Page 43 of Redline Baby

"Then I'll pay it," I say.

"No!"

"Kit—"

"I said no! I mean it! No!" His good hand closes around the edge of the emergency blanket. His face is pale beneath the road dust now, eyes too bright. "And before anybody else gets clever, none of you are paying for it either. I am not getting a four-thousand-dollar taxi ride because my shoulder hurts."

"It's more than your shoulder," I say.

"Still no."

I understand the impulse to fight him. But I've learned something about Kit in the last six weeks. Push hard enough and the only thing he hears is pressure. Give him one clear path that doesn't feel like surrender and sometimes he'll take it.

I look at Ni.

"Call King," I say. Ni's eyes move to mine. "Have him bring the club truck." Kit looks at me. I keep going. "We don't move you until it gets here. You stay warm. Dex keeps pressure on the arm. Somebody monitors you. The Yamaha goes on a tow truck."

Kit narrows his eyes.

"And then?"

"Then we get you off the side of the road."

"That's it?"

"For tonight?" I say. He hears the qualification.

"So that's not it," he says, a little weak, but with a smile.

"No."

One fight at a time. Ni watches the exchange for another second, then ends the emergency-services call before it connects and calls King instead. I finally move toward the motorcycle. I don't need him to explain what happened to understand enough. He was carrying speed. Too much of it. Again. My palm presses flat against the damaged case. Still warm. I think about the man on the side of the road last weekend. The stranger Kit carried forty minutes home. How gently Kit rolled on the throttle. How carefully he handled every corner. How obvious it was that he knew exactly how to preserve somebody else's life when it was placed in his hands.

He knows how to be careful. He just doesn't believe his own life deserves the same care.

The thought was terrible then. Standing beside the physical result of it is worse.

"Soren."

I turn.

Kit is watching me. He doesn't look angry. He doesn't look frightened of me. He looks resigned. Like a man caught doing something he can't charm his way around. Like he knows exactly what I asked him not to do. Like he knows exactly what happened because he did it anyway.

There is shame in his face.

I hate seeing it there.

He needs me. That's my first clear thought. Not he needs a Daddy. Not he needs discipline. Not he needs somebody to control him.

Me.

He needs me to be useful.

I cross back to him and crouch several feet away. His eyes drop to the ground between us.

"I messed up." The words are so quiet I nearly think I imagined them.

I don't answer immediately. He still isn't looking at me.