Page 199 of Bend

“That’s disgusting.”

He looks down at the mug. “It’s coffee.”

“Yeah, bitter and nasty.”

He gives me a look that is so painfully Talon I almost mention it, then decide I don’t have the energy.

My cup finishes and he slides it over. I wrap both hands around it, mostly for the heat, while he settles against the opposite counter.

For a little while, neither of us says anything, and I’m grateful for that too. The rain fills the kitchen around us while the rest of the house stays quiet, and this is probably the closest thing to calm we’re getting today.

Eventually he pushes away from the counter.

“You’ll do great today.”

I look up. “Oh, I’m not racing.”

“I know.”

There’s something in his tone that tells me he isn’t talking about the start line.

He means with the bikes. With the guys. With getting through today and not falling apart every time one of them disappears onto the same course that took Wolfe.

I take a drink before my throat can close completely. “Thanks.”

He nods once, and that’s it.

By the time the rest of the house wakes, the little bit of quiet is gone.

Nobody talks much on the way to the paddock. Revel tries once, muttering that anyone who schedules anything before sunrise should be publicly humiliated, but even he lets the joke die without trying to force another one behind it. Cece sits beside him with her hand resting on his thigh, Bex is close to Talon and Sayshen, Lena has one arm looped through Reign’s, and Draygon and Thorne take the seats on either side of me without a word, close enough that I can feel the weight of them there.

The found-family thing used to feel like a phrase people put on book covers because it sounded nice.

Now I understand it better.

Family isn’t always something you recognize because you share blood or a last name. Sometimes it’s simply the people who stay, who make room for your grief without asking you to explain it, and who somehow know when to hold on and when to just sit beside you.

Sometimes it’s all of us packed together in silence, hurting in different ways but carrying the same loss.

The paddock is already awake when we arrive.

Officials move between bays with clipboards and headsets, mechanics roll equipment across the concrete, generators hum behind transporters, and somewhere farther down someone starts a bike that cracks through the morning air hard enough to make my chest seize before I can stop it.

Then I see Wolfe’s bay.

Nobody has put another motorcycle there. His setup board is gone, most of the equipment that belonged specifically to him has already been cleared, and all that remains is one clean stretch of concrete between the other bikes.

One empty space.

I don’t need anything else.

I set my bag down, pull my hair into a tighter knot and get to work.

Routine should help. Right? Normally it does.

Today, routine mutates into obsession so gradually I don’t realize I’m doing it until Reign catches me staring at the same tire-pressure reading for the third time.

I start with Talon’s bike, checking brake pressure, lever feel, controls, fluid, fasteners and suspension. Then I move to Sayshen’s and repeat the same sequence. Reign. Revel. Draygon. Thorne.