Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 64917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
I kept us headed to the ridge road. Switchbacks like nowhere else, no guardrails where there should be, the kind of place that teaches you whether you know your machine or you only think you do. I eased us into it like a dance. First turn right, weight outside, eyes up, throttle steady. Second turn left, same song different verse. She followed me—didn’t get in my way, didn’t go stiff. Trust is always tested before it’s a promise.
“What do you feel?” I asked, and the question wasn’t about weather anymore.
She didn’t answer right away. Her hands under my shirt were warm now. The cold at our edges had given in to engine heat and skin. Finally, she spoke. “The quiet,” she managed. “Like my head wouldn’t stop. Except now. This makes it stop.”
“Good.” I dropped a gear and let the engine ease us into a tighter bend, rolled back on as the line opened. “Hold on to that.”
Past the old mine, the road straightens for a breath before the long curve that holds you like you’re in its palm. I took it sweet and smooth. She laughed quietly and tipped her helmet against my shoulder like agreement.
We crossed the river on the one-lane wooden bridge, boards thumping under us, water smell spiking—iron and fish and cold rock. I tapped the horn twice for the ghosts who built it. Habit. She squeezed me gently.
“Hands higher,” I told her, and slid them from my chest to around my collarbones, forearms crossing over my heart like a harness. I wanted her closer. I wanted her everywhere.
“Feel that?”
She swallowed. I felt the movement. “Yeah.”
“What is it?”
She searched. “You.” She caught on finally, helpless and certain.
“Me what?”
“You, me, and road, and…” She paused. “Home.”
I swallowed that and let it settle in because it scared me. I kissed her fingers where they crossed and heard her breath skip like a stone on a lake.
We hit the overlook turnout before the ridge drops back into trees. I eased us in, killed the motor, and for a half-second the night yawned wide at the sudden silence before crickets rushed in to fill it. The cooling engine ticked. Heat rose off the motor in invisible waves.
I didn’t turn. I just sat with her hanging on the back of my life like an amen, her hands still pinned under mine at my chest.
“Close your eyes,” I instructed.
“They are.”
“What do you feel?”
She answered without thinking now. “My pulse in my wrists.” A pause. “Yours in your chest.” Another. “The ghost of the road still moving under us.”
“And?”
“And that there’s a cliff just a few steps away and I’m not scared because you won’t let me walk off it.”
We climbed off the bike, took off our helmets and let the night envelop us in her beauty. I leaned my hip against the seat and watched her walk to the edge of the turnout, stop in the spill of headlight left in the dust, and throw her face to the stars like a dare. Wind lifted the hem of her sweater. Gooseflesh rose along the bare strip of skin. I stepped in behind her and set my palms at her hips, not pulling, just a place to lean if the world got woozy.
“What do you feel now?” I asked.
She tipped her head back onto my shoulder without asking permission like she didn’t need to anymore. “Big,” she said, a little laugh in it. “And… small. In a good way. Like I don’t have to hold everything up.”
“You don’t.”
She reached back and found my thigh, squeezed once like a thank you and a map. “I know.”
We stood there listening to the far-off hum of a semi on the state highway, the river whispering to rocks nobody will ever move. I could have parked my life in that minute and called it done.
After a while I felt her turn, soft against my chest, hands drawing lazy lines across the patch on my left side. President. Her fingers paused there, then slid up to my jaw. I didn’t need light to see her; I knew her face now like I knew this road.
“What do you feel?” she asked me, returning it like a gift.
“Everything,” I answered, and it didn’t even feel like any form of lie. “Wind. Your breath. The engine still in my bones. The part of me that used to go quiet when I got on the bike waking up because you’re here.”
Her mouth softened. “Alive,” she said, echoing me back, getting it exactly right.
“Alive,” I said into the curve of her cheek.
We didn’t kiss. Not then. The want was there, sharp as a blade fresh from the stone, but the night wasn’t about taking. It was about being. Existing together without the pressure of the past between us.
After a bit, I led her back to my bike. I strapped her lid again, double-checked the chin strap like I always do, like I always will. We climbed on. She settled and I felt her settle, like faith. The engine turned over with a bark, then smoothed. We dropped into the trees again, world going soft around us.