Page 16

“Cali girl. Huh.”
“I guess,” I say, not knowing what else to say.
“Do you know anyone famous?”
Ha. She probably doesn’t even realize the crowd I hung out with, nor do I think she’d know the names. “My dad’s a bodyguard for the Sawyer brothers.”
“Who?”
Told you. “They race freestyle motocross.”
She nods. Look at the glazed-over look and shrug. She has no clue. “Oh, cool. So they’re like famous then?”
“Yeah.”
Maille pulls out her cell phone. Within a minute, her knowing eyes meet mine. “These guys?”
On her phone is a photograph of them standing next to one another at last year’s X Games. My eyes are immediately drawn to the one with the energetic smile and captivating blue eyes.
I nod and she giggles. “My God. Why’d you move here with that eye-candy at home?”
I laugh off a response and thankfully she doesn’t pry.
And that’s how my new life in New York began. Twenty-seven hundred miles away, I began my life without him, but am constantly reminded of the one who will forever hold my heart in his talented hands.
“Did you miss me?”
I smile at Camden. If there’s one person I did miss while I was gone, it was this kid. “Yeah, bud.” I move toward the stove, laying strips of bacon on the cast iron grate. “How’s the back flip coming?”
His eyes light up at the mention of the freestyle skills he’s been trying to perfect. “I got a full rotation in the foam pit, but haven’t landed it yet.”
I wink at him. “You’ll get there.”
“How was Erzberg?”
“Gnarly.” I took a break from freestyle and raced hare scrambles wanting to tackle the most extreme off-road races. And I did. I dominated the Red Bull Hard Enduro Series and snagged the championship.
Camden takes in the marks on my forearms, the ones tearing through thousands of dollars in ink I’ve had done over the years. “I watched the videos of the rock gardens. That’s just crazy.”
I fight off a smile. Crazy doesn’t even do the Erzberg Rodeo justice. “It was.”
Reaching into the cereal box for a handful of Captain Crunch, Camden stares at the bruises covering my arms and the cuts to my face where I took a rock to the head when I was dealing with an overheating radiator in the rock gardens. “Can you take me out to Mammoth later?”
I smile. “Yeah, dude.” I love that Camden is starting to show some interest outside freestyle. Mammoth is actually a motocross track with lots of rocks, hard base, powder berms but at the end of the day, it’s gnarly with solid braking bumps that kick up the rocks beneath the surface. It’s perfect if you ask me because conditions vary throughout the day, making the more experienced riders stand out.
Do you see that guy standing in the kitchen? You might not realize it, but he has two broken ribs, bruises covering his entire body and ten stitches in his back where he landed on a rock, splitting his shoulder blade open. My head spins, my gut retches. I feel sick. Mentally. Emotionally.
That guy, he’s been through hell the ten months. Absolute fucking hell, but most of it, he doesn’t remember because it’s physical pain. Immobilizing at the time, but fleeting. That’s what the Erzberg Rodeo does to you. It’s the toughest single day endure; the most famous off-road race in the world. It’s held every year in May or June in the historic town of Eisenerz, Austria. No amount of training can prepare you for something like that. In freestyle motocross you do death-defying stunts that wow spectators with the acrobats. Sure, it’s dangerous and you shouldn’t try to without practicing, but a hare scramble is much harder to prepare for. Unless of course you enjoy bouncing your body off boulders the size of cars and speeding through a forest full of trees and branches that can decapitate you, or being forced into a ravine and up a steep muddy embankment.
Me? I love all that. I enjoy the technical, grueling woods, deep ruts, and rocks that cars couldn’t maneuver through. The satisfaction I get from it is unlike freestyle or any motocross event I’ve won. And yeah, I won. After training for a year in between my obligations to the Red Bull X-Fighters, for the first time in the twenty-year history of the event a rider from the USA has won it. It didn’t come without sacrifice. I left California two days after Christmas and worked my ass off to get myself into shape, both mentally and physically. I got up at three in the morning to train, to work out and push my body to extreme limits. That grit that kept pushing me forward, that refusal to back down, that’s what I excelled at and what earned me that win.
I hated returning home because it meant two things. Actually, only one of the two matters.
Tiller.
Lucky for me, I don’t see him the night I return from Austria, but it might be because I go straight from the car, to my bed, and sleep for what seems like two days straight. It’s needed. The Erzberg Rodeo is hardcore, both mentally and physically. It requires you to be physically invested and disconnected emotionally. I have two speeds. Fast and faster. And there’s no off button, or rev limit. I go until the engine explodes.
Sometime between me making breakfast and talking with Camden and Rick, Tiller makes his way into the kitchen, reminding me of why it felt so good to be away from here.