Page 54 of Redline Baby

"Keep the dressing clean and dry for the first twenty-four hours. After that, you can wash gently, but no soaking or submerging the arm until the wound is healed. Come back in about ten days for suture removal."

Kit nods.

"You'll also need the sling for the shoulder. Use it for comfort, but follow the discharge instructions about movement. If the pain gets significantly worse, you develop numbness or weakness, swelling increases, the hand changes color, or you get fever, drainage, or spreading redness around the wound, come back."

"Understood."

"If your tetanus record isn't current, we'll update that before you leave."

Kit closes his eyes.

"Of course you will."

The practitioner almost smiles and then she steps out. A nurse returns a few minutes later with the sling, fits it carefully around Kit's injured arm, and goes over the instructions again.

Then we're alone. The curtain falls shut behind her.

Kit looks down. At our hands. His fingers are still locked around mine. His grip is still firm. I can see the moment he registers it. The realization that he's been holding on this entire time. That the procedure is over. That there is nothing forcing him to keep doing it. His eyes lift to mine. I wait. He doesn't pull away. Instead, his thumb moves once against the side of my hand.

Then he smiles at me.

Chapter 15. Kit

The next morning, I push through the glass door at Halverson Moto with my left arm secured in the sling the hospital gave me, the white bandage around my forearm bright against everything else.

It's the kind of space that makes you feel exactly as put-together as you are.

Which, in my case, is not very.

The front showroom display bikes catch my eye first, same as always—a restored vintage Triumph on a center stand, and beside it something matte black and custom-built with hand-stitched seat leather that looks expensive enough to make me nervous just standing near it. A glass case runs along the front counter, filled with small parts arranged on black velvet like they're jewelry instead of hardware.

I take three steps into the main bay and stop. My bike is on the center lift in the far corner. My baby.

The exposed frame looks naked and vulnerable, the engine case gouged where it met the road. The left fairing is already off. One fork leg sits visibly out of line, a thin film of oil still streaking down the tube from the blown seal. Someone has already started the disassembly.

My jaw tightens. I feel tears prick at the backs of my eyes and blink them away before they can do anything embarrassing. Soren is at the workbench along the far wall, his back to me, both hands on a torque wrench. He either hasn't heard me come in or he's decided not to acknowledge me yet, and something about the second possibility makes my stomach do a small flip.

I cross the concrete floor.

"Hey," I say when I'm close enough that he can't reasonably pretend he hasn't heard me. "So, look. About the bike."

Soren sets the torque wrench down.

He turns to face me, and his eyes do that thing they do—the unhurried sweep from my face to the sling, to the bandage on my arm, then back to my face again.

My stomach turns slowly. Not unpleasantly.

"I can't afford to have it here," I say.

I've been running these words through my head since I woke up.

"I mean, this place is—it's nice. Really nice. More than nice, actually. But I need to take it somewhere else. Somewhere cheaper. I've got a guy who works out of his garage, does decent work for cash, doesn't charge shop rates. It's just—I'm sorry."

I'm shifting my weight from foot to foot. I can feel myself doing it, and I can't make it stop. My good hand flexes at my side, opening and closing, a small nervous leak of whatever's wired wrong in me that I usually bury under noise. Soren looks at me for a long, quiet moment. His expression doesn't change. There's no irritation in it. No impatience. No performative concern.

Just him, watching me try to talk myself out of accepting something good.

"You think I'd let you walk out of here over money," he says finally. "That's not what any of this was ever about."