I drove past them and up the long drive, which was rutted worse than ever—mud frozen to ridges that slammed the shocks and made the Civic’s undercarriage protest like a dying animal. At the top of the rise, the compound was a negative of itself: the main building dark, the windows like dead pixels, every other structure sealed against the night. Even the row of bikes outside the rec hall had been pushed together, as if for warmth. The onlylight came from the garage. A single rectangle, leaking gold onto the slush.
I parked under the awning, next to the bikes, and sat there with the engine running until the heater finally caught up and fogged the windshield into pure blankness. The silence was so total I could hear the metal ping as it cooled, the settling of the frame, the tick of my own watch amplified by the Civic’s cheap acoustics.
Inside the garage, it was warm and bright. The first thing I saw was a table, littered with the wreckage of a disassembled engine. The second thing I saw was the back of Nitro, hunched over the frame of a bike, a ragged t-shirt stretched over a body that looked cut from the same material as the chain hoist above him. His arms were bare, the tattoos gone pale in the work light, his hands moving with the rhythm of someone who had performed the same surgery a thousand times and could do it blind.
He didn’t turn around. Not at first. He kept working, socket wrench singing, until the noise of my shoes made him freeze in place. Then, slow, he set the wrench down, wiped his hands on the old jeans, and turned.
His eyes were two holes in the dark. He didn’t speak.
Neither did I.
I wanted to say something clever, or brave, or even cruel. Instead, I just stood in the doorway, the rectangle of warmth at my back, and waited for him to make the first move.
He looked at me, then at the car outside, then back to me. His face was unreadable, the scar on his jaw a white accent against the shadow.
“What are you doing here?” he said, finally. His voice was flat. Not angry—just tired.
I opened my mouth, but my throat closed around the words. “I’m sorry,” I managed.
He laughed, a dead sound. “For what? Telling the truth?”
I shook my head. “For not telling you first. For doing it on my own.”
He walked toward me, slow, wiping his hands on the shirt. I could see the blue of old bruises on his ribs, the thin red line of a fresh cut on the forearm. He stopped a meter away.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Not anymore.”
I searched his face for anything—a flicker of hope, a hint of forgiveness. There was nothing.
I tried again. “They’re going to leave you alone, now. The Justice Department. The Bureau. I made sure of it.”
He looked past me, at the Civic, at the open world.
“You think they ever leave anyone alone?” he said. “You think that’s how this works?”
He stepped around me, picked up the wrench, and set it in the cradle of the engine block. His hands were steady, but the motion was all for show.
I closed the door behind me and let the sound of it settle.
“I just wanted to see you,” I said, voice barely audible.
He nodded. “You’ve seen me.”
The silence was worse than before, because now it belonged to both of us.
I moved closer, close enough to smell the sweat and gasoline. He didn’t move away.
“I’m not going back,” I said, meaning the lab, the way things were, all of it.
He shrugged. “You don’t have to do that.”
I reached out, hand trembling, and touched his shoulder. The muscle twitched under my palm, but he didn’t shrug me off.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
He turned, caught my wrist in his hand, and held it there, not gentle but not rough. He stared at me, unblinking, like he was trying to memorize my face before it vanished.
“You did what you had to do,” he said. “So did I.”
