Page 58 of Redline Baby

"Noted," he says quietly. The same word he used before.

"We're not—I mean, that's not, like, a today thing," I say. Suddenly aware of how much ground I just covered without meaning to. My old instinct to retreat kicks in half a beat too late.

"No," he says, easy. No disappointment. No pressure. He lets me have the room to back up without turning it into a thing. "Not a today thing. There's no rush on my end." My shoulders loosen a little. "I just wanted you to know the truth of it, since it came up. I think you'd rather have the truth than a version I dressed up to make it more comfortable."

"I would." I breathe out. "I do." The remaining tension leaves my shoulders. "Thank you. For—that." The first one comes awkwardly. "And the eggs. And the bike. And, God, basically everything, apparently, since it turns out I've been keeping a running tab of things to thank you for and just never actually doing it."

"You don't owe me a tab, Kit."

"I know." I look at him. "Doesn't stop me from keeping one."

He huffs something warm at that and shakes his head. Then he pushes away from the counter. "Go home. Rest that arm. I'll call you when the bike's further along."

"Bossy."

"You know it," he says and winks. I laugh.

Chapter 16. Soren

I clock him before I've even gotten my jacket off.

Kit's at the bar, back to me, one boot hooked over the rung of his stool exactly the way it was the very first night I watched him from across this room, before I knew his name, before any of the last two months happened.

His good hand is doing the wide, sweeping gesture that means a story is building toward its punchline, and even from here, over the noise of the crowd, I can hear the pitch of his voice climbing.

Too bright. Too fast. Filling every available inch of silence around him. I stop just inside the door and watch for longer than I mean to.

It's the bandaged arm that does it, I think.

The visible proof of exactly how close he came to not walking into this room at all, sitting there propped on the bar top like a prop in his own performance, like the story he's telling right now is already being rewritten into something funnier, something with better flair.

The same way the sponsorship story got smoothed down into a punchline. His boot heel taps the rung. Fast. Uneven. The same restless pulse I've come to recognize as the exact opposite of the ease he shows me when it's just the two of us.

I hate it.

I hate watching it happen in real time.

Hate that two months of sushi and bowling alleys and Ferris wheels and eggs on a Tuesday morning haven't touched whatever this is.

Hate that some part of him is apparently still standing on the exact same ledge he was standing on the night he put his bike down on that county road.

Ni slides a bottle of dark German lager across the worn wood of a two-top before I've fully settled into the chair tucked against the far wall, away from the pool tables.

"He's been like that since he walked in." Ni turns his own bottle a slow quarter-turn against the table, not looking at me. "Louder every week since the accident, not quieter. Like the closer he gets to actually being okay, the harder some part of him fights it." I don't answer that. I keep my eyes on the bar. On the tap of that boot heel. On the laugh that's half a decibel too loud for the joke that produced it.

Something settles low and grim in my chest, the same weight I felt watching him from exactly this angle the very first night Ni brought me here.

That's when Allie cuts through the room.

She's tall, dark-haired, wearing a red cardigan and a pair of boots that look like they've walked through mud on purpose.

Her jaw is set. She looks upset. Her eyes find mine across twenty feet of crowded floor and hold there, and I know immediately that whatever's coming isn't small talk.

She reaches me.

"Can I talk to you, Soren?"

I nod and get up.