Page 74 of Driven By Impulse

He was a coward, it turned out.

“I’m not doing it, Nic. We both know what you’re doing here, and I won’t let you.”

Nicco chewed on his lower lip. He wished he had a cigarette, if for nothing else but to have something to do with his hands, but he’d lit the last one with without smoking it and hadn’t bought a new pack.

Which he definitely wasn’t looking into in any way.

“I don’t think you actually get a vote,” Nicco managed. He kept his face looking away from Ash because he was feeling rather close to cracking, and he didn’t think he could keep the words in if he saw the pain in his best friend’s eyes.

He stopped being my best friend a long time ago.

Nicco didn’t know when Ash had become so much more, but the truth was there, under his nails, tangling his hair like the wind on the open road. Perhaps it had been forever, in the grand timeline of the universe. It certainly felt like that.

“Niccolo, I’m not doing this with you,” Ash said. “I’m not going to pretend that it’s okay, or back off when things get bleak, or let you take the lead. I’m not. I…care too much about you. I always have. And I’m not the only one. You have Dante and Saint and Jinx and Gray and Xander. You have the entire club who will come running if you call, and you have Hanna and me.”

Nicco murmured his low, bruised fear into the Montana wind. “You and Hanna have each other.”

Ash shifted behind him. “Is that what you think this has been? Some fucking off-road adventure on the paved road to a happy little hetero life in the suburbs? Jesus, Nic. Give us both some credit.” He let out a long sigh. “I know you see what’s happening here. Whether you want to or not, whether it’s comfortable or not, I know you know this is more than just sex and titillation, that it’s…something. Real. Like us.”

“I can’t.” Nicco’s words came out choked. It seemed the ball that had been lodged at the back of his throat for the last twelve months was finally bobbing free. “It’s easier for you two and it’s…too hard for me.”

Ash stepped forward. “Which part, Nic?” he asked. “Which part is too hard?”

Nicco watched the last bursts of orange disappear behind the mountain, and the shadows had him envying just how easy it would be to disappear into welcoming darkness. “It was always meant to be you two,” he said quietly. “That part I knew from the beginning.”

Ash shook his head. “Apparently you’re the only one who did.”

“So what, Ash?” Nicco felt the fear in his chest, pulsing like a second heart. “So we just…live together in a happy little commune? The world doesn’t work like that.”

“Who gives a shit, Nic?” Ash asked. “Angel, if I listened to what the world wanted, I would have lived in the shadows my whole life. I would have turned into one of those broken, terrified boys from Ralston’s camps, never free, never loving, never living.” He swallowed. “The world may not be built for us, so what? We build a new one, a better one, one where kids never have to grow up wishing they were different, wishing they were normal. We break the rules and we live on our terms. Nic, our existence, our survival, it’s already part of the revolution.”

His words caught, and when Nicco finally turned to him, he saw a sheen in Ash’s eyes.

“You can tell me you don’t feel it, us,” Ash said. “But don’t pretend it’s about what the world thinks.”

“I’m not as brave as you,” Nicco said quietly. “You knew, back then you knew, that it wasn’t right. And more than that, you knew what you wanted and you went after it. No fear.”

“There’s always fear, Angel,” Ash said. “The trick is not to let it stop you.”

Nicco managed a smile. “Funny, Hanna said pretty much the same thing to me.”

Ash did smile then, and God, he was the image of Apollo, strong against the storm, more beautiful than any man Nicco had ever seen in his life. “Well, she’s pretty smart.” He swallowed. “I know you’re holding back, Nic. Tell me, which part is too hard?”

Waking up. Staying up. Putting one foot in front of the other. When the world is too quiet. When the world is too loud.

“She got away from us!”

Nicco had been so caught up in the storm of a conversation that he hadn’t realized when Gray and Xander had ridden up, and now the two of them were racing up the trail to the house.

“She slipped out of the hospital,” Gray added. “We were watching the exit. We tried to call but…”

Nicco looked down and realized his phone was still in the kitchen.

Shit. This thing between them, this overwhelming, too bright thing, this thing where Ash saw way too much, it was distracting them both from the mission.

Ash sighed. “I bet Tori helped her. Okay, when was the last time you saw her?”

Just as he asked the question, Jinx pulled up to the makeshift drive in front of the safehouse, kicking up dust and rocks as he pulled his bike to a halt. He yanked his helmet off at the same time he ran up the stairs. “Either of you want to answer your phone at any point, cool, anyway, I started tracking Hanna the second these guys called it in. It’s not exactly a surprise, but she is headed to the Canyon. I’d say she has an hour on us. She’ll be to the building sites in less than fifteen minutes.”