Page 159 of Shadowed Sins: Nitro

Dad's voice gets rough, catches on old pain. "We blamed God. We blamed the bike. We blamed everything except you."

"But we acted like we blamed you." Mom reaches out, stops just short of touching me.

"I killed him." The words rip out of my throat. "I went first, showed him it was safe—"

Dad grabs my shoulders, fingers digging in with desperate strength. "You were seventeen. SEVENTEEN."

His voice cracks completely on the repetition, and suddenly I'm seventeen again, bloody and broken in a hospital bed while my parents fall apart in the hallway.

They were scared. This whole time, they were just scared.

Mom breaks first. Pulls me into a fierce hug that smells like lavender soap and coffee, the scent of every morning of my childhood. Dad joins, and we're a tangle of arms and tears and thirteen years of unspoken pain.

The sobs rip out of me in gasping, graceless waves. Snot and tears mixing, chest heaving like I can't get enough air, the kind of crying that makes your whole face swell and your throat raw. My knees buckle and Dad catches me, all three of us sinking onto the worn leather couch that's been in this office since before I was born.

I'm home. After thirteen years, I'm finally home.

Mira stands apart, watching something she's never had with those eyes that catalog everything—the photos on the walls, Tommy grinning at my eighth birthday, all of us at the beach the summer before everything changed.

Mom reaches out toward her. "You too, dear."

Mira takes a step back, arms crossing automatically. But Dad's voice goes gentle, the same tone he used when neighborhood strays needed coaxing.

"You brought him home."

He stands, opens his arms, patient. Waiting.

She doesn't do hugs. She doesn't do any of this.

She looks at me—mascara smeared, face swollen, completely wrecked—and something shifts in her expression. She steps forward, lets herself be pulled into the embrace.

Mira Knight is letting my parents hug her. What universe is this?

Four people holding each other in a tiny office that smells like motor oil and old coffee and home.

Coffee steams from mismatched mugs—mine still says "World's #1 Son" in faded letters, Mira's advertises a parts supplier from the 90s. The ancient Mr. Coffee machine wheezes its last drops while we figure out how to exist in the same space again.

Same mugs. Same coffee maker. Like time stopped in here.

"The shop's doing good." Dad settles into his desk chair, the squeak familiar as breathing. "Got three mechanics now. Luis is almost as good as you were."

"Almost?" I manage a watery laugh.

"Nobody's as good as my boy with engines." Pride in his voice that I haven't heard in thirteen years.

His boy. I'm still his boy.

Mom hovers by the coffee maker, adding sugar to everyone's cups whether they asked or not—her nervous habit. "Your old room's still the same if you ever..."

Her voice trails off, hope and heartbreak mixing in the unfinished sentence.

They kept my room. Three years of nothing and they kept my room.

"I'm based in San Francisco now. Work keeps me busy."

The light in Mom's eyes dims slightly, and guilt punches through my chest.

"But Thanksgiving." The words tumble out before I can think. "We'll come for Thanksgiving."