Page 71 of The Loves We Lost

Like I’m somehow waiting for that moment when I’m found out, when people realize I’m not a great writer at all.

Which makes me think about the book I’m avoiding writing because the idea currently feels weak. I’d decided on another motorcycle club romance, and I planned to write the sergeant at arms, but now every time I try to plot out my idea, I think about Spark and Iris and their story. And I need to realize andremember that while putting mine and Miles’s story to paper is one thing, stealing someone else’s life story is altogether different.

Avery thinks just about everything she’s done is the greatest. Best picture she’s ever drawn, best cannonball into the pool she’s ever done. My mom wondered if she wasn’t becoming a touch egotistic. I think children are born to be happy and proud with themselves, and sometime before they turn eighteen, they start to compare everything they are to highly curated images on social media and find themselves lacking.

Or they listen to their grandmother, who tells them to silence their positivity so they don’t look too self-involved.

“Want to have dinner as a picnic in the yard?” I say, glad I finally got around to stocking the cupboards. The combination of finishing the previous book and getting my mid-year royalty check from my publisher made it possible.

“Yes,” Avery shouts from the backseat. Then: “Daddy’s here.”

My first reaction is impossible to ignore. It’s one of excitement. Swiftly followed by a vain thought about how I look, given I spent the morning covered in sunscreen by the pool with my hair scraped back off my face.

I look to the driveway and see his bike and swallow hard. It’s beat up and on its side on the ground. One part is hanging off. Another sits on the bottom of the driveway. There’s no sign of him.

Then I see the red smear that stains the top of the driveway and my world spins.

“Shit,” I mutter under my breath. I park the car on the street so I can drive away if I need to but reach for my phone and dial Bates’s number.

There’s no answer, and my heart rate escalates. I wonder if I should call Niro, who insisted on putting his number into my phone, but there’s nothing he can do from wherever he is. Idebate calling Anthony, but I don’t. If Miles is in trouble, I don’t want him to be in even more trouble if it’s illegal and Anthony arrests him.

I wouldn’t put it past him.

And now I’m making allowances for criminal behavior. But even as I acknowledge that, I don’t change my course of action.

Because my first thought is for Miles’s safety.

“Wait in the car for a second, pumpkin,” I say as calmly as I can.

“Why? I want to see Daddy.”

“You can in a few minutes if I can find him.”

“Is Daddy playing hide-and-seek with us?”

My eyes scan the front porch, the siding, anything that might give me a clue to where he is. “Maybe, but I want to make sure he knows not to give you a jump scare, because I know you don’t like them. Why don’t you duck down nice and low so he can’t see you from the street?”

“Okay. I’ll do that,” she says sweetly, doing as I suggest.

The heat hits me as I step out of the car. It’s such a sunny day. All I can hear is the faint hum of a lawn mower and some children laughing.

I peer up the left side of the house and see nothing. When I make my way to the right side, the one that faces away from the street, I don’t see anything either.

Until I look down and see two booted feet sticking out from the side of a bush. Keeping a wide arc, I walk a little farther into the lot, my phone in my hand ready to call 911. Miles is on the ground, his back against the siding, his face is a bloody mess. His leathers are destroyed around the knees. But from the hair and the cut and hands I’ve known for a lifetime, I know it’s Miles.

“Oh my god,” I gasp and run to him. “Miles, shit.” The words just come out on repeat as I fall to my knees. “It’s Vi. Can youhear me?” I reach for his hand, but the knuckles are cut and bruised. “Shit, hold on, baby. I’ll call an ambulance.”

My hands shake as I open my phone. But a hand grips my wrist before I can dial. “No. Ambulance,” Miles manages to say.

“But your injuries. You need help.”

“Did you ... just ... call me ... baby?” he says, trying to open his eyes that are both heavily swollen.

“Stop. I left Avery in the car because I thought you might be dead. And now I can see that you nearly are. Please let me call for help.”

Miles tries to move. “Fuck me. Everything hurts.”

“Let me get you inside.”