“She’s fine,” Damian had answered, slinging an arm under me and helping me back to the ambulance.
We left Jake and Wyatt behind and drove to a field, where Damian’s truck was parked behind a grain silo. They raided the ambulance for anything of use and then poured gasoline over it. I stared at the flames. It seemed dramatic and unnecessary. They rose orange against the pale sky, swallowing the red cross and the magnetic decals that Damian said were traceable.
Then we continued north for hours and hours and hours, the trees changing into vivid color along the way. I remember staring at the tattoos on Ryder’s hand as he gripped the wheel, and Damian reaching back to touch my face, asking how I was holding up. The taste of bile and Narcan in my throat.
When I finally woke again, we were here.Wyatt’s cabin, they said. Damian got the generator up and running. Ryder hauled logs in from the porch. I stood useless in the doorway, shivering in my blanket.
We ate canned beans off paper plates, but I couldn’t swallow more than a few bites. When we sat down in front of the fireplace afterward I curled into Ryder’s side, the familiar, lost smell of him finally taking the jittery edge off of things. I don’t even remember falling asleep. The next thing I knew the cabin was dark, Ryder saying it was four in the morning. Damian was asleep in the bedroom. I wanted air and we came out here.
We settled into the rocking chairs, the night a cloak around us, and I started talking.
Out here in the cold, with his face turned toward the dark and his hands knotted between his knees, I told Ryder what I’d kept from him. That Billy wasn’t just the president of the O.D., that he was mine before there was even a club to be president of. That when that bounty went up and Ryder had asked me, point-blank, who would be looking for me, I had lied straight to his face when I said I didn’t know. I could barely speak through my tears when I said, “They shot you because of me.”
He had taken a deep breath, eyes trained on the ground.
“Yep,” he’d said matter-of-factly, one hand settling to the left side of his chest and covering the County Medical patch there. “They did. Hurt like hell, too.”
It was neither angry nor accusatory, yet the way he didn’t deny it was my fault still stung. It had been hard to tell Wyatt; it was harder to tell Ryder, because he’s the one who almost died for my omission. But then he drew in another breath and lifted his head, dark eyes burning not with anger, but with intensity. Conviction. “When we ask you who’s coming for you,” he’d said pointedly, “it’s because we’re getting ready to stand in the way. We can’t do that blind. You need to trust us.”
There was no judgment beneath his words, no resentment underneath. He’d told me what I needed to hear and now the matter was closed. Somehow, that knocked the breath out of me more than the blame ever could. I’d nodded, throat too tight to speak, and he’d dropped his hand from his chest to my knee, warm through the blanket.
The fog grows thinner now as the light rises, stretching out and dissipating like all the threads that were tangled between us until now. When the first ray of sunlight peeps over the tops of the trees, I stand, the blanket draped loosely over both arms. It’s unseasonably warm for early October.
The t-shirt I’m wearing is from the race and has the screaming skull patch on the front, along with the words “DISORDERED: RIDE HARD, STAY HARD.” Ryder looked disgusted when he saw it, but there’s nothing else to wear. The closets here are empty.
“Let’s go see the lake,” I say, reaching for his hand. “Come on.”
He blinks up at me, the hint of a surprised smile on his lips, and takes my hand in his large one. We go down the steps down together. I’m barefoot but the feel of the wet grass on my feet is grounding.
Just a few steps away from the porch, the yard gives way to a small sandy beach. The fog at the shoreline thins to a breath. The water is still, a faint steam lifting where it touches the air. I let go of Ryder’s hand and spread the blanket out on the sand before stepping into the water, letting out a small squeal as the cold water washes over my ankles, then my shins. Ryder laughs and sits down on the blanket, arms braced over his knees, and watches me.
“It feels nice,” I call back with a grin, laughing at my own weak argument.
“No way.”
I laugh again, turn, and wade deeper. When I’m almost up to the hem of my shirt, I open my arms and look up to the sky and draw in a deep lungful of fresh, clean oxygen.
For the first time in a long time, I can breathe. No corrugated steel roof above my head, no wire fencing around me. The lake goes out all the way to the horizon with only trees on either side. The water is cold on my legs but invigorating against the heavy fatigue I’m dragging with me. It’s the most awake I’ve felt in months.
I turn and head back to the shore, standing in front of Ryder. “It really is nice,” I insist. “I’m going for a swim.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Join me.”
He glances down at the paramedic uniform, sweaty, torn, stained with blood, and motions to it with his hand. “Forgot my bathing suit.”
“Me too,” I say with a shrug, and then pull the black t-shirt over my head in one clean motion and drop it on the sand, turning to run toward the water as if I can move fast enough to preserve my dignity.
I know what I look like. Pale skin, body down to bone with bruises fading to yellow. The last few months are writ all over me, but it’s also proof of what I’ve survived.
Once I’m knee-deep, I dolphin-dive. The cold slams through me, pure and bracing, and I surface shouting. My heart’s hammering, blood burning against the chill. Alive.
“Ryder! It’s amazing!”
He grins, shakes his head, and finally stands, unbuttoning and peeling off his shirt. My breath catches. The ink across his chest is all bold black lines—a compass rose splashed over his sternum, a ring of tiny coordinates circling it, script breaking off toward his shoulders—but high on the left side there’s something new.
An angry pink scar cuts straight through one of the compass points, shiny and tight where the bullet went in. For a second that’s all I can see, pink carved through black, proof in his skin of what I cost him. I want to touch it. I want to press my mouth there and say I’m sorry until the word becomes meaningless.
