average human’s Reviews > Broken Breath > Status Update

It’s even softer than I imagined, ridiculously so, and he immediately swats my hand away with a glare.
“You shouldn’t.” I lean back with a satisfied grin. “The cut’s nice, you look good.” So damn cute.
His cheeks turn pink, just a shade, but enough to make my chest tingle with dangerous satisfaction.
“You drink your coffee black, no sugar, like some kind of bitter cowboy. Or tea, but only the kind that tastes like a forest and sadness.”
He huffs. Or was it a laugh? Eh, borderline. Either way, I press on.
“You’re a cat person, obviously. Aloof and judgy. Hating my son for no reason. You probably hiss when someone wakes you up too early.”
Another eyeroll. Excellent.
“Your bike has a name, and I’m sure it’s something dramatic. Like… Berserker, Nightmare, or Vengeance.”
The edge of his mouth twitches. There it is, the tiniest crack. Now’s my chance.
“You have a girlfriend.”
He frowns when his brown eyes come up to mine again.
Interesting.
“Boyfriend?” I hedge.
“No.” He presses his lips together firmly.
My heart kicks.
“Ever had one?” I ask, trying to hide how desperately I want to know the answer.
He halts abruptly and turns to face me, full-on.
“No.” His voice has an edge now, and he looks at me like I’ve prodded something I shouldn’t have. “Why are you asking me that?”
He looks suspicious, which is fair, but underneath that guarded expression is a flicker of something else. Not fear exactly, but wariness. The kind that comes with a closely-held secret. Maybe he is gay or somewhere in the vicinity.
Elite sports are still stuck in the Stone Age. Guys can fly down mountains at sixty-five kilometers an hour, but God forbid they admit they want to kiss another guy.
“I was just wondering if that’s why you won’t talk to me,” I say with a thoughtful hum. “If there’s someone in your life who doesn’t want you talking to guys like me.”
His eyes narrow. “Guys like what? Annoying?”
With a grin, I push his shoulder, just enough to back him against the nearest tree. My leg slips between his thighs on instinct, and he stills completely, his eyes wide.
“Tell me, Petit. Give me the real answer. Is there someone who thinks they’re dating you right now?”
My fingers curl under his jaw, tilting his face up so he has no choice but to meet my eyes. His breath stutters, the tiniest hitch, just like I hoped it would. Maybe even prayed. Something flutters in my chest at the contact.
“Why?” he asks on a breath, his voice soft like it’s trying not to tremble.
“Because they should know, I am a threat.”
A flicker of something crosses his face, defiance, fear, want, I don’t know, but it makes my pulse spike. He’s trying to build a wall, but I can feel the cracks spiderwebbing underneath.
“You…” he starts, then falters. His eyes narrow as he forces the words out like they cost him something. “You think you could have me?”
I shouldn’t smile, but I do, wicked and entirely sincere. My knuckle brushes along his cheekbone, a whisper of touch that makes his long lashes flutter. “Couldn’t I, Petit?”
He doesn’t answer, but his throat bobs once in a rough swallow.
Putain.
His lips are parted, but his shoulders are rigid, locked between the bark and my chest. He smells like lavender and ointment, a herbal sharpness beneath the sweetness. It’s the scent of healing, of bruises not yet faded. Strangely intimate and real in a way that cuts through everything synthetic in my world. It shouldn’t be sexy, but fuck, it is.
I eye the patch of skin at his throat, the small sliver exposed beneath the edge of his hoodie, too delicate for someone who rides like the devil owns his soul.
I want to taste it, bite it.
Claim it.
My knee presses higher between his thighs, and I swear I feel him tense, like he doesn’t know whether he wants to push closer or bolt. My thumb drags across the corner of his mouth, and I tilt his head to the side, because I need more. I need access. I need him.
“Merde.” I breathe out, and my voice is hoarse with everything I’m holding back. Tiny freckles are scattered across his pale skin in little constellations no one else has discovered.
Mon Dieu.
My hand slides along his neck, fingers splayed, thumb teasing over the taut line of muscle. His pulse hammers against my touch, wild and terrified or turned on, maybe both. I lower my mouth to that tender place just under his ear and bite. Gently. Teasing. Just teeth, heat, and the faintest drag of tongue.
He jerks in my arms, then hiccups a split second later, and I can’t help but smile.
Fuck, that sound.
I chuckle low against his skin, drunk on it, already addicted. My body reacts before my brain can catch up, and my cock twitches, and I want…
No. Need.
I need him under me, over me, around me, twisting in my hands, calling my name. I’ve never needed anything like this. Never anyone like him.
I’ve never fucked a guy before, and sure, this might be a bit ambitious out here in the middle of nowhere, with no lube, no prep, and nothing but pine needles to cushion my Petit. But I’ve got two hands and a vivid imagination. Couldn’t I just slide one down, wrap it around both of us, and stroke us off together?
I barely hold back a groan, because fuck. Yes.
That sounds perfect.
My hips press forward instinctively, lining us up. I grind just once, causing a firm pull against the ache in my jeans, because God, I need something, anything.
I’m not teasing anymore, I’m begging. Not out loud, but in every touch, every breath, every inch of me straining toward him.
My eyes find his, searching, asking. Is this okay? Do you want this too?
And for a moment, it looks like yes. His lips are parted, his chest rising in shallow waves, and the tiniest moan escapes him, so soft I feel it more than I hear it.
I want to revel in it, but in the back of my mind, I know something is off. Pulling back just enough to glance between us, I freeze.
Why the fuck doesn’t he have a boner?
The realization crashes into me like a snapped chain at full speed.
He’s not hard.
But I am. Fuck, I’m so hard I feel feverish, aching with it, every nerve tuned to the pitch of him, and now I’m suddenly, horrifically aware of it.
I look up, panic already creeping into my lungs. His expression is carved from tension, mouth pinched, eyes wide but blank. Not dazed with pleasure or drunk on the same madness I’m drowning in.
Blank.
No desire or heat, just the ghost of everything I thought we were building. My stomach drops, shame chasing it down in a sick, hot rush. I don’t see the ache I feel in him, no heat.
I want him.
And he doesn’t want me.
I can’t tell whether I misread everything or if he did want me, but I ruined it because I came on too strong, moved too fast, assumed too much. Hoped too much.
Petit Crews is the first to unfreeze, and the first thing he does is push my face away.
I let him.
Then he hiccups loudly, ducks under my arm, and bolts, unable to get away from me fast enough. Without a word or even a backward glance, he literally sprints away from me, and here I am, breathing hard, and just hard.
And humiliated.
What the fuck was that? What the fuck did I just do?
Toulouse shifts inside my sleeve, a faint rustle of fur and warmth against my wrist.
“Merde, sorry, mon amour. I forgot about you.”
I forgot about fucking everything.
Pressing the heel of my hand to my forehead, I lean back against the tree and try to remember how to breathe like someone who isn’t a complete fuckup.

52%

It was hot. Stupid hot. Just like Delacroix himself. The kind of heat that makes your brain shut off and your hips press forward all on their own.
He was possessive, and the way his body pressed into mine like he wanted all of it, like…
I shift on the table.
No. Not going there.
Breathe, Alaina. Concentrate on the pain.
And yeah, there’s plenty of that. Whoever said diamonds are a girl’s best friend clearly never met Naproxen.
I slept in the goddamn driver’s seat of the bus last night and the night before. Curled up with a blanket over my head and spine propped against the gear stick, which let’s be honest, was dumb as fuck considering how I hurt on a normal day after sleeping in a bed, but Dane is still sick and quarantined to the back of the bus.
And, of course, that thought loops me back to Finn because he knows.
He knows.
He hasn’t said a word, though. Not after the tire was fixed, and we were stuck again for the rest of the drive over here, and not since.
And then there’s Mason, who’s apparently still mad at me. Sure, he helped change the tire, but he didn’t look at me or acknowledge me in any way. Not even a ‘hey.’ It’s all fucked.
Luc, Finn, Mason.
Me.
But I don’t need them, hell, I don’t need anyone.
Except Dane.
I’m here to ride, win, and finish what I started, and that’s it. I shouldn’t even talk to them or worry about them talking, not talking, or anything else, to me. I should stop letting them hang around me and only talk to Dane. Maybe Piper. But that’s it.
Piper chooses that moment to press into a knot just above my hip, and I actually moan. Like, out loud.
She laughs. “Thought you said this was hell.”
“It is,” I mutter into the table. “Keep going.”
Piper moves to my lower back, knuckles dragging heat into the muscles along my spine. I flinch when she hits a tight spot near the scar on my left side.
“Jesus,” she mutters. “How are you even riding like this?”
I grunt into the padded table. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, Alaina,” she says hesitantly. “I… I watched your crash. On TV, when it happened.”
I hold my breath, my newly loosened muscles all tensing at once.
Oh. Oh.
I thought she just figured out I was a girl, not that I was Alaina Crews. Guess the missing dick was only half the giveaway.
“And I heard all about you and your injuries, what you went through. You’re like…” She pauses as her thumbs dig into a knot on my lower back, making me twitch. “You’re one of the ‘how bad can it get?’ examples we get in the med prep courses. Literally. When you apply to work on the circuit, they show you examples of what can happen if you don’t pull riders fast enough, or when someone keeps going with a ruptured this or fractured that. But here you are.” She presses a thumb into the side of my hip as she says it, like punctuation. “Alaina Crews. The cautionary tale. The ‘almost died on track, never raced again’ slide.”
“Wow.” I swallow past the lump in my tight throat. “Didn’t know I was famous.”
Piper snorts. “You are. I mean, you dethroned Delacroix last Sunday.”
I huff. “Raine dethroned him. I just showed up, and Luc had a bad race. It wasn’t about me being that good.”
“Well, Delacroix is off his game lately.” Piper rolls her shoulder as she moves around the table. “Apparently, he’s in love.”
My brain turns into a pretzel.
I wonder if she can massage that too?
I scoff, “Luc? In love?”
Just today, he was all over me. His breath, his hand, his body, hard against mine. His mouth was at my throat like he was starved for the contact. So if he’s in love with someone, why the hell would he do that?
“Sure it’s not just another rumor about him?” I add, trying to sound less interested in the answer than I am.
Piper hums under her breath. “Delacroix told me himself. He’s all moody and distracted. Apparently, he’s been trying to charm someone who keeps shutting him down.”
No. It can’t be me, can it?
Piper keeps working, but her voice goes soft. “He’s got a type, huh?”
My mouth is dry as I ask, “Does he?”
She laughs under her breath. “Looks like it’s quiet, broody boys with dangerous cheekbones and rage issues.”
I almost laugh. Almost.
Piper catches my eye from the side, a little too knowing. “You noticed how much attention he pays to you?”
“He doesn’t like me. He doesn’t even know me,” I argue, too fast, even though my stomach flips.
“No?” she asks. “Could’ve fooled me. He practically ran after you mid-conversation this morning.”
I roll onto my side. “He’s just weird.”
Piper grins. “Weird and obsessed.”
I have nothing to say to that because some part of me wants to believe it, but a bigger part of me knows it’s a very bad thing if it’s true.
“Well, your legs might not kill you now.” Piper wipes her hands on a towel. “For at least twenty-four hours.”
I sigh heavily. “Bless you.”
She grins, cocking her head. “So. Are you gonna put him out of his misery anytime soon?”
“Who?”
She gives me a look. “Delacroix.”
“Piper.” I laugh. “He still thinks I’m a guy.”
Her eyebrows go up before she chuckles. “Even better. No wonder he’s losing his shit. You’ve really messed with his head, and it was already pretty fucked.”
“Anyway.” I sit up slowly, sore in about sixteen places. “You said you’re kind of a doctor too, right?”
“On-hold pit medic, yeah,” she says, tossing the towel aside. “Not a real doctor-doctor, but for cuts, bruises, hydration, and panicked mechanics with finger sprains? I’m your girl. Why?”
I pull my hoodie down with a wince. “You know anything about sinus infections? Dane gets them sometimes, and I think the cold he has might be more than that now. The cough is gross, and he’s sleeping like crap, but he looks feverish like he did when he last had one, and I really can’t afford to get infected right now.”
“Oh, sinus infection?” She nods. “I’ve got some stuff. I’ll walk over with you. Consider it a house call.” She holds up a finger like one sec, disappears behind a curtain, and returns a moment later with a small black bag slung over her shoulder.
We step out into the night together, and I catch the once-over she gives the school bus, probably taking in the faded paint, how one wheel is chocked with a rock, and the white CREWS decal on the side that is peeling at the corners.
It looks like a rusted-out joke compared to the gleaming setup we just left.
Home sweet home.
The bus is quiet when we climb in, the air stale with hints of leftover soup, used tissues, and travel.
Piper glances around. “Where’s the patient?”
I usher her toward him, and Dane sits up from his bunk, wrapped in a blanket like a grumpy goblin. His eyes squint between us.
“What the fuck,” he rasps.
“She’s my physio,” I explain quickly, and Piper flashes a grin.
“Hey, I’m Piper. Nice to meet you, Dane.”
He looks at me with an expression that says, “Are you serious right now?” I just shrug back like, yep.
“Don’t worry, I’m just here to make you feel a little better,” Piper adds, settling her kit on the small table. “You know, you’re kind of the reason I got into downhill mountain biking.”
Dane blinks in confusion, as if he doesn’t even know who he is. “Me?”
“Yeah.” She cracks open a small container and starts mixing something. “When you were in your prime, I watched every single race while I was doing my training to become a physio. You were it. You made it look like flying. So damn cool.”
Dane looks vaguely alarmed. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.” She nods. “You were the reason I wanted to work on the circuit.”
He coughs into his elbow. “Damn.”
“Yeah, so dumb, right? I had such a crush on you.”
That little tidbit shuts Dane right up and makes me grin wildly.
“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…” She 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.
“Well, I’ll tell you how I feel. It makes me angry. So fucking angry, I want to scream.” Dane’s breath catches in his throat. “They erased you. Me. All of it. And no one even blinked. They deserve karma for it. Not World Cup wins.”
I look at the screen again.
Isaac Raine smiles into the camera as he sprays champagne across the front row of fans. The crowd roars as he raises the bottle like he deserves it.
“Don’t you feel anything anymore?” Dane’s voice cracks. “Tell me you’re still in there, Al. Tell me I still have a sister.”
I want to.
God, I want to.
He’s been with me through everything. He sat by my bed for days while I screamed in pain and begged for silence. He held me through the nights when my body seized up in spasms, when I thought I’d never move again. He fought the doctors, he fought our father, he fought everyone.
And now here he is, begging me to speak, to tell him how I feel. I owe him something, anything, really, but it’s just so hard to reach that part of myself again. My brain built walls around it to keep me from drowning, and now I don’t remember how to open the door. But I try for him.
“I used to,” I whisper. “I used to be…”
Somebody.
Now I’m nothing.
Nobody.
I drag my eyes away from the screen, from that life. That girl.
“I stopped breathing that day. Not only physically but mentally. Biking was my breath, and it’s broken.”
I press a hand to my chest, like I might feel something to contradict that, but I don’t.
“My breath is broken. And nobody can live with broken breath.”
My voice shakes, and my lip trembles, but I keep going. He doesn’t need to be broken, and I owe him this.
“He killed me, Dane.” The words barely make it out. “He wanted to kill me, and he succeeded.”
Dane flinches. “He didn’t kill you. He just…”
I glance at the screen again, where Raine is holding the World Cup overall trophy.
“Took the wins from us,” I finish for my brother. “Erased us.”
Dane nods slowly. “Then let’s take it back, give them the same fucking courtesy.”
He gives his back to the television, turning all his attention on me, his voice firmer now. “You could train and get back in shape, back on track. If anyone could do it, it’s you. Set your mind on it and take that win from Isla. A couple of years from now, everything could look different.” He softens a little. “I’ll help. I’ll train you. Just help me out here, Al. Want it. Take back what’s yours.”
“I don’t want it from Isla,” I snap, startling both of us with the intensity. “Fuck her. She’s a mouthpiece, a fucking pawn. This is his game. Raine’s.”
Dane’s mouth opens like he wants to argue, but then he stops, and a long silence follows. Just the sound of the television in the background, narrating Isaac Raine’s glory.
Finally, he says, “You know I’d help you take the win from him if I could. I would. But no matter how hard you train, you’ll never race in his categor⁠—”
“What if I could?” I cut in, sitting up straighter, the idea sparking in my tired brain.
What if I could?
Dane blinks at me. But I’m already there, chasing it.
What if I could race him? What if I could get to the final gate, line up right next to him, and rip that smug-fucking-smirk off his face with nothing but speed?
“Alaina… what?”
“I’ve been erased. So maybe that’s the way back in, as someone else, not Alaina Crews, but just a rider. Clean slate. Let them think I’m gone, let them all forget about me.”
He shakes his head, frowning in confusion, but I keep going.
“I race under a new name in the male category. Nobody would think twice, not if I do it right. I’d get my body there. Cut my hair, train like hell, and then… play the part.”
He’s silent, but I know him well enough to know it’s not because he thinks the idea is ridiculous. It’s because he’s calculating, measuring the odds and me.
“You think people won’t recognize you?” he finally asks.
“Let’s be honest, it will take me years to get there. They’ll forget Alaina Crews completely by then.”
His brows furrow. “That’s a lot, Al. And risky as hell.”
“But it’s doable,” I say, and there’s something wild in my voice now, almost alive. “This way, I don’t just beat Isla. I beat him, right in front of everybody, but he won’t even see it coming.”
My hip throbs in protest like it’s trying to ground me, remind me of everything that could go wrong, everything that has gone wrong, but I breathe through it, because pain means I’m alive. Pain means I’m still in this. And if I have to bleed my way to that finish line to show the world what he did, to prove to him that I survived?
So be it.
He took everything from me.
Now I’m going to take everything from him.
Dane stares at me, his expression like he’s seeing a ghost come back to life. And then, he nods.
“If that’s what you want, then yeah. I’ll help. I can do that. We can do that.”
I exhale, and for the first time in a year, the breath feels real.
“And after that, it ends.” I look at my brother, but he’s gone as still as a statue. “When I’ve won, when I’ve taken what he stole and made him choke on it, I want to be done.”
Dane’s mouth opens, but I keep going.
“If I come back… if I train, if I fight, if I bleed and break and still claw my way to the top, if I make it all the way back just to crush him, then that’s it.”
I stare at him. Let him see it in my face, the honesty, the promise.
“I don’t want a life after that. Hell, I don’t have one anymore, not really.”

Dane’s voice is hoarse. “Alaina…”
“This isn’t about healing,” I whisper. “It’s about justice. Revenge. I want him to pay. I want him to see me win and realize he didn’t bury me, that he failed. That I’m still here, only to ruin him, and bury myself afterward.”
Dane looks like I’ve pulled the air from his lungs, but he’s seeing something else too. He’s seeing me, for the first time in months, sitting upright. Because for the first time since the crash, I want something. Not healing or peace, just vengeance.
Even if it means war.
Even if it means the end.
“Swear it,” I demand. It’s not fair, none of this is, but I need him to agree. I need permission to carry this weight without the expectation of surviving it. “Swear that when it’s done, you’ll let me go.”
His face crumples. “Don’t make me…”
“Swear it, Dane.”
The silence that follows feels like a held breath, and the whole world is waiting to see whether he’ll break. And then, just loud enough to shatter me, he gives me what I want, what I shouldn’t want.
Like he always does.
“I swear.”