Page 134 of Redline Baby

I called Dex.

I didn’t tell him why. I just needed to hear a voice that wasn’t the silence in that apartment. When he asked whether I was okay, I said fine, obviously, and hung up before he could hear the rest of me break loose.

I cried on that floor for over an hour.

Pretty was pressed against my chest because I’d already taken him down from the shelf, and there was nobody else left to hold.

Nobody came. Because there was nobody left to come. When the thing someone needed you for is finished, they leave.

I look at Vera. She looks good as new. Better, maybe. Soren rebuilt parts of her that I thought were gone for good. Every panel sits clean. Every line is right.

Finished.

He won’t need me here anymore.

Deep down, I know it makes no sense. I’m just very upset.

The empty bed.

The cold pillow.

Waking up and not knowing where he was.

Lying in the dark telling myself it was fine until my chest got tight, then tighter, until breathing became something I had to think about.

And he knew what Charles had done.

He knew what leaving meant to me.

And he left anyway.

The thought isn’t fair. I know that too. It comes anyway.

I set the rag down.

I roll Vera off the lift.

For half a second, I stand beside her. I could wait.

Soren is thirty feet away.

I could walk through the back door and say:

Daddy, my brain is doing something bad.

I could do exactly what he has spent months teaching me to do.

Instead, I put on my helmet.

I leave.

The road opens beyond the city limits, and I open the throttle with it. Two lanes. Almost no traffic. I tuck lower over the tank. My knees lock against the frame. The engine climbs through the revs beneath me, eager and familiar, and I let it.

The first corner arrives fast. Too fast. I know that before I enter it. I should scrub more speed.

I don’t.

I press the inside bar and tip Vera into the turn, carrying more pace than I have any business carrying on a public road. The chassis loads beneath me. The tires work harder than they should.