Chapter Thirteen
~ Ransom ~
There’s a point in every long ride where your body forgets you ever had another life. Your hands weld themselves to the grips, knees cinch tight around the tank, and the world tunnels down to a single line of asphalt, pulsing through you like a second heartbeat.
Out here, I was anonymous—a speck in motion, wind-whipped and faceless, no past to outrun because the past had already let me go. It was the only kind of peace I could trust.
So when the phone started vibrating in my pocket, I ignored it. The bike was the only thing left that didn’t talk back.
It kept buzzing, though. Not just once, not a polite nudge, but the kind of relentless, full-body tremor that made you worry your phone would catch fire if you didn’t check it.
I coasted to the shoulder and killed the engine. The sudden quiet was violent—just my breath and the tick of hot metal, and the alien ringtone I’d never bothered to change.
I pulled off my helmet, thumbed the screen awake, and squinted at a wall of missed calls. Knox, ten times. No voicemails, but a flood of texts:
CALL ME.
Where are you?
Ran, it’s urgent. Answer your goddamn phone.
The time stamps were stacked like dominoes, each one closer together, each message louder without the need for sound. I scrolled, heart thudding out of sync with the phone’s new insistence.
The next text, from two minutes ago: If you don’t answer in five I’m calling the fucking state troopers.
The screen lit up again, and before I could even think, my thumb hit “Accept.”
“Yeah?” I tried to sound bored, but my voice came out sandpapered.
“Jesus Christ, Ransom.” Knox’s voice was sharp enough to leave a mark. “Where the hell are you?”
I looked up. The only landmark was a defunct weigh station and a sign that said “Shannon Creek Exit.” No idea what county I was in. “On the road, somewhere between nowhere and fuck you. Why?”
“Don’t do this,” he snapped. “You need to come back. Now.”
I flexed my hand, trying to shake out the pins and needles. “I’m not due back for another four months. The farm’ll survive.”
He breathed, slow and lethal. “It’s not about the farm. It’s Hardesty. The Sheriff’s department called me, Ran. He’s in the emergency room. Bad.”
The wind cut through my jacket, all the way to my bones. “What happened?”
“They didn’t say. Just that he was on a call, and now he’s at the trauma center in Eugene. I tried getting info, but they won’t say anything unless you show up.”
I nearly dropped the phone. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. “Me? Why the fuck me?”
Another pause. This one was longer. “You’re listed as his emergency contact.”
I sat down hard on the curb, not caring about the mud or the imprint it would leave. The world got thin and sharp, every detail painful in its precision: the cracked asphalt under my boots, the skitter of some rodent in the grass, the ugly sky overhead that looked like a bruise left by a bad dream.
Knox kept talking, but I barely heard. “Ran? You there?”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah. Keep going.”
“There was an incident at your shop. Inked Rebellion. Somebody hit it last night. Hardesty responded, tried to stop him. Bastard got the drop on him, did a real number. The department couldn’t reach you, so they called me, then asked if I’d pass it on.
They said if you can get to the hospital, do it. ”
I dug my nails into my thigh, left crescent moons in the denim. “How bad?”
“Don’t know,” Knox said, all the bravado gone from his voice. “Bad enough he’s still in the ER and they won’t tell anyone shit unless you’re next of kin. Which, apparently, you are.”
My mind went blank, then white-hot, then blank again.
I’d left because I was tired of being nobody. I’d left because he made me a secret. But now, in the place where you can’t lie, he’d named me—official, on paperwork, emergency contact. No more hiding.
I thought about the last time I saw Floyd: the cut of his jaw, the gravity in his eyes, the way he’d let me leave like he was closing a door on us that would never open again.
He’d never called me anything but trouble. Never risked a single inch of daylight for us. But when it mattered, he wrote me down.
My voice came out in pieces. “I’ll be there. Tell them—I’ll be there.”
Knox exhaled, a sound I felt in my gut. “Drive safe, asshole.”
I killed the call, then sat for a second, phone limp in my hand.
The sky broke open and started to spit rain, the kind that didn’t bother to build up or warn you—just a single, ugly wave of cold.
I shoved the phone in my pocket, jammed my helmet back on, and cranked the engine so hard I thought I’d shear a piston.
I had a hundred miles of shit road ahead of me and nothing but the ache in my chest to keep me company.
I’d been running all this time. From the town, from the mess I’d made, from the truth.
But I was listed on the paperwork now. I was the person they called when there was nothing left to lose.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t a secret.
I was the first number they dialed.
* * * *
The bike was built for bad decisions. I’d spent three years and more money than I’d ever admit tuning it for straight-line speed, but even then, I’d never opened it up the way I did that day.
The needle swept past ninety, then a hundred, then one-ten, and still there was no sense of motion except for the blur of pine trees and the white noise in my ears.
I didn’t remember shifting lanes or what music was playing in my head. All I knew was that with every mile marker, the odds of finding Floyd alive and whole seemed to shrink.
The road twisted through foothills and then broke out into a flat run of valley, the sky darker to the west, sun pressing low and hostile behind me.
I leaned in and willed the bike to go faster, as if speed could rewind time or erase the last month.
It couldn’t. But it let me imagine, for a second, that I was close enough to touch him.
My phone was in the inside pocket of my jacket, vibrating every so often, the same call over and over: “Unknown,” but I knew the number by the rhythm of the ring.
Knox was probably tracking my location, willing me forward, yelling at the phone from a state line away.
I let it buzz, ignored the pain in my wrist, the rattle in my teeth, the taste of blood at the back of my throat. I didn’t slow down.
The truth about a ride like this is you start to hallucinate. Not just the usual paranoia of sirens and blue lights in the rearview, but actual memories, alive in the air.
The last time I saw Floyd, he was standing in his living room, arms folded, trying to look like he didn’t care if I ever came back.
The time before that, he was naked in bed, asleep and snoring just loud enough to annoy but not enough to make me leave.
The first time, he had me bent over the desk at the station, hand fisted in my hair, mouth hot against my neck.
Every version of him appeared and dissolved at the edges of my vision, taunting and haunting me at the same time.
The guilt kicked in around mile fifty. Hard. If I’d just stayed, if I’d just picked up the goddamn phone, maybe Floyd wouldn’t be in an ICU right now. Maybe the shop wouldn’t be a crime scene. Maybe I wouldn’t be counting telephone poles like they were seconds left to live.
There’s a myth that love makes you soft.
Not true. It makes you mean, selfish, desperate.
I passed an old Subaru crawling along in the right lane and didn’t even notice until the wind shear nearly knocked me off the bike.
I rode the line between lanes for two more miles before I realized I was screaming inside the helmet, not words, just the kind of sound that strips your throat raw.
The sky opened up near Coburg, a wall of water that turned the road glassy and dangerous. I barely eased up, hydroplaned through a roundabout, and kept going. If the tires went out, fine. At least then I could say I’d tried.
That’s when the cop car pulled up behind me. I saw the lights before I heard the siren, blue and red slicing through the rain. I thought about pulling over, but the idea made me want to laugh. I twisted the throttle and left it all behind.
For a second, I could almost hear Floyd’s voice: “You’re gonna get yourself killed, idiot.”
I grinned, wild and unhinged. “Not today,” I said, and cut through an exit ramp so sharp I scraped the footpeg.
The squad car followed, but I knew these roads better than anybody.
I took a side street, ducked behind a shuttered minimart, and circled back to the main drag.
When I merged onto the bypass, the cop was a distant whine, powerless to keep up.
I thought about Floyd’s hands—big, careful, the only ones that ever made me feel small in a way I liked.
I thought about the scar on his left shoulder, the one he never talked about, and how I’d spent a whole night once just tracing it with my tongue.
I thought about the way he’d said my name the last time, like it cost him everything.
The rain eased up as I hit the city limits. Eugene’s lights looked like fireflies in a jar, twitchy and alive. I checked the GPS on the dash, saw the route, saw the little hospital icon, saw the words “EMERGENCY CONTACT” in my mind, burning bright as the tail lights ahead.
The sign said “Welcome to Sacred Heart Hospital,” and I laughed again, a sound with more sadness than anything else. I was home. Or as close to home as I could get at the moment.
I didn’t bother with the speed limit. I didn’t bother with the rules. I just kept riding, every mile a dare to the universe to try and stop me.
The last memory before I pulled into the hospital lot was the first time Floyd kissed me in public.
It was midnight on Main Street, after everyone had gone home, but it still counted.
He’d gripped my face with both hands and kissed me so hard I saw stars.
He pulled away, lips bruised, and said, “Don’t you ever fucking leave me again. ”
I parked the bike at the curb, killed the engine, and tore the helmet off. My hair was plastered to my face, my jaw set so tight I thought my teeth would break. I stood in the rain, fists clenched, and whispered, “Please be okay. Please be okay.”
The automatic doors hissed open. I walked inside, heart pounding a drumbeat that didn’t belong to me anymore.
Every part of me screamed to turn around, to run, to do what I did best and vanish. But I walked to the front desk, dripping on the tile, and said, “Ransom McKenzie. I’m here for Floyd Hardesty. I’m his emergency contact.”
The nurse looked at me with that professional blend of sympathy and suspicion. “He’s expecting you,” she said, and pointed down a hall that smelled of bleach and fear.
I went.
With every step, I repeated it—like a prayer, like a curse, like the first promise I’d ever meant:
I’m coming, Floyd.
I’m coming home.