Page 88 of Over & Out

That’s when I felt the buzz in my pocket.

Hopper.

The thirty minutes between my text to Hopper and his arrival were only a little awkward. And only at first. I asked Shay a few questions, but she was fully tight-lipped.

When I told her I was sending for help, she’d freaked out. Grabbed Betty from me and started trying to walk. Unless she lived right around the corner, though, it wasn’t going to be easy to get her home.

“How much time before your…he comes home?” I asked her.

She’d faltered then, looking slightly panicky.

“I promise, you can trust me,” I say. I told her I used to be like her. Sneaking out with a bike I wasn’t supposed to be riding. In my case, it was the guy at the bike shop in Swan River who let me borrow one of the older ones from the shop. The home I’d been staying at was strict, but not awful. I figured out how to get the time away.

She seemed to be rapt, so I continued. “I was in foster care,” I explained. “After my dad died.” I described my best foster home. And my worst. I left out all the blandones in between. I talked so much I was surprised Hopper wasn’t there already.

I don’t know if I fully won her over. But by the end, I got a smile out of her. Some joke about the caseworkers and parents getting my name wrong, no matter how many times I corrected them. And it felt good to talk about that time. Even if it was a sanitized version.

There’s a long pause now. Long and quiet enough that I can hear the rumble of a truck in the distance. Hopper. I hope.

Shay looks over at me. “How did you learn how to ride?”

I smile. “Someone taught me.”

“You took lessons?”

“Nope. Just someone who rode. Who thought I showed promise.” I skim over the fact that this was my real dad. Because I want her to believe she can trust someone to teach her too.

Someone like me.

The thought makes me nervous but sends a thrill through me too. Empowering a girl to ride a dirt bike? I can think of no better way to spend a day. Or a hundred days.

With the truck definitely louder now, though, I tell her about Hopper, trying and failing not to lay it on too thick. I talk about how good he is. How kind. How even though he’s kind of grumpy sometimes, he isn’t when it counts. And he’s pretty much erased all the bad men I know.

Just before the engine cuts out in the parking lot, Shay looks at me like she did the first time. “I still can’t believe it’s really you.”

Chapter 29

Hopper

Despite Chris reassuring me several times over text that she was fine, I still expect to turn up to the track to find her mortally wounded. Call it déjà vu or good ol’ paranoia. But when I rush out beyond the parking lot to see her chatting amicably with a teenager, I practically do a cartoon screech of my feet.

“Hey!” Chris calls, waving and then jogging the two hundred feet over to me as I stride toward her. It physically hurts to see her again and not be able to touch her, because we’re not alone.

“Hey—” I say, biting back thebabyorsweetheartor whatever it is that was going to come out oh so naturally after that word.

“Thanks for coming so fast,” she says, her breathing slightly elevated.

“It wasn’t as fast as I’d like,” I say. I stuff my hands into my pockets, because I want so fucking badly to scoop her up into my arms. To kiss the shit out of her. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Of course,” she laughs. “You can see the issue, right?” She looks over her shoulder at the kid kneeling next to the bike, poking at its wheel.

“Yes, bangles. I can see. Is she okay?”

“She’s okay.” Her face flashes with something I don’t like.

“You sure about that?”

“No, but there’s not much I can do about it right now. And she needs a ride home before five.”

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