Page 214 of Bend

Then I recognized the little worn leather keychain attached to them and immediately tried to give them back.

Wolfe’s cabin had been left to his parents. I knew that much. It made sense. They were his family, and whatever he owned went to them, so I assumed they would keep the place for when they visited Florida or eventually sell it when they were ready.

Instead, they gave it to me.

Not to stay in for a few weeks, or until I found somewhere else.

Mine.

I told them no so many times that his dad eventually looked at me and said, very calmly, that continuing to live in a motel when I had an entire life here was fucking ridiculous.

His mom was nicer about it.

Barely.

She told me Wolfe had apparently complained more than once about me living out of bags and refusing to admit that Tampa wasn’t temporary anymore. He thought I needed somewhere that felt like mine instead of another room I could leave without looking back.

Then she said they couldn’t think of anyone he would rather have there.

And well, I didn’t have the heart to argue, so, now I have a house.

His house.

Which might be the kindest gift anyone has ever given me and also the most emotionally fucked-up thing I’ve ever agreed to.

Because Wolfe is everywhere.

His boots are still beside the front door. There’s coffee in the cupboard he bought, a jacket hanging on the hook near the kitchen and books on the shelves with receipts and random pieces of paper shoved between the pages because apparently bookmarks were too much commitment. There’s a plant on one of the windowsills that looks half-dead, which means I’m now responsible for keeping it alive because I refuse to let the first thing I do in Wolfe’s house be murder his fucking fern.

It should be unbearable.

Sometimes it is.

But sometimes I walk into a room and catch the faint smell of him still hanging in the wood, the couch or the clothes he left behind, and something inside me settles for half a second before reality catches up.

It’s a blessing and a curse.

I get to be surrounded by him.

I also have to be surrounded by him.

Maybe eventually those two things will stop feeling so different.

But today isn’t that day.

The Speed Demons’ garage feels wrong the second I walk through the doors for Wolfe’s memorial. Everything is exactly where it should be, which makes the one thing missing impossible to ignore.

His bay is empty.

His locker is still closed, his name still printed across it, and for a second I can see him leaning against the bench like he did a hundred times before, pretending to be interested in whatever I was working on when really he was just there to bother me.

Draygon comes in behind me and pauses when I do. His hand settles at my lower back, warm and steady, while Thorne stops on my other side.

Nobody says anything, because we don’t need to.

Andre has already started arranging the memorial wall when we arrive. Cruz is up there, his number and photo surrounded by pieces of a life I never knew, and beside him is a new space that makes my stomach turn.

Wolfe’s helmet goes up first.