Chapter Twenty-Two
Echo
Two days later, I still feel like I’m standing between two transporters with Thorne’s arms around me and Draygon holding us both together because none of us knew what the fuck else to do.
Everything after that comes back in pieces.
Andre talking to officials with one hand pressed to the back of his neck, his voice clipped and hard because if he stopped sounding like the person in charge, I think he might’ve come apart with the rest of us.
Talon disappeared somewhere with Sayshen and came back looking furious enough to put his fist through concrete, while Sayshen looked hollowed out beside him. Bex stayed close to both of them, not trying to fix it, just making sure neither brother had to stand there alone with it.
Reign paced until Lena caught him and held on. His grief had teeth too, all clenched jaw and restless hands and nowhere to put any of it.
Revel sat on the floor with Cece beside him, so quiet I barely recognized him. She stayed tucked against his side while he stared at nothing, and that might’ve been the worst part because Revel always had something to say.
Some stupid comment, or inappropriate joke. Anything to fill the silence, but not then.
Draygon put a bottle of water in my hand and stood there until I drank it, his own anger sitting just beneath the surface while he focused on the one thing he could control.
That was all any of us were doing, really. Grabbing onto whatever small thing kept us from completely losing it.
The guys were angry because hurt like that had to go somewhere. The girls were wrecked right along with them because this wasn’t something happening to the team while they watched from the outside.
Wolfe belonged to all of us.
He was threaded through every part of this group, every stupid story and garage argument and beach night and race weekend, and losing him didn’t leave one person broken.
It tore straight through the middle of the family.
Thorne vanished for a while.
When he came back, his knuckles were swollen.
Nobody asked, and I didn’t need to.
Somebody got us back to the house eventually, though I couldn’t tell you who drove or what route we took or whether anyone spoke on the way. I remember climbing out of the vehicle and staring at the front door like I didn’t understand why we were there without Wolfe.
Inside was worse.
His shoes were still by the door, one black trainer kicked half underneath the little table and the other sitting crooked beside it like he’d stepped out of them without thinking.
His jacket was still slung over the back of one of the dining chairs, and there was a mug beside the sink with the coffee ring dried around the bottom because apparently nobody could bring themselves to wash it.
I made it upstairs before any of that could properly sink in. Then I opened my bedroom door, and remembered the night before.
Wolfe had been in there.
Not some distant memory I had to reach for. Last night.
His laugh had filled this room. His hands had been on me.
He’d held me against his chest while we talked about things I usually found a way to joke around, and when I admitted how much of my life I spent trying to make sure I was worth keeping, he’d looked at me like the idea was fucking ridiculous.
You already are.
I’d told him I was working on believing that.
Good. You’ve got time.
My chest caved in.
His hoodie was still on the floor beside the bed where I’d tossed it the night before.
I stared at it for maybe three seconds before I broke.
I crossed the room, grabbed it with both hands and pulled it over my head so fast I barely got my arms through the sleeves. It still smelled like him. That clean, familiar woodsy scent, smoke and whatever cologne he wore lightly enough that I never really noticed it until now.
That was all it took.
I crawled into bed and curled onto the side he’d slept on, dragging the blanket up around me while I pressed my face into the pillow.\
Because he was there too.
In the sheets. On the pillowcase.
Every fucking breath gave him back to me for half a second before reminding me he was gone.
The sound that came out of me didn’t even feel human.
I shoved my face deeper into the pillow and clutched the front of his hoodie in both fists, trying to keep quiet because everyone downstairs was already hurting and I didn’t want to add mine to the pile.
It didn’t work.
It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes before the mattress dipped behind me.
Draygon didn’t say anything.
Didn’t ask if I was okay, because what kind of stupid fucking question would that have been?
He just climbed into the bed behind me and curled his body around mine, one arm sliding beneath my head while the other wrapped firmly around my waist. His face pressed into the back of my hair and he held me like that was the only job he had left in the world.
Which somehow made me cry harder.
Because Draygon had lost him too.
Wolfe wasn’t only someone I loved. He was one of Draygon’s closest friends. His teammate. His brother in every way that mattered, and I knew there had to be something inside him screaming just as loudly as whatever was tearing through me.
But he still came.
Still put his own grief down long enough to carry some of mine.
I twisted in his arms until I could bury my face against his chest.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out.
His hold tightened immediately.
“Don’t.”
“You’re hurting too.”
“I know.”
That was it.
No pretending he wasn’t. No telling me mine mattered more.
Just I know.
His hand moved slowly over my back while I cried into him, and after a while I felt his breathing change too. He tucked his face against the top of my head, and when something warm hit my hair, I knew he was crying with me.
Neither of us mentioned it.
I don’t know how long we stayed like that before the bedroom door opened again.
Thorne stood there. For a second, nobody moved.
His face was still blotchy from crying, his eyes swollen and his knuckles already darkening where he’d hit something after leaving the paddock. Whatever anger had been carrying him earlier was gone now, or maybe just buried under exhaustion.
He looked at me in Wolfe’s hoodie.
Then at Draygon wrapped around me.
His mouth tightened, so I lifted the blanket, and that was all it took.
Thorne shut the door behind him and crossed the room, kicking off his shoes before climbing onto the other side of the bed.
He didn’t make a joke about the three of us barely fitting.
Didn’t complain when my knee ended up wedged between his legs or when Draygon’s arm stretched across me and landed partly over him too.
He just moved closer.
I turned enough that I could grab the front of his shirt, and Thorne covered my hand with his before pressing his forehead against mine.
Nobody said Wolfe’s name.
We didn’t need to.
He was already in the bed with us in every way except the one that mattered.
The empty space.
The hoodie I was wearing.
The sheets that still smelled like him.
The fact that the last time I’d been here, there had been four people in this strange, complicated thing we were building, even if none of us had quite figured out what to call it yet.
Now there were three, and none of us knew how the fuck we were supposed to move on from this.
Eventually exhaustion won.
I don’t remember falling asleep, only waking sometime later with Draygon still curled around my back and Thorne’s hand wrapped loosely around mine between us.
For one horrible, blurry second, I didn’t remember.
Then I smelled Wolfe on the hoodie, and it all came back.
By the time my father arrived, I had already learned that grief could make two days feel like two hours and twenty years feel like nothing at all.
He flew in as soon as Sayshen called him.
Not because of me, at least not at first. But because Wolfe had died, Talon and Sayshen had just lost someone who was as much a brother to them as they were to each other, and the whole team had been ripped open right down the middle.
Their dad heard that his sons were hurting and got on a plane.
He came because they needed him.
Because the guys needed someone who loved them enough to cross an ocean when everything went to shit.
And somewhere between the airport and the house, Talon and Sayshen had to tell him there was something else waiting for him when he got there.
A daughter.
Me.
The daughter he never knew existed.
The one who had planned to introduce herself eventually.
Just… not like this.
My father is sitting across from me at the kitchen table, both hands wrapped around a mug he hasn’t touched in a while, when I finally let myself really look at him.
He looks different from the photos I found before I came to Tampa.
Older, obviously, but not in a way that surprises me. More in a way that makes him feel real. The old racing pictures caught him in leathers, helmet under one arm, looking like every bit of pain in his body was still years away.
Now there’s gray threaded through his hair, deeper lines around his eyes, and the kind of stiffness in the way he shifts one leg beneath the table that makes me wonder how many crashes he still carries around with him.
His eyes lift and catch mine, and something in his face changes when he realizes I’m studying him.
For a second, neither of us says anything.
Then he looks at me a little harder too, like he’s finally allowing himself to.
“You look like her.”
My chest tightens.
“Mom?”
He nods slowly, and there’s a flash of something painful across his face.
“Yeah. Around the mouth. The shape of your face.” His gaze stays on mine. “But your eyes…”
He trails off.
“What about them?”
His throat moves before he answers.
“They look like my mum’s.”
That hits me in a place I wasn’t ready for.
I blink and look down at my coffee because suddenly there’s too much sitting in that one sentence.
A grandmother I never knew. A whole side of myself I’ve never seen reflected anywhere before.
When I look back up, he’s still staring at me.
Not in a way that makes me uncomfortable.