Page 181 of Bend

His face twists for half a second before he turns back to the radio.

Everything after that becomes waiting.

The worst fucking kind of waiting, because there’s nothing for me to do with my hands and no machine to open up and fix.

Nobody knows where to stand.

Revel paces beside me until Reign catches his shoulder and keeps him still. Sayshen stays close at my back while Andre tracks the three riders still on course and keeps trying to get information from race control.

I stare at Wolfe’s number on the screen.

It doesn’t move.

All I can hear is his last voice through the comm.

At least I got to know you both love me.

No.

That is not how this fucking ends.

He was conscious. He was talking. Medical is there. People survive crashes like this. They fix broken bones, stop bleeding, put people back together.

That’s what you do when something breaks.

You find the problem and you fix it.

Andre’s radio crackles.

He turns slightly away from us, listening.

I watch his face change.

His jaw tightens first, then his eyes close for one second.

My stomach drops.

“What did they say?”

He lowers the radio.

I’m already shaking my head before he turns around.

“No.”

“Echo…”

“No.”

Andre takes one step toward me, his own eyes red now.

“They couldn’t save him.”

Everything inside me goes still.

I shake my head again. “Check again.”

His face tightens.