When I finally ease up a little, I look at him again and see him taking stock of my face and posture, and I do my best to bring down the tone.
I speak softly, and take a small step toward him.
“I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t think any of this was going to upset you like it did, or I would have been more careful. I will be more careful. But I don’t want to pass on this money just because we’re fighting. Especially when we’re really fighting about a bunch of other stuff. Please just come with me? You can watch, I’ll win some cash, we’ll go home. We’ll sleep all this anger off, I’ll stop doing stupid selfish shit, and in a week it’ll all feel like a bad dream. And I promise we’ll talk about the custody thing more before I do anything, because you’re right, I did spring that on you. But please, right now, can you come with me? I don’t want to ride thinking about how angry you are at me.”
I wince, because I didn’t mean for that to come out all manipulative and shit. I was shooting for honesty.
“You don’t have to,” I say as a quick correction. “If you don’t want. I’ll be fine. But I would like it if we could go together. And we’ll talk more when I get home, no matter what.”
“Yeah, because talking in the middle of the night is going to be so helpful.”
“Please, Silas? Will you please do this for me?”
There’s a long, scary silence before he finally answers.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ihate everything about this.
The stupidity of it is that I’m not sure why. I’ve always had anxiety about Cade riding, that’s not new. But never like this. It always felt like an isolated fear that was largely irrational, and I knew that. Sure, it’s a sport where you can get injured. But my fears were always so outsized.
If Cade had done this race a few weeks ago, before things started to get weird between us, I would have been worried a normal amount, but also optimistic. Now though, it feels so ominous. Like we’re fucking doomed, and this is just highlighting how much worse things have gotten ever since his dad showed up.
Kyle hasn’t even done anything. It’s so fucking nuts how much he can get under Cade’s skin and make him spiral just by existing, but at the same time, I know that if it were my dad, I’d be the same. Not spiraling in the same way, of course, but I’d still be spiraling.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to stop this terrible momentum that we seem to have gained, but the only thing worse than watching this stupidity would be sitting at home, waiting to get a call when Cade hurts himself or gets into a fight or does any of the things he does to misplace all that anger he won’t even acknowledge.
This whole situation is a shitshow. I’m standing here with the fifty or sixty other people who came to see the carnage. Because this is all illegal and we’re trying not to attract the cops, only a couple sodium lights are on, and none of the really big overhead ones. We’re surrounded by forest and one single dirt road leading away, and the small track already seems dwarfed by all this darkness.
I considered asking Tristan or anyone else I can trust to come with us, but then I realized I’d be putting them in danger if this whole thing gets busted up by the cops. It seemed too selfish.
So it’s just me here, waiting to see what happens and how bad it ends up being. I’m trying to brace myself, but it keeps shifting to numbness, instead.
“Wish me luck?” Cade asks.
He’s only standing a foot away from me, all of his gear on except the helmet and googles dangling from his long fingers. It feels like a bigger gap, though. It feels astronomical.
“Do you need luck?”
The flash of hurt on his face hurts me too, but it’s too late to take the words back. I realize I’ve got my arms crossed and my shoulders up around my ears, my body thrumming with tension, and force myself to relax. A little.
“I just mean… make good choices. You’re the best rider here. We both know that. But you have to ride smart and clean.”
Cade chews on his bottom lip for a minute, staring at me before he eventually nods.
“I don’t like how dark it is. It seems too risky,” I continue, as if I can still change his mind.
“It’s still light enough to see. I’ll be careful, I promise.”
He keeps staring at me, but doesn’t move any closer to me. I can hear by the shift in the noise around us that everyone’s getting ready to start.
Cade’s riding against four other guys—the three from the bar last night, plus a man I don’t recognize, who looks too old to have gone to high school with us. At least most of them are also hungover, I guess, and Cade’s on roughly even ground with them.
Or maybe the collective hangovers will just make it all more sloppy and dangerous. I’ve given up trying to predict what’s going to happen. I know, deep inside myself, that whatever it is will be bad. Now I just have to wait.
I catch Cade’s eye one final time, and notice the way he’s shifting his weight from one foot to the other, not turning around to go. I feel like an idiot when I realize what he’s waiting for. We normally try to keep PDA to a minimum when we’re in any kind of public space, but I also don’t want to leave things between us feeling like this.
It only takes one step to put myself in Cade’s space and wrap my hand around the back of his neck, holding him firm. He sinks into me when I kiss him on the lips. It’s chaste; mouths closed, but it feels like we’re saying everything that we haven’t said. I lean my forehead against his when I break the kiss, taking a deep breath of the scent of him and closing my eyes for one more moment of peace.
