Page 46 of Redline Baby

Absolute.

"No way. I can't afford it."

"I know."

That stops me for half a second. Of course he knows. I told him everything last night in the gravel while Dex held gauze against my arm and I tried not to look directly at the remains of my dignity.

Soren watches my face. Then, after a beat:

"Did I sound like I was asking you to pay for it?"

I open my mouth. I have a response loaded. A variation on I don't need anybody paying for anything, pitched to sound like self-sufficiency rather than pride, which is what it actually is. It's the same response I've been leaning on for weeks whenever he offers me something I don't think I've earned. But I don't say anything.

I've learned, these past weeks, that it doesn't work on him anymore. He just waits me out.

Soren is already moving.

He hooks a boot around the leg of a stool tucked beneath the workbench and drags it out across the concrete with a dull scrape. Then he points at it. Not a suggestion.

He knows exactly how submissive I am by now.

Knows it better than almost anyone ever has.

And he uses it without hesitation when it actually matters.

I sit down.

He pointed at a stool and I sat on it.

Same as I would have at any point in the last six weeks. The realization makes something warm and humiliating twist low in my stomach.

The shop is very quiet.

Through the front windows, I can see the avenue outside, a delivery truck making slow progress up the block, a dog walker moving through the thin morning light.

In here, the only sounds are the hum of the fluorescents and the occasional creak of the building settling. Soren crosses to the far wall, opens a cabinet with a key from his belt loop, and retrieves a hard-sided first-aid kit. He carries it back and sets it open on the bench beside me.

"Let me see how bad this looks."

He doesn't wait for a joke. He takes my left forearm carefully, one hand supporting underneath while the other works at the edge of the dressing Dex put on last night. His hands are large and calloused from years of work, the kind of hands that have been pressed against hot metal and greasy engines since before I learned to corner.

They are also, currently, warm. He's not aggressive, but not delicate either.

I stare at the far wall. My whole body is answering to it anyway. The closeness. The care. All of it landing somewhere lower than it probably should, considering the state I'm in.

There's a framed black-and-white photograph above the cash register.

A race bike, tail-out, rider pressed flat against the tank, the whole thing leaned hard into a corner.

The dressing peels away. Pain arrives bright and clarifying enough that my breath catches before I can stop it. Soren pauses. Only for a second. His eyes flick to my face.

"I'm fine," I say automatically.

His expression doesn’t change.

I sigh.

"Right. Sorry. Banned phrase." I murmur under my breath, "Authoritarian."