Page 34 of Broken Breath (Rogue Riders Duet #1)

“Didn’t everyone?” She continues, “Funny, though, you were already gone when I started, and now I’m so over this anyway. It’s my last season here, but I guess it was fun. So…” Sh e shrugs as if all of those words were no big deal. “Thanks for that.”

She hands him a nasal rinse and some pills with a practiced smile. “Take this. Steam, rest, and try not to infect your sister.” She stands and is already heading for the door. “Get well soon,” she calls over her shoulder, hopping down the steps like the fairy godmother she is.

Dane stares at the door long after it shuts behind Piper, his mouth agape.

I sigh and head for the front of the bus, toward my makeshift nest in the driver’s seat. “You’re welcome.”

“What the fuck , Alaina?”

Dane drags himself upright from the bunk, his blanket falling off one shoulder, eyes bloodshot, face flushed with fever. He’s leaning on the wall as if just standing is costing him everything, which means this conversation is that important to him.

“She knows?” he rasps, then folds forward with a violent cough.

“Yeah,” I say, arms crossing tight over my chest.

“You told her?”

“No,” I snap. “I’m not that dumb. She figured it out.”

“You said we didn’t need a physio.” His face twists. “ Swore we didn’t. I could’ve found someone. Someone reliable. Someone we could trust. ”

“It just happened,” I mutter, still hugging myself. “She is reliable.”

“You don’t even know her! She’s a risk. If someone finds out?—”

“ If someone finds out…” I cut in, voice rising, “… it’s my fuckup. My name. My face. My head on the chopping block. If this all blows up, that’s on me, not you. So stop acting like you’re the one about to lose everything. ”

“No,” he croaks, shaking his head. “You don’t get it. It can’t end already.”

I frown. “Why? What are you even talking about?”

And why is he looking at me like that?

He coughs again, harder this time, and when he straightens, his eyes are glassy, and I don’t think it’s from coughing.

My stomach twists with dread.

“Alaina, please …” he whispers, looking at me like I’ve just broken his heart. “I need more time.”

I inhale sharply. “More time for what ?”

Is he feverish? Delirious? Do I need to call someone, after all?

“To make you want to live past this fucking vendetta! ”

I bristle, and defensiveness rises within me. “We talked about this.”

“Yeah,” he snaps, coughing so hard it folds him forward again. “We talked about it six years ago! When I thought I had time. Time to show you that your life is still livable. ”

I flinch like he slapped me.

Nothing about this is livable.

The only reason I’m still on my feet, still pretending to be upright and okay, is pure spite. I’m not standing because I’m strong. I’m standing because falling would mean letting him win.

If there weren’t a finish line and this ticking clock in my head promising it’ll all be over soon, I’d be crumpled in bed, fists in the sheets, screaming into a pillow, and begging someone to make it stop.

The only reason I haven’t broken yet is because I told myself I wasn’t allowed to, not until I finish what I came here to do.

My hip throbs in pain as if in answer to my thoughts.

“You promised,” I whisper, my throat tight .

“I know I fucking promised!” Dane chokes, and a tear cuts down his cheek, but his face is twisted in fury. “That was six years ago when I was scared out of my mind. When I thought…” he sucks in a breath, “… when I thought you’d kill yourself the second I turned my back.”

“I told you. I promised to hold out until the end of this season. No matter the outcome. That’s it. That was the deal. I’ll keep my promise. But it’ll happen?—”

“No,” he cuts in. “ No, it won’t. I won’t let that happen. I would never let that happen, Al.”

“You swore .” My eyes and nose burn. “You swore , Dane.”

All these years. Countless hours of pain, every extra dose of meds. Endless miles on that damn trainer, pushing through screaming nerves and fractured bones.

“I lied! ” he roars. “I fucking lied, okay? I will not let you quit on yourself after this. I won’t let you give up. You never gave up, not really. You came back, you’re back , Alaina. Look at you. You’re stronger than ever, faster than…”

“More numb than ever,” I roar back. “That’s the word you’re looking for.”

He wants to open his mouth, but I cut him off.

“I’m numb, Dane, except for the parts that hurt all the fucking time. I’m in excruciating pain constantly. And when I’m not? I’m medicated into something that barely even feels like me.”

He frowns at me, hurt in his gaze. “You never told me.”

“ Why would I? ” I press the heels of my hands to my eyes.

Just breathe. Don’t cry.

“There’s pain therapy,” he says quickly, desperately. “Maybe another surgery, maybe we could talk to someone, figure out…”

“No. ”

“You’re back , Alaina. Back with the living, and I’m not letting you walk away from that.”

I drop my hands and stare at him. Shivering arms, bloodshot eyes, his whole body held together by fever, stubbornness, and that same rope he’s been holding for six goddamn years. He’s still trying to keep me here.

My protector is still trying to save me.

But he can’t. Not from this.

Especially not from myself.

“I don’t need your help for this. I can win this shit on my own, and then I can leave it all behind on my own.” I storm down the bus’s aisle, my anger so much easier to hold onto than my pain.

“Alaina!”

Something slams into the floor, and I turn back quickly, my mouth parting at the sight of Dane on his knees. Stumbling and confused, his hands reach for something that isn’t there before he collapses sideways into the wall.

“Fuck,” I curse as I rush forward, catching him just before he crumples completely to the floor.

Gritting my teeth, I drag him back to his bunk. He lands with a grunt, too weak to even sit up again.

“Alaina,” he pleads again, but I leave him behind without another word.

Pulling the switch to open the bus door, I step back out into the night air. The cold slaps my face, but I barely feel it as I walk fast to nowhere, as if I can outpace the burn behind my eyes and the memories of that day.

The day Dane made that promise, the one he’s intent on breaking now. The day I gave myself my real finish line.

And even though I swore I wouldn’t cry again, I do as the memory pulls me in .

I’m sure Dane doesn’t know it, but I can hear the physio’s voice through the crack in the door.

“Her body’s not the biggest issue here. It’s her mind,” he says, exasperated.

“She’s not trying. I can’t do anything if she won’t work with me.

She’s not even sitting up, let alone putting weight on it.

She’s going to lose hip and leg function permanently if she doesn’t start moving. Really moving.”

Silence.

Then Dane’s voice, flat but tight. “Another week. Just give her another week.”

“More than enough time has passed, Dane. The wounds from the surgeries are all healed. Now she needs to work those neglected muscles. She’s still so young, she could recover some of it, but not like this.

I know you’re trying to do this your way, but maybe it’s time to think about…

a facility. Somewhere she can get the mental help before the physical even starts.

She needs more help than I can give her at home.

” A pause. Then lower, “I spoke with Mr. Crews. He suggested medication. Something to make her more compliant.”

Compliant.

Bile rises in my throat so fast I nearly choke on it.

I haven’t seen my father eye to eye in months, and he hasn’t asked what I want or even how I am, but sure, he still gets a say.

He gets a say in me.

Like I’m a project to be managed. A broken toy to be passed around between professionals until I’m polished enough to be tolerated again.

“Stop right there,” Dane snaps. “I don’t give a shit what our father thinks is best. I will not let her be turned into a fucking zombie.”

“Dane…” The physio’s voice softens. “Have you seen your sister lately? She’s already there. ”

My stomach clenches, but I don’t move.

He’s right.

I haven’t gotten out of bed, haven’t tried, haven’t done anything but lie here in this room like a ghost in training. The last of the surgeries was done months ago. The pain is still constant, but at least it’s not the blinding one anymore, the one that made me scream for painkillers.

Or death.

It’s been a year, a whole fucking year, and outside these walls, the world kept turning, while I was lying there, hoping just to not wake up one morning.

The World Cup is on again.

Even if I tried to shut myself off from the living, I know that today is the final race of the season. In Snowshoe, just down the damn mountain from here.

The door creaks open, and I shut my eyes, pretending I’m asleep, pretending once more that I’m dead. But curtain rings screech, then light stabs the darkness, and I flinch.

The window opens, too, and air rushes in. Then the television clicks on, with the volume on low, but not so low that I miss what’s showing.

“Hey, Speedbump.” Dane comes to sit at the edge of the bed. “Look at this.”

I don’t want to. I really don’t, but I do.

The broadcast shows the final standings. Isla Raine is in first place in the women’s category. First in the men’s is Isaac Raine. I’d love to punch them both right in their pretty faces, but I don’t even have the strength to lift my hand.

“They won,” Dane says quietly. “Took the overalls as well.”

Something sharp stirs inside me because I should be there. I was supposed to be there. But they took everything, and now I’m here. Useless. Forgotten. While they celebrate. While he wins .

“How does that make you feel?” Dane asks softly after a moment, his eyes glued to the screen. I don’t answer, making him shift beside me until his gaze finds mine. “Alaina. Doesn’t that make you angry?”

I move my eyes to the ceiling, to the five hundred and ninety-nine different patterns in the wood I know by heart, since I’ve counted them endlessly.