Grease Stains And Gold Medals

The day Harrison cheated, I used the Swiss Army knife hed bought me for our anniversary to carve a permanent memory into my stepsisters face.

Once I was behind bars, our marriage dissolved automatically. He finally gave her what she wanted: the kind of lavish, white-lace wedding that makes the front page of the society kits.

Three years later, I was paroled.

Harrison went into a frenzy. He hired twenty bodyguards to form a human wall around her. He laid fifty legal traps, desperate to send me back to a cell. He even sent a hundred different intermediaries to tell me I could name my priceany amount of money, any propertyas long as I stayed away from Jade.

He was overthinking it.

I didnt want his money, and I certainly didnt want his wifes life. I simply stepped out of the prison gates and vanished into the city like a single drop of rain falling into the Atlantic.

We met again at my auto shop.

I spat out the toothpick Id been chewing on, wiped my grease-stained fingers on a rag, and popped the hood of his car. I didnt look at him as I asked, "How long have you had this?"

I heard him grind his teeth. The sound was sharp, brittle. "Maya," he said, his voice like sandpaper. "This car was the first gift you ever gave me."

My hand, poised with a wrench, went still for a heartbeat.

"Oh. Then its been a while," I said, my voice flat. "Probably needs a complete overhaul."

I was too calm. I could see the flicker of confusion in his eyes, the way his mouth worked as if he had a dozen things to say but couldn't find the breath for any of them. I went back to work, tapping each bolt, checking the tension with a clinical precision. To me, this gleaming yellow Ferrari was no different from the thousands of beat-up sedans Id salvaged over the last few years.

Perhaps the rhythmic clanging of metal on metal got to him. Harrisons expression shifted from shock to a twisted, mocking smirk.

"Maya, if youre broke, you could have just called. You didnt need to scatter nails on the road just to lure me to this hellhole so you could put on a show."

I gave him a small, professional smile, the kind I gave to any difficult customer. "If I were an actress, Harrison, Id be in Hollywood, not under a chassis. You came from the East Side, right? The news reported a spill from a hardware truck over there this morning. You should be more careful."

I picked up a rag to wipe the black oil from my knuckles. He stared at itit was a faded pink towel, frayed at the edges, bleached nearly white from too many washes. Something in him snapped.

"You used to be like a swan, Maya," he said, his voice rising. "Claustrophobia, OCD, a germaphobia that bordered on pathological. You were the quintessential heiress. Youd spend ten minutes wiping a speck of dust off your Louboutins. You once fired a maid on the spot because there was a single grease spot on the dining table..."

"Now look at you"

"Hey, Maya! Can you take a look at my AC? Its blowing nothing but hot air!"

The shop door groaned open, letting in the humid afternoon air and a boisterous woman in a loud floral shirt. She tossed her keys onto my workbench.

"Sure thing, Mrs. Gable. Leave it with me. Its probably just a refrigerant leak. Easy fix."

"Youre a lifesaver," she said, patting my shoulder with a meaty hand. She glanced at Harrison, then leaned in, whispering loudly, "Oh, youve got a fancy client? Ill let you get back to it. Catch you later."

Once she was gone, I turned back to Harrison with a polite, distant smile. "Mr. Sterling, your car is ready. Thatll be twenty dollars for the tire plug."

"You..."

He stared at me, looking as if Id slapped him. He fumbled for his phone, his fingers trembling slightly as he pulled up his payment app.

A notification chirped. I looked at the screen. Hed sent five hundred.

"Mr. Sterling, you overpaid. Let me send the change back." I instinctively went to look for his contact info, then remembered. Hed blocked me the day I was sentenced. I rubbed the back of my neck. "Well, this is awkward. Could you show me your QR code?"

"Didn't you say... the car needs an overhaul?" Harrisons eyes were dark, unreadable. "Check the rest of the components. Is five hundred enough?"

I shrugged. "More than enough. Have a seat."

I dragged a small, plastic stool over and pushed it toward him. Looking at his bespoke suit, I felt a twinge of pity and laid a relatively clean rag over the seat. Harrison sat down slowly, his movements stiff and elegant, his hands resting on his knees like he was at a board meeting in a junkyard.

The door creaked again.

"Maya, lunch is here! Business looks good todayI saw you ordered the double protein special."

It was the delivery guy, a kid from the neighborhood Id known since he was in diapers. I traded a few jokes with him as I took the plastic container. Harrison winced at the term "fancy client," looking away and letting out a long, slow breath.

He couldn't help it. This world was loud.

Penny from the nail salon next door popped in to ask about dinner. A young professional from the apartments upstairs dropped off a suitcase for me to hold until she got off work. A college girl ran in to borrow a portable charger. They all looked at Harrisonsome with curiosity, some with blatant interestbut he just sat there, looking increasingly out of place.

Finally, he shifted his legs, his voice tight. "Maya, is this what youve become? Rotting away in the gutter with... these people?"

His eyes looked slightly bloodshot. Or maybe it was just my own vision playing tricks on me. Three years of staring at industrial sewing machines in a dim prison workshop tends to tint your world in shades of red.

"The car is fine," I said, straightening up and wiping sweat from my brow with my elbow. "Brake pads are a bit thin. You should get them replaced soon, but I dont keep OEM parts for Ferraris here. Youll have to go to a dealership."

I pointed him toward the nearest authorized service center and started opening my lunch. Curry chicken, spicy peppers, stir-fried greensthe cheap, oily comfort food of the working class.

Harrison didn't leave. I paused, my chopsticks mid-air, and pushed the container slightly toward him. "Are you hungry, Mr. Sterling? Its not five-star, but its filling."

His gaze drifted from the black grease under my fingernails to the glistening, sodium-heavy food. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

"This is processed garbage, Maya. Its not healthy. You... you never used to touch this stuff."

In his memory, I was a delicate creature. I was the girl who picked at organic salads and sashimi. If a meal wasn't perfectly fresh, Id spend the night curled over a toilet.

I chuckled. "The prison diet cures you of a lot of 'delicate' habits. And when youre doing manual labor all day, you need the calories. This place makes the best spicy chicken in the zip code. You should try it. Oh, lookthey gave me an extra packet of chili oil today. Score."

I tucked the extra packet into a small organizer bin behind me. It was full of condiment packets, sugar stirrers, and plastic cutlery. The hoard of someone who knew what it was like to have nothing.

Harrison stood up abruptly. "Enough!"

I flinched, startled by the sudden boom of his voice.

He pulled a black card from his wallet and threw it onto the workbench. "This is a supplementary card to my platinum account. Take it."

He moved so fast he knocked over the plastic stool and nearly sent my lunch flying. I lunged, barely catching the container before it hit the floor.

"Mr. Sterling," I said, a bit tired. "If youre not going to eat, please don't ruin my meal."

"Maya!" he hissed, his voice trembling with a desperate kind of rage. "Im serious! Theres a five-million-dollar limit. Use it. Buy a decent storefront. Start a real business. Be a boss again. Dont stay in this hole being a filthy mechanic!"

"You were a world-class skier, for God's sake! Have you forgotten who you are?"

His shout echoed in the small shop, dragging me back into the cold, crisp air of my past.

My family had been one of the biggest investment names in the city. I was an only child until I was seven, when my mother found out she was pregnant with twins. But while we were celebrating the arrival of my sisters, my father was celebrating his affair with a B-list actress named Evelyn.

Evelyn wasn't content with being a secret. She showed up at our house, demanding my mother step aside. My mother was a woman of fire; the argument turned into a struggle. I stood at the top of the stairs and watched as Evelyn, with her long, manicured red nails digging into my mothers throat, pushed her.

One fall. Three lives gone.

To protect his new lover, my father locked me in a room for twenty-four hours, beating me until I agreed to change my statement. Evelyn walked free. They married, and she brought her daughter from a previous marriageJade.

That was the beginning of the nightmare. The bruises, the psychological warfare, the constant "accidents." I eventually fled to Switzerland, pouring all my pain into the snow. I became a champion.

That was where I met Harrison. He was at a prestigious business school nearby. He saw me on a broadcast once and became an obsessive fan. He was at every finish line, screaming my name. When a judge tried to cheat me out of a medal, he organized a protest that shut down the street.

He was there for the injuries. He was there for the lows. And when I finally took the gold, I didn't care about the cameras. I unstrapped my skis and ran straight into his arms. We became the "it" couple of the international circuit.

But the night of my victory, as we walked through the cobblestone streets of Zurich, two armed men jumped us. They wanted our watches, our money. Harrison stepped in front of me to fight them off. I was terrifiedI couldn't let him get hurt. I charged in to help him.

In the chaos, a shot rang out.

The bullet didn't kill me. But it tore through my lung and grazed my heart. My career was over. I could never compete again. I could barely run a block without gasping for air.

But I didn't regret it. Harrison was my world. I could win a hundred gold medals, but I only had one Harrison. When I lay in that hospital bed, clutching his hand, I told him that. He cried into my chest, promising me the world.

"Maya, let's go home," hed whispered. "My family has connections in every sector. Whatever you want to do, Ill make it happen."

Harrison was a man of action, not words. I believed him. We flew back to the States together.

And there, waiting at the gate, was Jade.

When she saw the heir to the Sterling fortune standing next to me, her eyes widened for a split second before she masked it with a brilliant, predatory smile. She looked exactly like her mother had when she stood next to my father.

My stomach dropped. And soon, my nightmare came full circle.

It started slowly. Harrison began mentioning Jades name in every conversation. At first, she was "sweet and misunderstood." Then, she was "a victim of her circumstances." Eventually, it became: "Maya, why do you have to be so hard on her?"

I wanted to sit him down, to talk it out, but it was the anniversary of my mothers death. I was buried in grief and the rituals of remembrance. When I came home from the cemetery, I walked into a scene I will never forget as long as I live.

There they were. Harrison and Jade. Naked on our Egyptian cotton sheets, tangled in each other.

"Oh, Harrison," Jade had giggled, her voice like sugar and glass. "Aren't you supposed to be at the cemetery with your future mother-in-law?"

"Which one?" Harrison grunted. "A woman from the sticks isn't a mother-in-law. If Im picking a family, Im picking yours..."

The world turned white. I lost my mind. I grabbed the knife from the nightstandthe one hed given me for 'protection'and I went for her. The sound of her scream when the blade met her skin... honestly, it was the most beautiful thing Id heard in years.

At the trial, the judge considered the provocation. He was leaning toward a suspended sentence. But Harrison hired the most ruthless legal team in the country. He bribed witnesses to say Id planned it for weeks. He made sure I got three years of hard time.

Seven years had passed since that day.

I took a deep breath and looked at Harrison. Money is a wonderful preservative; time hadn't left a single mark on him. He was as handsome as ever. Meanwhile, I had cracked skin, hair chopped short for convenience, and grease that had permanently settled into the creases of my palms.

I pushed the black card back across the bench. "I dont want it, Mr. Sterling. Im doing fine."

"I have a roof over my head. Im free. I earn my own keep. Im a simple woman nowno great riches, but no great tragedies either."

Harrisons hand stayed on the card. "Just... take it as compensation. Once you take the money, the debt is settled. We dont owe each other anything."

I looked at him, genuinely surprised. The arrogant Harrison Sterling was actually trying to offer an olive branch. He used to be a man who never apologized, never looked back.

"There is no debt," I said calmly. "I saved you because you were my boyfriend at the time. I went to jail because I committed a crime. Were square."

Harrison clenched his jaw, staring at me as if trying to find the girl he used to know under the grime. Finally, his head dropped, and I saw his eyes shimmer.

"Maya... you're a stranger to me."

I checked the clock on the wall. "Its been a long time. People change."

"That night... it was a moment of weakness," he whispered, his voice cracking. "All these years, Ive thought... if you hadn't reacted so violently, if youd just let me explain... I would have married you out of guilt. I would have treated you like a queen..."

I didn't say anything for a long time. The ticking of the clock filled the silence.

"Everyone has their own path," I said, unwrapping a lollipop and popping it into my mouth. "Don't look back at things you can't change."

"You" Harrison was speechless, his frustration boiling over. "You haven't changed one bit! Still as stubborn as a mule!"

I nodded. "The neighbors say the same thing."

"Maya!"

He shouted my name, the old nickname slipping out. It caught me off guard. The tone was exactly as it had been years ago. Seeing me falter, he softened his voice.

"If you won't take my money, let me talk to your father for you. You don't know, do you? He has stage four pancreatic cancer. He doesn't have much time left."

"If you go to him now, if you ask for his forgiveness, you could still get your inheritance. Youd never have to work another day in your life..."

"Really?" I said, a genuine smile touching my lips. "So karma finally caught up with him. That's good news."

Harrison snapped. He grabbed my arm, trying to pull me toward his car. "Maya, stop this! Look at yourself! Look at this life! Youre living in a shack, doing back-breaking work! Youre eating garbage and getting excited over a free packet of sauce! Do you think this makes you look strong? It makes you look pathetic! Youre a bottom-tier mechanic, and thats all youll ever be!"

I looked down at myselfthe stained coveralls, the messy ponytail, the smudge of dirt on my cheek. "Its not so bad. At least I still have my own face. Unlike some people."

Harrison jumped back as if Id burned him, his face flushing deep red. "Jade has had the surgeries! Shes fully recovered! Theres a scar, yes, but makeup covers it! And youyou smell like motor oil and your hands feel like sandpaper! No man is ever going to want you!"

In his heat, he swung his Herms bag around, nearly hitting me.

The door creaked open again.

Two small children, a boy and a girl, came charging in like little rockets.