The room was full of blue light and the smell of us—sex, sweat, the chemical burn of adrenaline working its way out through our pores. I listened to the television, then to the silence, then back to the television, as if one would explain the other.
A knock at the door. Neither of us moved. After a second, the knob turned, and Augustine poked his head in, eyebrows doing half the talking.
“They dropped it,” he said. “Just now. Justice Department. All charges. You’re clear, brother.” He looked at me, then at Nitro, and gave a half-smile. “Guess you’re a hero now.”
Nitro snorted, flipping Augustine off. “Get out.”
Augustine left, closing the door with the soft click of someone who knew exactly what was happening on the other side.
I shifted, rolling to my back, the blanket pooling at my waist. On the TV, a lawyer with the jawline of a wood chipper was already speculating about my “dangerous liaisons” and how the government’s reversal was a cover-up.
Nitro watched the screen, but his eyes were far away.
“What now?” I asked.
He didn’t answer right away. He let the question hang in the stale air, bouncing from the cinderblock walls to the old motorcycle parts on the shelves to the soft, sticky place where our legs tangled under the blanket.
Finally, he said, “You go back to work. I keep the heat off your back. World keeps spinning.”
“Just like that,” I said.
He nodded, but it was a lie.
I propped myself up on one elbow, staring at the side of his face. The scar on his jaw looked newer in the TV light. “We could leave, you know. Start over.”
He smiled, sad and sweet, the kind of smile that never got shown to anyone outside this room. “We’d last a week before we burned it all down.”
I traced the line of his ribs with my finger, feeling the places where the bones didn’t quite match. “Not if we didn’t have to fight so hard.”
He pulled me back in, tucking my head under his chin. “You always fight. It’s who you are.”
I let the silence take us. The TV cycled through the same stories, the same footage, the same endless crawl of disaster and accusation. I watched it all, eyes open and unblinking, until the blue light was the only thing I could see.
He stroked my hair, slow, as if counting the seconds between the next siren, the next phone call, the next time the universe would try to erase us.
I closed my eyes, let the sound of his heartbeat override the noise of the world.
For now, we were safe.
For now, we were enough.
The blue light flickered, and the shadows on the wall kept us company until morning.
20
Nitro
Twilight hit the compound like an old debt coming due. The bikes were all stabled, the day's last echoes dying in the parking lot as men drifted to their cigarettes, their cards, their unfinished business. The chapel’s neon cross glowed against the dusk, its humming transformer outlasting any claim to holiness. Out on the porch, I sat beside Seraphina on the warped planks, boots tapping the hollow where a termite colony had once held court. Her head was bowed, but she watched the treeline with a sniper’s patience.
I didn’t know how to start. I’d survived the wars, the kidnappings, the press conferences, and all the clever little games of men with guns, but now the air between us was more fragile than anything else in the county. My right hand worked a cigarette back and forth, not lighting it. The pack was already empty—habit, not hope.
She didn’t break the silence, but I felt the pulse in her, the awareness that the next word could shatter the whole peace.
“They’re going to eat you alive, you know,” I said, finally.
She lifted her chin. Her glasses were gone—contact lenses today—but the effect was still the same: absolute clarity, zero illusions. “Who?” she asked, and I could hear the old, dry scorn in it. Like she’d already run the numbers and found the threat negligible.
“Everyone. The lab. The government. Those guys with the cheap haircuts on the Sunday morning shows. You gave them something to talk about.” I tried to smile. “A real hero’s arc.”
