Page 33 of Twisted Trails (Rogue Riders Duet #2)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Alaina

The garage smells like dust, chain grease, and ghosts.

I stand still in the doorway, arms crossed, spine locked, every muscle tense like my body knows what this room means before my brain lets me feel it. It’s cold in here—colder than it should be in October—but maybe that’s just me.

Four bikes line the left wall. All Dane’s.

Each of them is a timestamp, a fucking shrine.

There’s the one from his first World Cup win, still crusted with mud, like it was too sacred to clean.

Next to it stand the ones from the seasons of his other overall wins, and the last one, the one he raced the year I crashed, still has the mechanic’s marker on the rear suspension.

Across from them are two bikes that used to be mine.

One of them still has the teal grips I begged Dane for on my birthday last year. It looks smaller than I remember, like it shrank while I was busy learning how to walk again.

The one that broke under me isn’t here, though. I don’t know whether the factory retrieved it to check for the failure or if Dane disposed of it, but either way, it vanished, as if it had never existed .

Like it never happened.

I step closer, boots echoing off concrete. My fingers brush the handlebars of my old bike, and they tremble. It’s ridiculous how much this hunk of carbon owns me. How my chest clenches like it remembers the feel of air ripping out of my lungs, but if I want revenge, then I have to start here.

I slide the bike out of its rack, and my ribs already protest the movement, as does my hip.

It’s fine.

I don’t need to be whole. I just need to be fast.

The tires are low, but the bike still rolls, and that’s enough for what I want right now. I push it outside, past the porch, down the gravel, and to the trailhead just behind the house.

The morning air is thick with fog, and the track ahead splits almost immediately into two black lines. One veers left, the other plunges straight down, steep enough to make seasoned racers flinch. Dane and I built both. We never believed in blue runs.

Easy was boring.

Rolling the bike to the start of the trail, I realize it feels heavier than I remember, or maybe I’m just weaker. Probably both.

I try to swing my right leg over the saddle, but I don’t manage to get it high enough.

I back up, try again, but my hip locks like the joint is frozen in place. The third time I try, something spasms and pain arcs down my thigh.

“Fuck!” I hiss through clenched teeth, head dropping forward.

I don’t want to cry. I don’t cry.

But my eyes sting anyway.

This shouldn’t be this hard .

I squeeze my eyes shut, suck in a breath, and then bite down, grit through, and shove my leg up and over.

The scream stays silent in my throat, but I’m on the bike now, perched at the top of a trail only lunatics would ride before breakfast, and I’m shaking because I’m back on a bike, back on what almost killed me.

My breath comes in sharp bursts as my vision sways .

My lungs are trying to expand , but there’s no air, none, just pain, and the weight of a broken body folding in on itself. I’m suffocating on my own blood while the medics scream, and I can’t scream because I?—

I blink hard. This is not real. I’m fine.

But the tremor in my arms is real, and the bile in my throat is too. I try to breathe the panic down while my gaze is zeroed in on the screws on the stem of the bike, and anxious thoughts fill my mind.

Who was the last one to touch this bike?

Me?

Dane?

A mechanic?

When was the last time it got checked?

Since when has it even been standing in the garage?

The panic flares again, and I fumble for balance, try to swing off the saddle, but my leg won’t move high enough. I twist, panic climbing up my throat once more, and my foot catches on the pedal. I go down, the bike tangled between my legs, my side slamming into the ground.

Ouch.

Clawing out from under it, I feel gravel biting into my palms as pain stabs through me, and I want to throw up.

I hate this. I hate this so much.

I hate my hip, my lungs, my fucking ribs. I hate that I can’t lift my leg like a normal person, hate that my body betrayed me, hate my mind for freezing, for panicking .

But mostly, I hate that I thought I could do this, and that I ever believed I could be something again.

And I hate this fucking bike.

I stand, unsteady, but grab the frame with both hands, and push it over the edge and down the trail with a scream.

It only skids a few feet down the track, and I scream again because I can’t even get that right. I scream until my throat rips raw and my lungs give out, and all that’s left is the heaving in my chest and the dull throb of everything—hip, ribs, heart.

“Al.” A warm hand lands on my shoulder, startling me.

I look up to find Dane’s eyes wide and worried.

Fuck. I only manage to worry him.

“I can’t do it, Dane.”

He wraps his arms around me, his warm hoodie brushing my cold skin. “It’s just too early, Speedbump. You can’t yet . You just managed to walk again without crutches. Give yourself time.”

“I don’t have time.” I shake my head hard, tears blurring everything. “I don’t have any fucking time, Dane.”

“That’s not true,” he says, gripping my shoulders. “We have all the time, okay? I already told you, it’ll take years. Years to get you back and on this level, but that’s okay. We can do it.”

“It’s not even just me. I don’t… I don’t trust it. I don’t trust the bike anymore.”

“Okay.” His hand moves to my back, while he’s looking down the trail where the bike’s still lying. “Should we get you a new one?”

“No, it’s not… it’s just… who touched that bike last?”

“I don’t know. Probably your mechanic or you. Or me, pushing it up here.”

“But you don’t know. ”

“No,” he admits. “I don’t know for certain. Should I call your mechanic? I can. I’m not sure if he’s gotten a new job yet. We could offer him something permanent. He could stay here with us. Make sure your bike’s fit. Every day.”

I shake my head again. “We can’t do that.”

“Why not? It’s a fucking dream job. I’m sure he’d say yes, and Dad would pay him if I asked him to.”

“I don’t know if I can trust him anymore,” I say, and the words taste like rust because my mechanic never failed me, and I know it was Isaac’s doing and not his, but still.

Dane frowns, nodding slowly. “Okay. What about my old mechanic? He’d jump on it in a heartbeat.”

“No,” I whisper. “I don’t… I don’t think ? —”

“We can hire a new one,” he says quickly. “Someone who was never on our team before.”

I lift my eyes and will him to understand with my gaze. “I don’t trust anybody but you and me anymore, Dane.”

He stares at me for a long moment, then he nods once, with that quiet certainty he’s always had.

“Well, then we know what we have to do.”

He lets go of me and disappears down the trail. A few moments later, he’s back, my bike rolling beside him, brake lever crooked from when it landed. When he reaches me, he slips his free arm around my shoulders again, guiding me back toward the house.

“Come on. Let’s get some breakfast.”

I lean into him, exhausted, breathing in the scent of sandalwood and Dane, something that’s always meant safety.

When we’re almost at the garage, I ask, “And what is it we have to do?”

His gaze stays forward. “Watch a fuckton of YouTube videos on how to be your own mechanic.”

I glance up at him, and there’s a tug of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Warmth blooms in my chest, chasing away the despair that lived there minutes ago .

“We’re so screwed,” I murmur.

He nudges me. “Perfect. Screws are half the job.”

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I jolt upright, heart thudding, as someone knocks something against the side of the bus, right where my damn pillow is. The ghost of the dream clings to me as I sit up and yawn, its weight still pressing into my chest.

That dream.

I glance down at my hand, at my taped fingers that are aching again. My hip joins in, a dull, familiar throb pulsing deep in the joint.

Yeah. Time for another round of painkillers.

“How the hell am I supposed to do this again?” I mutter to myself, rubbing my stiff neck with my good hand.

Getting back on the bike the first time after the crash nearly broke me, and sure, this time it’s not as bad. My lungs are intact, and my hip isn’t freshly put together, but the motocross ride from three days ago made one thing painfully clear.

I can’t hold onto the handlebars the way I need to.

And that was on a straight damn line. What’s it going to look like when I’m bombing down a course riddled with rocks and roots at forty-fucking-miles-an-hour?

Thump, thump, thump.

I groan, pushing the blanket off and standing slowly. Everything aches in that quiet, familiar way now, like my body has stopped bothering to scream and just groans instead.

I pull on a hoodie, tug some fresh riding pants over my boxers, and shuffle to the bathroom. Cold water, toothpaste, and an aggressive brush later, I look up at myself in the mirror as I take my pills .

Still here.

Glancing out the tiny bathroom window, I have a perfect view of the Italian mountains, and they are ridiculously green, jagged, and unfairly beautiful.

We arrived late yesterday, Otis and Luc playing tag team with the driving while I sat with Piper and Dane, pretending I could answer questions I didn’t even know how to ask myself.

Am I feeling ready and good enough for the next race?

I don’t fucking know.

So I didn’t talk much. I just sat there, nodding in the right places. Let Piper rub my back once when she thought I needed it. I didn’t, but I didn’t stop her either.

Another thump, louder this time, echoes through the bus.

What the actual fuck is that?

I pad out to the front where Dane is already sitting at the little table, laptop open, glowering at the screen.

“What crawled into your cereal and died?” I ask, grabbing a protein bar from the counter and taking a bite.

He doesn’t even look up. “Nothing.”

Thump.

Urgh!

“What the hell is that?”