No board meetings. No billion-dollar expectations.
Just me, the road, and the truth pulsing in my chest like a second heartbeat:
I have to see her again.
The descent comes fast, steep, sharp, the kind that demands absolute focus.
I’m holding steady, core tight, weight back, fingers feathering the brakes like I’ve practiced.
Then, suddenly?—
A rider brushes up from behind me. Close. Too close.
We both wobble.
One wrong shift of weight.
The wheels slip.
My handlebars jerk sideways.
Theneverythinggoes sideways.
My body lifts. Then flips.
Bike. Sky. Ground.
Metal. Gravel. Wind knocked clean out of me.
I feel the slam of bone against asphalt. The grinding skid of my helmet. The violent, disorienting tumble—over bike, over body, over bike again.
And then?—
Black.
I have a vague recollection of sirens. Of voices speaking French too quickly.
A hand on my chest. Something sharp in my arm. A woman saying,restez avec moi.Stay with me.
But mostly, I remember the white.
White walls. White sheets. The too-clean brightness of a hospital room in Paris.
And pain.
A lot of pain.
But layered under it—like something half-submerged— her face.
Not real. Not here. But clear.
Rhea.
SEVEN
RHEA
I wasn’t planning on drinking that much.
