I kept my gaze on his face. Discipline had to count for something.
He grabbed a rag from the workbench and wiped his hands, then reached for the shirt draped over a nearby stool. The fabric slid over his skin, hiding all that dangerous territory, and I felt something that might have been relief or might have been disappointment.
"Couldn't sleep." His voice was rough with disuse—the voice of a man who'd been alone with his thoughts for hours.
"That makes two of us."
He studied me for a moment, and I had the uncomfortable sensation of being seen. Tank had a way of doing that, of looking at you like he was cataloguing every detail, filing it away for future reference. I'd been trained to observe, to read people, to notice the things they tried to hide. But Tank made me feel like I was the one being read, like all my carefully constructed defenses were made of glass.
I wondered what he saw when he looked at me.Probably nothing good. A liability, like Blade had said. A complication the club didn't need.
A man who stood in doorways and stared at him for too long.
"You ready?"
"For what?"
"Real roads." He nodded toward the lot, where the Sportster sat waiting beside his Harley. Both bikes gleamed in the early light, chrome catching the sun like promises. "You've got the basics down. Time to see if you can handle actual traffic."
Something fluttered in my chest—nerves, excitement, the particular terror of being trusted with something that could kill me if I lost focus for a single second.
"Already?"
"You've been practicing every spare hour for three days. Your clutch work is solid, your balance is good, and you're not going to get better riding circles in a parking lot." Tank moved toward the door, pausing to look back at me. His eyes were steady, patient, completely unreadable. "Unless you're not ready."
It wasn't a challenge, exactly. More like a question—giving me the option to back out, to admit I wasn't capable, to stay safe in the confines of the lot where the worst that could happen was bruised pride.
I'd spent eight months undercover with people who would have killed me if they'd known my real name. I'd built cases against traffickers, watched colleagues get bought, dismantled my entire life to bring down one corrupt network. I'd let Cross intomy bed and my heart and my future, and I'd survived when all of that burned to ash around me.
I could handle a motorcycle on a public road.
"I'm ready."
Tank nodded like he'd expected nothing less and walked out into the morning light. I followed, trying not to notice the way his shoulders moved beneath his shirt, the easy confidence in his stride, the complete lack of self-consciousness that seemed to define him.
Discipline. I had discipline. I could do this.
The Sportster felt different on real asphalt.
Every crack in the pavement, every shift in grade, every subtle variation in surface texture—I felt it all, transmitted through the frame and into my bones like a constant stream of information. The training lot had been forgiving, predictable, a controlled environment designed to minimize consequences. This was the opposite. This was alive.
We pulled onto the main road and my hands tightened on the grips, my shoulders locking, every instinct screaming that I was out of my depth. A car passed in the opposite direction, too fast, too close, the rush of displaced air shoving at my body like an impatient hand. My front wheel wobbled. My heart slammed into my throat.
Tank was beside me, steady as a heartbeat, his Harley rumbling along at an easy pace. He didn'tlook over, didn't check on me, didn't offer reassurance or advice. He just rode, his presence a constant anchor in my peripheral vision, and something about that wordless confidence made me remember to breathe.
The first mile was pure terror. Crystalline, absolute, the kind of fear that lives in the animal part of your brain and doesn't respond to reason. I was going to crash. I was going to die. I was going to fail in front of this man who'd invested time and patience in teaching me, and he'd finally have proof that I didn't belong here.
Then the road curved, and I had to stop thinking.
The turn came up fast—not sharp, not dangerous, but real in a way the training cones hadn't been. I leaned into it without planning to, my body responding to some instinct I hadn't known I possessed, and the bike followed. The world tilted and held. The pavement swept beneath my wheels in a gray blur. And then I was through, upright, still breathing, still moving.
Something cracked open in my chest.
The next curve came, and I took it cleaner. The one after that, cleaner still. My hands loosened on the grips. My shoulders unlocked. The fear didn't disappear—I could still feel it, a constant hum beneath my skin—but it stopped being the only thing I could feel.
The road climbed into the foothills, winding through landscape that seemed to unfold like a gift. Golden hills dotted with scrub oak. Fence lines stretching toward distant mountains. The sky abovevast and blue and endless, the kind of sky that made you feel small in ways that were almost comfortable.
Tank had chosen the route well. Light traffic, long sight lines, curves gentle enough for a beginner but real enough to matter. Every mile, I felt myself settling deeper into the rhythm of the machine—the vibration of the engine, the pressure of the wind, the constant negotiation between balance and motion that riding demanded.
