Page 26 of Rogue Riders Duet

I whip around and drive my foot into the back tire of the van. Hard. Pain rockets up my shin, white-hot and blinding, but I don’t stop. I slam it again and again, harder each time, annoyed as hell that it barely makes a sound as I try to beat the uselessness out of me. If I hurt enough on the outside, maybe the inside will finally shut the fuck up.

If I can’t win, what the fuck is this all for?

What’s the point of me?

An unexpected noise cuts through the quiet around me, snapping me out of the same bloody loop of my failures, and I glance toward it, feeling vicious.

Mini Crews.

That could be the perfect outlet.

He’s the reason I came in fourth.

He’s just visible in the faint light of dawn, crouched in front of the blue school bus parked maybe fifteen meters away. He hasn’t noticed me yet, so I just watch him.

I’ve been doing that a lot lately.

Eventually, he sets his flashlight down, spilling a beam across the pavement. I clock the mess of bike parts spread out around the guy, and realize it’s his bike, fully torn apart in front of him like he’s dissecting it.

What the hell?

Yeah, we all tweak our setups for brake tension, suspension, maybe a part swap when something feels off, but tearing your whole rig apart? On the freezing ground? At four in the morning with nothing but a bloody flashlight?

That’s not fine-tuning. It’s a breakdown on every level.

Dad always says racers shouldn’t wrench their bikes. Get too close, and you stop seeing the cracks.

Another clatter sounds as he fumbles with whatever the hell he’s doing.

Seriously, has this kid ever held a tool before?

Something about his incompetence soothes my anger. Douses the flames.

I saw him before the Cup started, racing in smaller events. He never spoke to anyone, never removed his helmet, acting like some kind of quiet shadow moving through the ranks and didn’t want to be seen.

But somehow, I always caught him watching me. I took note of it, somewhere in the back of my mind, bracing for him to be like the rest, looking to get a piece of the scandal. Curious to get a glimpse of a rapist, maybe, but he didn’t press me, and I started looking closer at him.

Something in his eyes was different from the others. No disgust. No fear. Not even pity, either. Just something else. Something I couldn’t read.

He’s off. Haunted, even.

I knew that before I even saw this.

He has the same look that I catch in mirrors, the kind you wear when your whole story changed in one breath, and no one stuck around to hear the ending.

Dad talked to Dane Crews during one of these earlier races and found out the kid is his cousin.

Of course he is.

Lucky bastard, having Dane-fucking-Crews backing him up. After everything that went down too. That whole mess with the crash and the bike mods, the fallout.

If I thought it would go well, Dane would probably be a good person to talk to about all this shit, but I know it wouldn’t. How could it?

But he was gone, vanished from the circuit, and now he’s back, dragging the knockoff version of him around, like he did with his little sister years back.

That girl could ride. She had guts, clean lines, fearless drops, and a kind of fire you couldn’t fake. She was hard not to notice, with a loud laugh, sharp eyes, wore her confidence like armor, and pretty, too, in that way people who don’t try to be pretty stand out the most.

Dane being here proves that people can come back, though. So even though I haven’t spoken to him, it has given me some hope.