“I’m sorry, T-Mo,” I finally tell him. “If I’d have known—”
“B’s the only one who knew anything about him,” he says with a dismissive shake of his head, “and that was only because I didn’t know what the fuck to do for Jules. I thought it was gonna kill her.”
Pulling another cigarette from the pack, he says, “I told B I needed help fixing it, and he told me to stop trying.‘You can’t fix this. Stop trying tofixit and just hold space for it.’Might be the best advice he’s ever given me.”
Like his brother told him to do, I sit in silence, watching as Tripp pulls drag after drag from the smoke in his hand until it’s nothing but ash. Tossing the butt to the ground next to the other, he grinds his toe against it and clears his throat.
“Keep these away from me for a while, will you? Fuck.”
I catch the pack of cigarettes as he tosses them in my direction, tucking them into the pocket of my flannel.
I shouldn’t say this. I shouldn’t ask.
“You don’t think she’s pregnant again, do you?”
I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.
“That would be immaculate fucking conception and I’d have to rethink the whole atheism thing,” he says. “Unless—” he cuts himself off with a shake of his head as he reaches for his helmet. “Never mind. We going?”
“Unless what?” I ask as I pull on my helmet, securing it into place.
I can hear my heart slamming in my ear drums.
Tripp’s voice crackles to life through my Cardo. “Nothing.”
He slides across the seat of his bike, flipping up the kickstand as he revs the engine, telling me without words that our conversation is over. His chest is lowered toward his fuel tank and he’s peeling out of the lot before I’ve even gotten my own kickstand up.
Shit.
I hurry to catch up and follow behind him, barely making it past a sedan without clipping it as we weave between lanes of traffic. The Cardo is silent while we ride; no conversation, no music. The only thing I can hear is the sound of my own engine, which is slowly drowned out by a single repeating thought.
He knows.
The roads aren’t empty tonight like we usually like them to be, which leaves us splitting between rows of cars until we hit an open patch of road on the highway.
Tripp’s speed picks up, and I ramp up my own in response to keep up with him, scanning ahead of us for any incoming patrol cars or obstacles that might cause us issues. As my speedometer climbs past a hundred and fifteen, I blow the horn on my bike.
“Pull off on the shoulder,” I tell him.
I get nothing from him in response.
“You fail two out of six,” I grit. “Don’t be stupid.”
An aggravated growl rips through the comms unit, but his bike veers toward the shoulder as it starts to decelerate, and I follow behind. I’ve already lost enough friends who rode upset, I’m not adding him to that list.
Even if it’s my own damn fault.
Pulling my bike to a stop behind his, I climb off of it and move to snatch his key as he dismounts. He pulls off his helmet and rests it on the seat of his bike, stepping away as he runs his fingers through his hair with a groan.
I slide out of my own helmet, waiting with my heart slamming against the wall of my chest as he walks away from me and out of my eye line for only a minute before he returns. When he does, he swings his foot toward the guard rail next to him with a loud curse, shoving his hands into his hair once again.
There’s a pain etched into his features that I’ve only seen a few times before, normally when he mentions his oldest brother, the one whose name is written into the space behind his ear. Myhand tightens around the keys in my hand with enough force that I think it may cut right through me. Everything inside of me wants to look away from him, but I can’t let myself do that.
“I gotta get home,” he tells me.
“So take a minute to calm down or hop on the pegs and have someone come pick her up,” I say, angling my head toward his bike. “You’re not getting back on the road like this.”
His gaze moves between his bike and my own, the wheels in his head visibly turning as he tries to make whatever decision it is that feels right to him, before finally dropping to the ground to sit against the guard rail that he just got done kicking the shit out of.
