If anyone tried to stop me, I’d show them what hard really meant.
By the time I hit the next nondescript town, the sun was just threatening the horizon—a purple bruise over the mountains, bleeding into the cold. I didn’t stop for coffee, didn’t stop to piss. The only thing that mattered was what waited in that motel room, probably shivering under a neon sign, too proud to call for help and too scared to stay put.
I punched the accelerator, let the engine roar, and smiled to myself in the rearview. Bo didn’t know it yet, but I was about to give him exactly the kind of hard time he’d been begging for.
And I wouldn’t let anybody—least of all his father—lay a finger on him ever again.
The road out of Redding was an unbroken tunnel, blacker than a welder’s mask with only the Chevy’s high beams for company. After thirty minutes, the world flattened into a blur: painted lines, signs, the sudden swoop of an owl’s shadow as it crossed the highway.
My dashboard lights bled blue over my hands, throwing the bones and knuckles into sharp relief against the leather-wrapped steering wheel. I’d driven this stretch more times than I could count, hauling parts for the shop or making mercy runs for friends too drunk or stoned to drive themselves.
But this time was different. This time, the urgency in my gut was personal, like every minute wasted on the road was another minute Bo bled out in some shitbox motel.
The heater finally won its war with the cab, thawing the chill in my legs but doing nothing for the knot of adrenaline in my stomach. I drove one-handed, the other tracing the stitchedpattern on my jeans—an old habit for when I needed to keep my mind from boiling over.
Out the window, the moonless sky dripped toward morning, the horizon smeared with the faintest suggestion of lavender. I could almost smell the river, sharp and cold as a knife, even with the windows rolled up.
Somewhere past the Lake Shasta exit, my brain threw up an old memory like a speed bump. Bo at twenty, hair too long and boots too new, showing up to the end-of-summer bonfire in a tank top cut so low it practically qualified as nudity.
He’d been drunk—everyone was—but his version of drunk meant picking fights with anyone who got within arm’s reach, then laughing it off like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to fuck you or knock you out.
I’d broken up at least two scrums before I found him parked on the tailgate of my truck, clutching a half-empty bottle of Evan Williams and muttering to himself.
“Why you always watching me, Moxley?” he’d slurred, the bruised mouth quirked into a challenge.
“Someone’s gotta make sure you don’t get set on fire,” I’d answered, deadpan.
He’d stared at me, brown eyes unblinking in the firelight. “I get tired, Jo. Sometimes I just wanna stop fighting.”
“You know how,” I’d said, low. “You just never let anyone else be in charge.”
He’d laughed, then, but it wasn’t happy. “Bet you’d like that.”
You have no idea, I thought, and I think he saw it in my face because he held my gaze a long time before smashing the bottle against the wheel well and sauntering off into the dark.
I shook the memory loose and switched lanes, passing a semi that stank of diesel and livestock. Bo had always been a runner—running from his family, from the valley, from anyone who gotclose enough to pin him down. But I knew the truth behind the bluff.
He wanted to be caught. He wanted someone to haul him out of his own disaster and say, “Enough. You’re safe now. I’ve got it.”
I flicked my lights at a Prius that wouldn’t budge from the left lane, then eased past, all the while keeping one eye on the rearview. I liked knowing what was coming. It was a habit drilled into me from a young age, reinforced by a mother who made lists for every grocery run and a father who never let a stray bolt sit on his workbench more than five seconds. The world was chaos, but if you moved careful and stayed two steps ahead, you could keep your people safe.
The image of Bo’s face—swollen, stitched, still trying to pull off a smirk—swam up again. I pictured the way he used to sleep in the back room at the shop, curled up like a dog in a pile of oily coveralls, and the way his nose crinkled when he was about to say something he knew would piss me off.
Once, when he’d stayed the week after the Fourth of July, I’d come home to find him at my kitchen table, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and drawing on a paper napkin. He’d looked up, all sleepy-eyed, and said, “I got bored. Hope you don’t mind.”
I never did. If anything, I was so starved for company it made my teeth ache.
I forced myself to focus on the lines on the road. The only thing worse than losing Bo was getting both of us killed because I couldn’t keep my shit together.
Another memory surfaced, this one from Portland last winter. I’d driven up for a parts expo and stumbled into an art show in a warehouse near the river. It was one of those places where the paint on the walls was still wet and everything cost more than a month’s rent.
I spotted Bo’s work from the door: brutal, angry canvases with slashing lines and colors that looked like they’d been scraped out of a wound. He signed everything “B.McK” in the corner, but he’d tried to play it off like he was just one of the crowd.
I bought three of his paintings and had them shipped to the shop under a fake name, never told him, never hung them up. They lived in storage on the third floor of my shop with the rest of the stuff I didn’t want anyone seeing—old family photos, love notes from an ex I hadn’t forgiven, and, most embarrassing of all, a worn copy of the motorcycle magazine Bo had been in during his brief modeling stint. I kept it locked up like contraband.
Maybe it was.
I’d told myself it was just about supporting his art, but I knew better. I wanted every piece of him that nobody else did. Every secret, every ugly truth, every scrap he was too stubborn to hand over. I wanted it all.
