Lucky bastard, having Dane-fucking-Crews backing him up. After everything that went down too. That whole mess with the crash and the bike mods, the fallout.
If I thought it would go well, Dane would probably be a good person to talk to about all this shit, but I know it wouldn’t. How could it?
But he was gone, vanished from the circuit, and now he’s back, dragging the knockoff version of him around, like he did with his little sister years back.
That girl could ride. She had guts, clean lines, fearless drops, and a kind of fire you couldn’t fake. She was hard not to notice, with a loud laugh, sharp eyes, wore her confidence like armor, and pretty, too, in that way people who don’t try to be pretty stand out the most.
Dane being here proves that peoplecancome back, though. So even though I haven’t spoken to him, it has given me some hope.
Even after a scandal, after the world turns on you….
But that still might not be true for me.
You can fix a frame, strip a drivetrain, or swap out components and say,look, it’s clean now. But there’s no part swap that clears the wordrapistfrom your name.
No tool kit for that.
If this kid manages to get his bike together, that’ll bethat. I tear myself apart every night, but come morning, I’m still not the same.
I exhale sharply through my nose, fingers dragging over my jaw. That sick feeling is back, curling low in my gut.
No one cares that it doesn’t make sense, or asks questions, but I’m doing things differently this year. I may still be silent, but I’m not shrinking.
Mini Crews curses again, voice pitched high. Higher than that fake-deep thing he tried in the interview after the race, confirming that he forced it, trying to sound older or tougher.
I roll my eyes, then curse when I see what he’s doing. He’s got the bottom bracket half out, fighting it like it slept with his sister. The threads are probably stripped, or he’s cross-threading it in blindly. Wrong tool, wrong angle, wrong everything. If he keeps going at it wrong, he’ll wreck the shell.
I should turn around and leave him to it. Not my problem. Not my bike. Not my rookie.
But I keep standing there like an idiot, watching him nearly destroy a drivetrain because no one taught him better. I want to walk away, to leave him to it, but I can’t forget him meeting my eyes andnotflinching away like I was a monster.
Goddammit.
Muttering another curse, I head back to the van, stepping inside as quietly as I can, and dig through the tool kit until I find the bracket wrench. It’s the correct tool, which actually gives leverage without snapping something clean off.
Guess we’re doing this.
When I walk back to him, he startles so hard he drops the flashlight. The beam skitters across the pavement and blinds me as it swings.
“Shit,” he mutters, scrambling to grab it.
I crouch down beside him and lift the wrench, preparing to loosen the bracket myself, but before I can, his hand shoots out and closes around my wrist, making me freeze.
The assumptions fly through my mind easily.
I’m radioactive, unwelcome, and he doesn’t want me to touch his bike.
His small fingers barely wrap around my arm and are smudged with grease and grit from however long he’s spent elbow-deep in parts. I brace myself to pull back, but when I look at him, I catch something in his wide, brown eyes.
Anxiety, not disgust. Not rejection.
This isn’t about me.
What the hell is going on with this kid?
Instead of pulling away, I turn my wrist slowly, holding the tool out between us.
After a beat, he lets go and takes it, muttering a quiet, comically deep, “Thank you.”
