Before I could say more, Red rode up, his custom exhaust obnoxiously loud as always. “Well, well. Look who decided to grace us with their presence. The Heleonix poster boys.”
I tensed, my hand automatically tightening on the throttle. “Fuck off, Red.”
“Just surprised to see you slumming it with us regular folks,” he continued, circling around us like a shark. “Thought you’d be too busy riding fancy electric bikes on your private test track.”
“That test track is work. I don’t call Jiffy Lube your fancy private auto garage,” Milo said evenly.
I choked back a laugh, knowing it would only irritate Red more.
Red snorted, the sound distorted through his helmet. “Must be nice getting paid to ride. Let’s see if all that clean, professional track has made you soft.” With that parting shot, he took off toward the starting line.
I rolled my shoulders, trying to shake off the unease that had settled between them. “You good to go?”
“Always.”
At the line, Vince ran through the route for the newcomers—fourteen miles, no traffic, don’t cross the double yellow. “Keep it clean,” he called. Some newbies snickered; bad sign. I caught Milo’s eye—idiots like them ended up in body bags. As Vince moved aside, I wondered what we were really chasing. The test track with June had felt real. This felt empty.
June didn’t know where we were tonight. We hadn’t lied to her, but we hadn’t volunteered the information either. She’d texted earlier to say she was working late on some motor housing adjustments based on our feedback. I’d replied letting her know Milo and I were going for a ride.
She didn’t need to know the details because she wasn’t the boss of us. She wasn’t even our girlfriend, not officially. And we’d been doing these races long before she came into our lives, long before Heleonix, and we’d keep doing them long after she left us behind. This was who we were. These were our people.
“Riders ready?” Vince called, pulling me from my thoughts.
I glanced at Milo, who gave me another thumbs up, his visor now down, hiding his expression. The riders around us tensed, engines revving higher as anticipation built.
Vince raised his arm, held it for one heartbeat, two, then dropped it in a slashing motion.
We exploded off the line, my instincts taking over as I leaned into the first curve. I hung back slightly, letting Milo take the lead as we pulled ahead of most of the pack. This was our strategy—Milo’s smoother riding style worked better for the initial curves, while my more aggressive approach gave me the edge in the straightaways.
The first mile flew by in a blur of sensation—the cold mountain air rushing past my helmet, the powerful machine responding to my slightest shifts in weight, the road unwinding before me like a challenge. For a few minutes, I lost myself in the pure physicality of it, the dance between man and machine and mountain that had always been my escape.
I caught glimpses of headlights behind us—the rest of the pack, led by Red, pushing hard to catch up. But they were still a good quarter-mile back. Milo and I had this locked down, as usual. We knew every inch of this road, every potential hazard, every optimal line through the curves.
Except tonight, it didn’t feel like the victory it usually did. It felt like playing chicken with death for no good reason, like riskinga run-in with the law that would destroy our relationships with our sponsors.
I shook my head, trying to dislodge these unwelcome thoughts. This was who I was, goddammit. Xavier Cross, the guy who rode like he had nothing to lose because, for most of my life, I really didn’t. The guy who accepted that he probably wouldn’t live past thirty and was fine with that. The guy who—
My thoughts shattered as I watched Milo’s bike suddenly fishtail ahead of me. His rear tire hit something—gravel, sand, something that shouldn’t have been there—and lost traction. For one suspended moment, I watched as he fought to regain control, his body doing everything right, everything I would have done.
But it wasn’t enough. The bike went down, Milo separating from it as they both slid across the asphalt in a shower of sparks. His body tumbled once, twice, before coming to rest against the base of a guardrail while his bike continued skidding into the opposite lane.
“MILO!” The scream tore from my throat as I slammed on the brakes, my back tire locking up, sending my bike into a controlled skid that I barely managed to keep upright. I killed the engine and threw my helmet off before my bike had fully stopped, my heart hammering against my ribs so hard I thought they might crack.
I sprinted to where he lay, my boots slapping against the pavement, each step an eternity. He wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t he moving? This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.
“Milo! Fuck, Milo, talk to me!” I skidded to my knees beside him, hands hovering, afraid to touch him, afraid of making something worse. “Milo!”
He groaned, the sound punching a hole through the panic that had gripped me. “Fuck,” he mumbled, his voice muffled by his helmet. “That sucked.”
Relief flooded through me so violently that my vision blurred. I realized I was crying—actually fucking crying—as I carefully removed his helmet, my hands shaking so badly I could barely work the strap.
“Don’t move,” I ordered, my voice breaking. “Something might be broken. Just stay still.”
His helmet didn’t look too damaged, thank fuck, just a little scratched. “My shoulder,” he gasped. “Think I landed on it.”
The leather of his riding jacket was shredded along one side, but it had done its job—protecting his skin from the cheese-grater effect of the asphalt. His shoulder, though, was clearly not right, the odd angle visible even through his gear.
“Where else?” I demanded, running my hands over him, checking for other injuries. “Anything numb? Can you feel your legs? Your hands?”
