Page 36 of Redline Baby

It should land soft. Any other night, it probably would. I've let him say harder things than this and felt something in me settle instead of spike.

But I've had four drinks and a stockroom conversation sitting behind my eyes, and a ring on John's finger twenty feet away, and instead of softening, something in me goes sharp and defensive. Fast. The old reflex kicking the door shut before I can stop it.

"This is me," I say, and I hear the edge in my own voice. "This is exactly me, actually. Maybe you've just been getting a curated version."

Something flickers across his face.

"Okay," he says. Just that. He doesn't push. He never pushes.

Some nights, I love that about him. Tonight, it makes me want to throw something.

"I'm gonna head out," I say, sliding off the stool, my balance a half-second slower to catch up than it should be.

"I'll drive you." He's already standing.

"I've got my bike."

"You've had four drinks, Kit."

"I've ridden after more than four drinks plenty of times." I say it like a joke, like the old bravado, except it isn't a joke. It's just true. And saying it out loud in front of him feels like handing him something ugly I usually keep hidden.

"That's the actual problem." His voice doesn't rise, but there's something underneath it tonight, something taut, close to the surface for the first time since I've known him. "I'm not letting you ride like this. Let me drive you home, or call Ni, or—anything. I'll figure out the bike tomorrow. Just don't get on it tonight."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You're four drinks in, your hands aren't steady, and I watched you not hear a single word I just said to you."

He steps closer, solid, the way he always is.

Except tonight, it feels like a wall instead of an anchor.

"Please. Not tonight. Whatever happened today—I don't need to know what it was. I just need you to not get on that bike."

Something in me wants to listen. I can feel it. The part of me that wants to hand him the keys and let him put me in the truck and drive me somewhere safe. The part that wants to tell him about the job. About good luck out there. But it's four drinks deep and buried under a ring on John's finger and a morning I haven't let myself feel yet, and the loud, reckless, self-destructive part of me is louder tonight than it's been in weeks.

And it wins.

"I'll be fine," I say. "I do this all the time."

"Kit—"

"I'm not asking permission."

It comes out harder than I mean it to.

I don't wait for him to say anything else.

I turn, and I walk, and I don't look back at him, because if I look back, I'll see exactly how much I'm hurting him by walking out that door, and I can't carry that on top of everything else I'm already carrying tonight.

I get the bike out of the lot fast, but I don't make it loud yet.

I roll out clean, swing onto the main stretch, shift smoothly up through the gears.

The city thins out around me in about ten minutes.

The bright, dense grid of streetlights stretches and gaps. The storefronts give way to fenced lots and dark warehouses and then to nothing, the lanes widening as the road shoulders out toward the county line. The traffic bleeds away to nothing. There's just me and the cold black ribbon of asphalt unspooling under the single eye of my headlight, and the sodium lamps coming farther and farther apart until they stop coming at all.

That's when I open it up. I roll the throttle open and the engine pitches up into that high, screaming register. The bike surges under me. The speedometer climbs.