Page 13 of Crash’s Secret

“Tell Manny.”

“I’m not telling Manny that.” He’s looking at me, and my shirt is sticking to my back, and his eyes drop to my mouth and stay a second too long to be an accident.

“Crash.”

His hand comes up, and his thumb takes a smudge of something off my cheek, and the touch lasts longer than the smudge does. He leans down, and we’re eye to eye.

I’d swear under oath the room runs out of air. If I lean forward three inches, this whole thing is over.

He steps back.

“I need to go for a ride.” He’s already moving, scooping his keys off the desk without breaking stride.

I duck out after him. “I’ll come with you.”

“Cass.” He stops with his hand on the doorframe. “You’re the reason I’m leaving.”

“Well, maybe I’ll leave first,” I tell him. “And you promised Saber that you’d babysit me if I left the clubhouse.”

He sighs. “Don’t do this.”

“Then take me with you.”

He turns around. “Fuck it,” he says. “Let’s go.”

We ride for miles until we reach a dirt road I haven’t been on since I was a kid. The bike climbs through mesquite and loose rock for twenty minutes, and I hold on to Crash with my palms flat against his stomach, half an inch lower than last time I was on his bike.

He doesn’t correct me.

The trail tops out on a ridge with the whole valley spread underneath it. Ash Valley looks small from up here. The highway is a gray thread, and the clubhouse is a speck you’d miss if you didn’t know what to look for.

I get off the bike and stand at the edge with my hands in my pockets while the sun starts its long slide toward the western range.

“I’ve been here before,” I say. “My dad used to ride up here.”

“I know.” He kicks the stand down and stays by the bike. “He’s the one who showed me. I was sixteen, first bike, riding it like an idiot. He made me follow him up this trail till I learned throttle control or died.” He looks out at the valley instead of me. “I didn’t die.”

“Thank god.”

He huffs out a laugh and comes to stand beside me. Not close. There’s a careful three feet between us.

The sun drops. The valley goes gold, then copper. Somewhere below us, a hawk circles, and neither of us has said a word in five minutes.

It’s the quietest I’ve ever known him to be.

“You want to know why I picked a school in California?” I ask.

“Good weather. Ocean.”

“To get away from the desert,” I whisper.

He looks over at me. “You mean to get away from the club?”

“To get away from you.”

He turns his gaze back toward the valley and doesn’t respond.

“I loved you, Crash. Since before I understood what to call it. And you only saw me as a kid.” I stop myself. Breathe. “I felt invisible.”