I press a kiss to the top of his head. “Anything you need?”
He shifts just enough to look at me, eyes glassy but clear. “Stay.”
“I’m not going anywhere, baby.”
He turns in my arms, burying his face in my neck, and my hands find his back, stroking gently, calming the last tremors still working through him.
“I’ve never felt like this before,” he whispers.
“Like what?”
“Unmade and still wanted.”
My heart cracks a little as I pull him tighter to me. “Youarewanted, always, and no matter what.”
We lay there, wrapped around each other as my fingers trace lazy circles against his skin. Our legs tangle. Every part of me is touching him, and itstilldoesn’t feel like enough.
Sleep pulls at me slowly, but I can feel him smiling faintly against my throat, and I just know he’s replaying what we just did, and holy shit.
I just fucked Luc-fucking-Delacroix.
But it wasn’t just fucking.
It waseverything.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Alaina
“You said you don’t know how to let go of the revenge,” Dr. Mira says gently, her French accent curling around the words. “But let me ask you this. What’s always harder to hold onto than the anger?”
The hotel room is still wrapped in that colorless pre-dawn gray, and I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed, wrapped in one of Luc’s hoodies, fingers tugging absently at the frayed cuff. The phone rests face-up on the pillow, speaker on, her voice the only sound aside from the low hum of the air-conditioning.
“I don’t know.” It comes out too small.
“Hope.”
Hope.
“And in your case…” she continues, “… hope means identity. What person, sister, even teammate you were before you had a target.”
I blink up at the ceiling, letting the quiet stretch. My mind drifts to dirt under my fingernails, to the taste of blood, sweat, and fear at the start line of my first World Cupas Allen Crews, and to every time I heard Raine’s name and felt my stomach twist.
Before all that, I was just me. I was reckless and fast, and so in love with this sport, it hurt. I was someone who knew how to laugh even after a crash. Someone who used to sleep with her medals under her pillow like they were proof she could take up space in the world that belonged to her brother.
That girl feels far away now, but maybe she’s not gone. Perhaps she’s just buried under years of fury, drive, and the belief that revenge was the only thing holding me upright.
“Hope,” Dr. Mira says again, softer now. “You’ve already walked past that moment, Alaina. You know how to let go because you’re still here. You’re still breathing, still planning, still riding, even without winning. Letting go isn’t erasing the past, it’s making space for everything else youcould be.”
My chest squeezes as something in me cracks open just wide enough for something new to grow.
What could I be if I’m not the girl chasing revenge?
If I’m not Allen Crews with something to prove?
“Letting go of one thing doesn’t mean losing everything,” she adds. “It’s actually choosing whatdeservesto stay.”
I close my eyes and think of Luc and Mason’s laughter echoing across the BMX track. Of Finn picking wildflowers with pizza grease still on his fingers. Of Dane, always watching out for me, even when I didn’t deserve it. Of Piper, being my first real girlfriend. Otis and Toulouse, Jim and Élise, even Dad.
