Page 97 of Road to Redemption

I didn’t necessarily feel bothered by her presence. She hadn’t done anything. What overtook me was more so a feeling of being observed: of wanting to be seen by her and being unsettled by what that meant about me.

And given the speed with which she shifted her sparkling blue eyes from my face to the horizon, I imagined a similar tension might be pulling at her gut.

“Come with me,” she rapped her knuckles against the back of my Adirondack chair. “I need to show you something.”

Those words transformed the fluttering in my stomach into a full on twist. “What is it?”

After all the secrets and revelations I’d endured in this house, I wasn’t sure that my system could handle another shock.

But Dom just turned her back on me and strode across the yard toward the front of the house. “Come.”

With a sigh, I set down my drawing and gave Lady another scratch on her sleepy head. “Keep an eye on my stuff, yeah? And if you hear me screaming, go find Leo and Spence.”

Lady groaned, leaning in to every last second of the pet until I took off after Dom.

Striding across the lawn, Dom’s broad shadow was a dark fissure through the golden evening: a dark beacon through the blinding light. As I followed behind her, her tall frame rose like a mountain against the horizon, reaching up and up with enough ambition to block out the entire sun.

She was a force of nature. And I was caught between the simultaneous urge to run for cover and to let myself be swept up in her might.

Coming to a stop at a more secluded part of the long gravel driveway, she finally turned to face me as she set her hand down on the handlebar of a huge gray motorcycle: my father’s bike.

A chill plucked at the nerves down my spine. “What are we doing with the Gray Ghost?”

“Teaching you to ride.” Dom studied my expression, keeping her own neutral. “If you’re going to insist on going into that lion’s den, it’s my job to make sure that you’re prepared for any outcome.”

She didn’t have to spell out the implication for it to make my stomach turn. The world we lived in was not without risk, and inviting Maura in only made things more dangerous.

I knew that I needed to see her — to get answers for myself and for our mission. But I wouldn’t bear the consequences of a failure on my own.

If something went south, Zeus’ forces would have to leave three bodies in their wake before they got the chance to touch me. And as much as my saviors’ dedication touched my heart, it also terrified me.

I don’t want to imagine that.

Dom waved me closer as she took a lap around the bike. “It’s a bit big for you. And if you take a liking to riding, we can get you something better suited to your size. But it felt appropriate to have your first ride be on Brennan’s bike.”

She cleared her throat, pushing down the note of sentimentality that had crept into her usually gruff voice. “Besides, if anything went wrong, the bike you’d have to peel out on could be as big as mine. The circumstances won’t be ideal, so I’d rather you practice in realistic conditions.”

I nodded, hovering on an invisible perimeter my mind had formed around the bike. This couldn’t be real.

But Dom leaned forward, resting one hand on the handlebar and the other on the bike’s seat as she nodded for me to come closer. “It’s just a bike. It won’t bite.”

Hearing the thinning patience in her voice, I stepped forward, taking her hand as she guided me onto the hulking vehicle. It wasn’t so tall that I couldn’t touch the ground, but it bordered on it. And fuck was it heavy — I could hold it up for now, but a few hours like this, and I knew my joints would ache.

I reached forward, resting my palms against the smooth handlebar and feeling a ripple of apprehension tense my shoulders.

There’s no way I can do this.

I had half a mind to hop off of the bike, but before I could, two muscular thighs bracketed mine from behind. The bike shook as Dom settled her weight behind me, using her ropey arms to grip the handlebar and keep her weight from crushing me.

With my back pressed to her chest, Dom’s voice rolled from her chest and straight through mine. “How much of this do you remember?”

“Not much…basic bike parts?” When I was a kid, Brennan would take me on short laps around this very driveway. Despite his insistence that I keep off of the damn things, he also knew that mystifying them would only make me more curious.

“Like keeping a firearm out of a safe,” he would mutter before taking me out to show me the basics. I was sure that some of the info was still rattling around in my brain somewhere, but the memories had grown fuzzy from disuse.

“I doubt I could make it down the drive in one piece,” I shook my head.

“Alright, that’s what I’m here for,” Dom adjusted her grip on the handlebars. “We’ll start nice and slow. I’m going to take care of the handlebars until you get used to the footing.”