Page 9 of Revv

“What?”

Thorne snorts into his beer. “Mate, didn’t I hear she referred to you as community service?”

“That means she thinks I’m worth saving.” I grin. “Or helping, at least. Either way—progress.”

“And she threatened your teeth,” Talon says. “Again”

“Just means she was looking at my mouth.”

Thorne shakes his head. “You could turn a restraining order into encouragement, couldn’t you?”

“Only from the right woman.”

Talon laughs, dragging a hand over his jaw. “Jesus fuck, you’re actually insane.”

“No. I’m fucking motivated.”

I say it like a joke, and the guys take it like one, because that’s how this shit works. I run my mouth, they run theirs, everybody laughs, and nobody looks too hard at the fact I’m still standing there with my nerves lit up like I need to be doing something super fucking stupid.

Moving.

Riding.

Picking a fight.

Anything but standing still.

That restless shit under my skin doesn’t settle. It never really has.

People think it’s just personality. Loud mouth. Big ego. No survival instincts. The asshole who hits the throttle harder because he’s too cocky to believe the road can bite back.

They’re not completely wrong.

But they don’t know what the quiet does to a kid who grew up waiting for the next door to slam, the next bag to get packed, the next adult to decide he was too much fucking work.

Stillness gives my head too much room, and my head is a shitty place to be alone.

That’s why engines make sense.

Wind makes sense.

A hard lean into a turn makes sense, because at that speed, there’s no room for ghosts. No room for old houses, old caseworkers, old beds that were never really yours. No room for the kind of memories you turn into jokes because nobody knows what the fuck to do when you hand them the truth.

Lena knew.

She was the first person I met who looked at all that ugly shit and didn’t flinch. Same system. Same kind of damage. Different scars.

But I’m not thinking about that tonight.

I’m thinking about Cece.

About the way she looks at me like I’m trouble she has no intention of needing, while every little reaction she tries to hide says she’s curious what kind. About that mouth. That attitude. That locked-up, don’t-touch-me energy that makes me want to get close enough to find out what happens when she runs out of insults.

She feels like danger too.

Just not the kind I can outride.

And that’s probably the fucking problem.