offers me as much as a wrong word. Jake takes one look at me, sees my disheveled state even though I tried to make myself look put together, and he snorts.

"What the fuck is your problem?" I sneer at him.

"You look as though somebody sure as fuck fixed your problem, Spice." He waggles his eyebrows suggestively and I wanna slap the smirk off his face.

"Idiot," I mutter under my breath.

"Woah, what's got your panties in a bunch?" Jake asks. I ignore him and focus my attention on the worksheet Garrett put out for me on my station. He walks over to my side, eyes narrowed as if he's really worried about me. "What's wrong, Rose?" he asks me. The fact that he's using my name means that he's being serious as hell.

"It's nothing Gar," I lie, but he sees through it as if I'm made of glass.

"Don't do this, Spice." He nudges my shoulder, forcing me to look up at him. I cave.

"I don't wanna talk about it." I shake my head and walk over to the locker room. I can hear them talk as I shut the door and kick the door of my locker with my sneaker.

I pull the sweater over my head and step into my overalls. Just as I'm putting my hair up, my phone rings. I stop moving and watch the screen.

Irina.

Emmett rushes into the locker room, his cheeks flushed. He's late as well. I arch a brow at him, thankful he intervened. If not for him, I'd have answered that call.

"Wow, run a marathon?" I ask him, gathering up my hair at the back of my head in an attempt to make a messy bun without a mirror.

He huffs and drops his body on the bench in the middle of the locker room, looking borderline exhausted.

"Fuck," He breathes. His chest rises and falls rapidly as he catches his breath. He looks hot and bothered, and it's a sight for sore eyes. I avert my eyes as he watches me do my hair.

"I missed the fucking bus so I had to run here."

"The bus?" My eyebrows lift high, surprised.

"Yeah well, since my car is here it's the only way I can get around with my roommate doing morning shifts." He shrugs.

"You ran?" I continue to be flabbergasted.

"Gotta pay the bills, Spice." He smiles, blue eyes sparkling.

He gets up and pulls the hoodie over his head. His T-shirt rides up, exposing an inked back and the waistband of his underwear.

I mutter a reply before I shut my locker, tie my boots, and make my way to the shop floor.

"Jake?" I ask, watching him get some supplies out of the stockroom.

"What up, Spice of my life?" He whips his head in my direction, a gentle smile on his face.

"I'm sorry for being a bitch earlier."

"You don't have to apologize. I probably stuck my nose where it didn't belong." He shrugs and I stop him from walking back to the muscle car he's working on by himself.

"Can I talk to you?" I bite my lip and take a box of spark plugs out of his hands.

"Sure."

"How did you know about your ex cheating on you?"

His brows furrow at my question. "What? You mean Ir—"

"I don't know, but I need to find out." I shrug and fiddle with the tape around the cardboard box.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me. She can't do that to you; I mean look at you! She'd be a fool."

"I'm not here looking for compliments, Jake. I'm looking for answers."

He scratches his hair. It's gotten long and keeps falling into his deep-brown eyes.

"Well, for starters, Bella kept running off to wherever the fuck at any time of day. If I asked, she told me she was gonna go run errands, or go to the gym."

"But you go to the gym daily. Isn't that like the worst lie ever?" I wonder.

"We went to different gyms. She liked lady stuff, like yoga and pilates. Bella thought my gym was too dirty for her." I never liked Jake's ex, and the fact that she cheated on him with her now-husband made me hate her even more.

"What else?"

"Showers. More and more showers, and more bags of lingerie I never got to lay my eyes on except when she was doing laundry." I'm hurting him with this many questions about his former girlfriend, but I just need answers.

"She's been working late on this one case, for ages now. We had a fight last night and she ran off to the person she was defending," I tell him.

"What? So she's fucking a client? Isn't that like, against the rules of being a lawyer?"

"I don't know, Jake. I don't care. I just want to know if she's fucking her or not."

"When she comes home, does she take showers?" he asked me. I tried to think. Most times I'm in bed by the time she comes home. But then it dawns on me.

"Fuck," I gasp.

Jake puts his stuff down and throws an arm around my shoulders. I'm too fucked up to care, and besides, Jake is safe.

"What is it?" he asks as I lean my face against him.

"She kinda smells really fresh and like she just put perfume on when she gets home."

"Oh, baby Spice…" He offers me no lies about it, not trying to convince me it isn't what I think it is. I appreciate him for it.

I feel a lone tear escape my eye and he brushes it away. His finger is calloused and dirty, but I don't care; I savor his touch instead of flinching.

"You're no porcelain fucking doll, okay? You'll get through this. I won't let her break you, Spice. You went through enough shit already; you're stronger than that."

I smile up at him.

"This stays between the two of us, okay?" I hand him the spark plugs.

"Sure thing, Spice. You don't even have to ask me that."

"Thanks, Jake. You're the best."

"Don't I know it!" Even when I reopened the wounds of his break-up, he still makes me laugh.

Over by the Ford, Emmett is keeping himself busy, looking under the hood.

"Hey." He smiles at me, dimples at full alert. "You okay?"

I nod.

"Don't lie to me, Spice." He shakes his head, leans his hands on the car.

"I need to talk to you later," I say, nerves running through my system.

"Sure," he answers.

We work in silence for a little while before he breaks it. "Is i— Did I do something?"

"What? No, of course not. Why would you think that?" I frown.

"I don't know. Maybe texting you was out of line? Your girl didn't like me, I could tell by the way she was looking at me."

"Don't worry about her," I blurt out angrily.

"What's up, Spice?"

"It can wait." I decide, crossing out the things I already did on our to-do list.

"If you say so." His green overalls stretch over his broad back and shoulders as he fills up the windscreen wipers' liquid with the huge jug we have standing around.

The day's ending and we make plans for happy hour this Friday. Garrett's planning on bringing Kate, which means Jake and Paul have a hard time keeping their ridiculously raunchy comments to themselves.

"Tell me, big G. Is she meeting us before your other little friend?" Paul laughs, unzipping his suit. He's wearing a white tank underneath, his olive skin contrasting against it.

"I don't even want to know." I put my fingers into my ears playfully, pretending I'm disgusted by them.

"Spice, I bet you have a lot of not-so-little friends in that nightstand of yours, right? Care to be the judge on this?" Paul arches his brows as he pretends to open his suit further, and I burst out laughing when he attempts a sexy stripper move.

Emmett jumps in on the conversation, coming to my rescue.

"Dude, have you seen her dainty little fingers? I bet she's gonna say size doesn't matter. It's all about skill, my friend!" I stare at him, shocked when he takes my hand to prove a point. It looks minuscule against his big, warm palm.

"Emmett, you know only dudes with little dicks say that shit." Paul guffaws, moving around his pinky finger to make a statement.

"I told you, I don't have any small body parts. I'm perfectly proportional, fucking everywhere." I look at him, biting my lip to hold back a smirk.

I bet he's right.

Emmett walks up to Garrett's office and pulls out his wallet to pay his bill. His car's been ready since mid-morning, and he thanked me profusely for working on it with him. Forming a team with Emmett McCarty was beyond anything I ever expected. He was serious about the job, yet he was humorous and kept flirting with me. I can't even count the number of times I caught myself staring at him. There was so much tension between the two of us I felt my stomach tense up whenever he was near. I felt the need to touch him, all the time and it scares me. I haven't felt this way about a guy since I fell for Royce. I don't even know if Irina ever made me feel this way because I'm too angry at her to even think about it.

I watch Emmett take off, unzipping his work suit as he walked to the locker room. Paul and Jake are in there as well, so I go to my corner and start by washing my hands, watching Emmett from my vantage point in the mirror. The muscles in his back ripple when he takes off his suit, folds it over at the waist. His tank is smothered in oil stains, and it makes my stomach flip. I've entered a danger zone, and I can't help myself. I like it, the attention. So much it kills me on the inside.