Walking the Beauty Home
After the satisfying dinner came to an end, Arthur Sterling stood up and quickly took care of the cleanup.
He gathered the empty plates and wiped down the small kitchen counter, the comfortable silence between them a stark contrast to the usual chaos of his life in Los Angeles.
Once the chores were done, he returned to the living area and stayed with Mia in his small rented apartment, transitioning into a casual, easy conversation.
It was painfully evident that Mia usually had absolutely no one to talk to when she was surrounded by Boss Tang and his tight-knit group of rough, adrenaline-fueled brothers.
Because of that profound isolation, Arthur found that he only had to bring up a random, everyday topic, and the two of them ended up chatting effortlessly for over an hour.
The atmosphere in the room was warm and inviting, a rare sanctuary away from the grease and gasoline of the garage.
Neither of them noticed the rapid passage of time until the sudden, jarring sound of Mia's cell phone ringing shattered the quiet intimacy of the moment.
Mia, in particular, completely failed to realize that during their entire, free-flowing conversation, Arthur had been highly observant.
He was deliberately looking for engaging topics and constantly, subtly adjusting the content of his words to perfectly cater to her attitude and interests.
As a direct result of his careful emotional navigation, Mia, completely unaware of his calculated charm, felt an overwhelming sense of 'meeting too late' with him.
She felt as though she had finally found someone who truly understood her, someone who existed outside the suffocating shadow of the Fast & Furious underworld her brother controlled.
So much so that when the harsh ringtone violently interrupted their chat, she felt quite visibly annoyed.
She let out a frustrated sigh as she took out her phone from her pocket, clearly disappointed that their rare, normal conversation had been abruptly cut short.
Therefore, when Mia looked at the caller ID and finally answered the phone, her tone wasn't very good at all.
"Dom, is something wrong?" she asked, her voice tight with defensive irritation.
Although Arthur respectfully turned his head to the side to give her a modicum of privacy, the moment he heard the nickname 'Dom', he immediately realized that the person on the other end of the line was Mia's overbearing older brother, Dominic Toretto.
Arthur couldn't hear the deep, gravelly voice speaking on the other end of the receiver, but judging entirely from Mia's increasingly sour, frustrated expression, she was likely being sternly lectured.
She bit her lower lip, a nervous habit, and listened with a look of deep displeasure for a long moment before calmly, coldly replying.
"I know, I'm coming back now," she said, her tone flat and uncompromising.
"That's all, Dom!"
Hanging up the phone decisively with a sharp click, the bright, genuine smile from just a few moments earlier was completely wiped from Mia's beautiful face.
Seeing Arthur looking at her with quiet, unjudging concern, Mia quickly tried to mask her frustration and forced a small, apologetic smile.
She stood up from the sofa, smoothing out her clothes, and said softly to him, "It's late, I have to go back, Arthur."
Arthur didn't need to hear the conversation to more or less guess the exact content of the demanding phone call!
Dominic Toretto had essentially raised his younger sister alone on the unforgiving streets of Los Angeles.
While he might be incredibly far from a perfect, emotionally available brother, he still cared for and looked after Mia with a fierce, almost suffocating intensity.
So, Boss Tang must have inevitably discovered that his sister had slipped out of the house at night without telling anyone where she was going.
And Los Angeles at night, especially in the neighborhoods they frequented, was by absolutely no means a safe place for a young woman to be wandering alone.
"Okay, let me walk you out!" Arthur offered immediately, his tone brooking no argument.
He knew perfectly well from his predecessor's memories that Dominic's place was nearly twenty kilometers away from his current, rundown apartment complex.
Mia must have obviously driven her own vehicle here to bridge that distance.
So, he planned to be a gentleman and see the girl safely to her car.
After all, Arthur knew firsthand that the dark, poorly lit streets of this specific neighborhood weren't exactly known for their safety and hospitality.
"Thank you!" Mia replied, her tense shoulders relaxing just a fraction.
She didn't refuse his offer of protection; in fact, she had developed a very good, deeply rooted impression of this young man over the course of the evening.
It wasn't just because they were exactly the same age, but also because he was remarkably well-spoken, effortlessly humorous, and possessed truly incredible cooking skills that rivaled professional chefs.
If her initial, hesitant visit to Arthur's apartment earlier that day was purely because she felt deeply guilty that he had been violently targeted by Vince on her account...
Then right now, standing in the dim light of his living room, Mia had truly come to appreciate him for who he was.
He was a very charming, grounded boy, at least giving her the strong, undeniable urge to get to know him much more deeply in the future.
Walking side-by-side and chatting quietly to dispel the lingering tension of the phone call, they soon arrived at the desolate, concrete expanse of the apartment's parking lot.
Mia's beloved, meticulously maintained car, a sleek Honda Acura, was parked perfectly under the glow of a flickering amber streetlamp.
With just one passing look at the vehicle's aggressive stance, a flood of technical information from the various car and motorcycle magazines Arthur had diligently read recently automatically surfaced in his enhanced mind.
It was a beautiful third-generation Honda Acura; the top-trim price for a brand-new factory model in the United States was roughly about thirty-four thousand dollars.
However, looking at the widened wheel arches and the custom exhaust, it was obvious that almost everything in Mia's car, from the high-performance powertrain hidden under the hood to the racing-spec interior, had been illegally and extensively modified.
This particular car of hers, with all of its underground upgrades, couldn't be built or bought for anything less than two hundred thousand dollars in the current market.
One must know that, acting as the world's undisputed automotive kingdom, standard car prices in the US have always been among the absolute lowest globally.
For context, a brand-new Mercedes-Benz S-Class, a mid-to-high-end luxury sedan, started at only eighty thousand plus dollars off the dealership lot.
For over two hundred thousand dollars, a person could literally buy a heavily armored, bulletproof version of that same Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
Mia gracefully got into the low-slung driver's seat and immediately rolled down the tinted window.
Looking up at Arthur, who was standing casually nearby and expertly sizing up her impressive car, she let out a small, genuine laugh.
"By the way, Arthur," Mia said with a warm smile, "when you finally go back to the garage tomorrow, remember to give my car a really good checkup."
"I've been feeling like there's some annoying trouble with the ignition lately, and it's been driving me crazy."
"Sure thing!" Arthur agreed confidently.
Arthur had already successfully unlocked the [Repair] skill while painstakingly fixing his own dilapidated motorcycle a few days ago.
After constantly tinkering with various appliances and mechanical parts at home for a few days, he had confirmed a very lucrative system mechanic.
Repairing mechanical vehicles, and even various complex industrial products like standard household appliances, could reliably earn him valuable experience points for the [Repair] skill.
However, he also learned that the more highly complex the item was, and the significantly higher the technical difficulty of the repair job, the more massive the experience points he would gain upon successful completion.
So, Arthur was now incredibly eager to get his hands dirty and give Mia's highly modified, complex car a comprehensive, bumper-to-bumper overhaul.
Mia also knew that it was indeed getting quite late, and Dom's patience was legendary for being remarkably thin.
After a few brief, pleasant pleasantries through the open window, she inserted the sleek key into the ignition cylinder, fully ready to drive back to the Toretto house.
However, just as she aggressively twisted the key to start the ignition... an incredibly annoying, anticlimactic scene soon unfolded.
Vroom… sputter… clunk.
Her incredibly expensive, highly modified car acted as if it had a terrible, mechanical case of diarrhea.
It kept weakly sputtering and whining, but the high-performance engine absolutely refused to turn over and start.
Furious and heavily embarrassed, Mia violently slapped the leather-wrapped steering wheel with the palm of her hand, her face instantly darkening with frustration.
Arthur smoothly stepped up to the window, his enhanced mind already diagnosing the sound.
"Sounds like the battery connection is loose, or there's something else electrical acting up," he said calmly, offering a professional assessment.
"It's far too late and too dark out here to mess with it now. I'll give it a proper, thorough look tomorrow morning in the daylight."
"Tonight, I'll take you home."
Mia let out a heavy sigh, realizing she had absolutely no other viable options. She didn't refuse his offer.
"Fine," she conceded, her shoulders slumping in defeat.
She hopped out of the useless, two-hundred-thousand-dollar paperweight and tossed him the keys.
Arthur smoothly caught them out of the air. He pretended to casually pocket them in his jeans, but in reality, he was discreetly slipping them directly into the absolute safety of his dimensional private space.
He waved her over with a tilt of his head. "This way."
He confidently led Mia across the dark lot to his beat-up, aging motorcycle.
Arthur pulled off his single, scratched helmet from the handlebars and gently handed it to her.
Despite growing up surrounded by high-end, million-dollar muscle cars, Mia didn't mind the old, rattling machine at all.
When Vince had violently caused trouble earlier in the week and she had come to Arthur's apartment to apologize, she had already discretely asked around the garage and learned all about Arthur's background.
She knew that his parents were tragically gone, that he was buried in inheritance tax debt, and that he lived entirely alone, fighting to survive.
She swung her leg gracefully aboard the motorcycle, her long legs settling comfortably behind him on the worn leather.
The incredibly tiny, cramped seat forced them to press tightly together to maintain balance.
Feeling the sudden, undeniable soft pressure of her body pressing firmly against his back, Arthur's thoughts inevitably wandered for a split second.
But he quickly shook his head, clearing his mind and steadying his racing pulse.
"Hold on tight," he warned her over his shoulder. "I'm opening her up."
He had taken a long, thorough shower after his grueling physical training that afternoon.
So, despite being a mechanic who lived a rough, working-class life, Arthur smelled pleasantly clean—only of fresh shampoo, mild soap, and the faint, natural scent of male skin.
It was a stark, incredibly refreshing contrast to the heavy, suffocating reek of stale beer, sweat, and motor oil that constantly clung to her brother's violent buddies.
"Okay," Mia murmured softly, her voice muffled by the thick padding.
She leaned forward, her helmeted head resting gently and securely between his broad shoulder blades.
His newly sculpted, lean frame felt incredibly solid and deeply safe beneath her grasp, stirring that intense, confusing flutter in her chest all over again.
Hidden behind the tinted visor of the helmet, her cheeks warmed furiously in the cool night air.
Breathing in his clean scent, she felt a sudden, undeniable heat spread entirely through her as Arthur aggressively kicked the starter, the vintage engine roaring to life beneath them.