So when the phone started vibrating in my pocket, I ignored it. The bike was the only thing left that didn’t talk back.
It kept buzzing, though. Not just once, not a polite nudge, but the kind of relentless, full-body tremor that made you worry your phone would catch fire if you didn’t check it.
I coasted to the shoulder and killed the engine. The sudden quiet was violent—just my breath and the tick of hot metal, and the alien ringtone I’d never bothered to change.
I pulled off my helmet, thumbed the screen awake, and squinted at a wall of missed calls. Knox, ten times. No voicemails, but a flood of texts:
CALL ME.
Where are you?
Ran, it’s urgent. Answer your goddamn phone.
The time stamps were stacked like dominoes, each one closer together, each message louder without the need for sound. I scrolled, heart thudding out of sync with the phone’s new insistence.
The next text, from two minutes ago:If you don’t answer in five I’m calling the fucking state troopers.
The screen lit up again, and before I could even think, my thumb hit “Accept.”
“Yeah?” I tried to sound bored, but my voice came out sandpapered.
“Jesus Christ, Ransom.” Knox’s voice was sharp enough to leave a mark. “Where the hell are you?”
I looked up. The only landmark was a defunct weigh station and a sign that said “Shannon Creek Exit.” No idea what county I was in. “On the road, somewhere between nowhere and fuck you. Why?”
“Don’t do this,” he snapped. “You need to come back. Now.”
I flexed my hand, trying to shake out the pins and needles. “I’m not due back for another four months. The farm’ll survive.”
He breathed, slow and lethal. “It’s not about the farm. It’s Hardesty. The Sheriff’s department called me, Ran. He’s in the emergency room. Bad.”
The wind cut through my jacket, all the way to my bones. “What happened?”
“They didn’t say. Just that he was on a call, and now he’s at the trauma center in Eugene. I tried getting info, but they won’t say anything unless you show up.”
I nearly dropped the phone. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. “Me? Why the fuck me?”
Another pause. This one was longer. “You’re listed as his emergency contact.”
I sat down hard on the curb, not caring about the mud or the imprint it would leave. The world got thin and sharp, every detail painful in its precision: the cracked asphalt under my boots, the skitter of some rodent in the grass, the ugly sky overhead that looked like a bruise left by a bad dream.
Knox kept talking, but I barely heard. “Ran? You there?”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah. Keep going.”
“There was an incident at your shop. Inked Rebellion. Somebody hit it last night. Hardesty responded, tried to stop him. Bastard got the drop on him, did a real number. Thedepartment couldn’t reach you, so they called me, then asked if I’d pass it on. They said if you can get to the hospital, do it.”
I dug my nails into my thigh, left crescent moons in the denim. “How bad?”
“Don’t know,” Knox said, all the bravado gone from his voice. “Bad enough he’s still in the ER and they won’t tell anyone shit unless you’re next of kin. Which, apparently, you are.”
My mind went blank, then white-hot, then blank again.
I’d left because I was tired of being nobody. I’d left because he made me a secret. But now, in the place where you can’t lie, he’d named me—official, on paperwork, emergency contact. No more hiding.
I thought about the last time I saw Floyd: the cut of his jaw, the gravity in his eyes, the way he’d let me leave like he was closing a door on us that would never open again.
He’d never called me anything but trouble. Never risked a single inch of daylight for us. But when it mattered, he wrote me down.
