Page 23 of Redline Baby

"Let go of me," I say. My voice doesn't sound like mine.

"I'm not doing this again tonight," Charles says. He looks tired in a way I've never seen on him, gray around the eyes, his big frame smaller than it's ever looked, folded against the doorframe. "You've been out until four in the morning three times this week. You won't tell me where. You won't tell me why. You come home smelling like gravel dust and exhaust, and I don't know if you're hurt until I check myself, because you won't say."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine, Kit. You haven't been fine in months and you keep telling me you're fine, and I keep believing you because I want to, and every single time it's a lie, and I am so tired."

His voice cracks on tired.

Charles's voice never cracks.

"I can't keep patching you up if you won't stop crashing into things. I can't be your Daddy if you won't let me actually take care of you. You just want somewhere soft to land after you've already decided to fall."

"That's not fair."

"It's the truest thing I've said in a year."

I'm crying by then.

He's crying too, which is worse, because Charles doesn't cry. Charles is the immovable thing, and the floor is cracking right in front of me.

"I love you," I say.

It's true.

It doesn't matter.

"I love you too. That's not going to be enough this time."

He packs slowly, over two days, which is somehow worse than if he'd left in one furious hour. I watch him fold his shirts. I watch him lift his toothbrush out of the cup by the sink, leaving an obscene little gap where it used to stand beside mine.

The last thing he takes off the shelf is a framed photo—the two of us at a rally, his arm slung heavy around my shoulders, both of us squinting into the sun, before any of it went wrong. He looks at it a long time before he wraps it in a towel.

"Take care of yourself," he says at the door.

Not I'll call you.

Not we'll figure this out.

Just that.

A door closing gently instead of slamming, which somehow hurts more.

"Charles—"

"Don't, Kit." His voice is gentle. His eyes are wrecked. "Please don't make me stay for the wrong reasons again."

"Kit."

Soren's voice.

Close.

Present.

His hand is still loose around my wrist, but he's gone completely still behind me, and I realize I'm holding a bowling ball I haven't thrown, standing frozen on the approach while, somewhere behind us, the teenagers three lanes down keep shrieking about something that doesn't matter to anyone.

"Sorry," I say.