Page 12 of Over & Out

“I’m just a little rattled,” I say.

I’m not rattled. I’m fucking scared. I know it, Mac knows it. He just doesn’t know how deep that fear runs. No one does.

Biking was everything to me, and though it sounds so stupid to think like this about a hobby, I don’t know who I am without it. It was how I blew off steam, but it was also how I felt things. How I stayed strong. How I kept my demons at bay.

“Your dad taught you how to bike, didn’t he?” Mac says softly, and I curse myself for telling Shelby that during a moment of girls’ night vulnerability. But I didn’t tell her it was a secret.

“Yeah,” I say, the lump in my throat thickening, making tears threaten to fill my eyes.

I picture my dad whooping for me on the sidelines as I made my first jump. The sound of a cracked beer on our tailgate later, a clink of the can to my lemonade.You did it, pumpkin!

The track was where I felt safest, even when Dad let me down.

So far only one person besides my friends hasn’t.

Black helmet. Strong arms.

I’ve got you, sweetheart.

That person is such a distant memory, though, that he might as well be a character. Like the Duke.

A knock on the door startles both of us.

Mac frowns. No one knocks around here, not unless Mac is in here with Shelby. Then,ew, we all knock just in case.

But with any of us? Even with a closed door, Mac has an open-door policy.

“Must be Lana,” Mac says. After he came to smooth things over out there—and pull me into the office for this talking-to—Lana showed up. Mac clearly called her in as a favor. Maybe before Dick even showed up, seeing I was struggling.

I’m closest, so I get up. I could use a Lana hug.

But when I open the door, I freeze. It’s not Lana. It’s the woman from the table. Hopper Donnach’s…what, manager?

“Oh,” I say. “Hi.”

“Hi. Chris, is it?”

I knit my brows. “Yes. How did you?—”

“The other server. I slipped her a hundred. Which reminds me?—”

She opens her clutch and pulls out a wallet, handing me a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill.

“Are you?—”

“You did great. So great, in fact, that I’d like to see more.”

“Excuse me?” I say.

“Excuse me?” Mac parrots.

She glances at him, then angles the bill at me. “Please take it, or I’ll have to give it to him for training you so well.”

I grab the cash. “I trained myself.” Once again—so mature.

The woman smiles. “I trust you did. Can I talk to you outside?”

I look over her shoulder, my stomach tightening.

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