51. Kiera
KIERA
I set down my pencil with a sigh, leaning over to give Lady a scratch on the head and a glimpse at my drawing. “Whaddaya think? I think I’m getting pretty good at the trees, no?”
Lady picked up her head curiously before letting it plop back down into the grass.
Leo had been right all those days ago about dislocating my thumb — as cool of a party trick as it was, that shit left my hand aching for days.
Luckily, I’d gone for my nondominant hand, which meant I could still sketch with relative ease. Which was a blessing in its own right.
Now that I’d picked up drawing again, I wasn’t sure that I could stop.
The scratch of the pencil against paper, the gentle friction reverberating through my fingers with each stroke…
it was just so easy to submit to the rote memory of it, to let it soothe me through all of this stress like it had in childhood.
And stress was a constant companion lately.
I picked up the pencil again with a sigh, working on the shading of the fluffy clouds overhead. With my savior’s reluctant blessing, I’d finally confirmed a meeting with Maura. A week from now, I would be face to face with the woman I’d been avoiding for months now.
And in the meantime, all there was to do about it was… wait.
“Not bad.” A gruff voice over my shoulder. “The trees are pretty good, actually.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin, snapping the sketchbook shut against my chest. But when I wheeled around, it was only Dom hovering over the back of my chair.
“What are you doing here?” I snapped before I could bring my heart rate under control.
Dom flexed her jaw. “It’s my house. Do I need permission to stand in the yard?”
The obviousness of her assertion was met with a moment of taut silence.
I didn’t necessarily feel bothered by her presence. She hadn’t done anything. What overtook me was more so a feeling of being observed: of wanting to be seen by her and being unsettled by what that meant about me.
And given the speed with which she shifted her sparkling blue eyes from my face to the horizon, I imagined a similar tension might be pulling at her gut.
“Come with me,” she rapped her knuckles against the back of my Adirondack chair. “I need to show you something.”
Those words transformed the fluttering in my stomach into a full on twist. “What is it?”
After all the secrets and revelations I’d endured in this house, I wasn’t sure that my system could handle another shock.
But Dom just turned her back on me and strode across the yard toward the front of the house. “Come.”
With a sigh, I set down my drawing and gave Lady another scratch on her sleepy head. “Keep an eye on my stuff, yeah? And if you hear me screaming, go find Leo and Spence.”
Lady groaned, leaning in to every last second of the pet until I took off after Dom.
Striding across the lawn, Dom’s broad shadow was a dark fissure through the golden evening: a dark beacon through the blinding light. As I followed behind her, her tall frame rose like a mountain against the horizon, reaching up and up with enough ambition to block out the entire sun.
She was a force of nature. And I was caught between the simultaneous urge to run for cover and to let myself be swept up in her might.
Coming to a stop at a more secluded part of the long gravel driveway, she finally turned to face me as she set her hand down on the handlebar of a huge gray motorcycle: my father’s bike.
A chill plucked at the nerves down my spine. “What are we doing with the Gray Ghost?”
“Teaching you to ride.” Dom studied my expression, keeping her own neutral. “If you’re going to insist on going into that lion’s den, it’s my job to make sure that you’re prepared for any outcome.”
She didn’t have to spell out the implication for it to make my stomach turn. The world we lived in was not without risk, and inviting Maura in only made things more dangerous.
I knew that I needed to see her — to get answers for myself and for our mission. But I wouldn’t bear the consequences of a failure on my own.
If something went south, Zeus’ forces would have to leave three bodies in their wake before they got the chance to touch me. And as much as my saviors’ dedication touched my heart, it also terrified me.
I don’t want to imagine that.
Dom waved me closer as she took a lap around the bike. “It’s a bit big for you. And if you take a liking to riding, we can get you something better suited to your size. But it felt appropriate to have your first ride be on Brennan’s bike.”
She cleared her throat, pushing down the note of sentimentality that had crept into her usually gruff voice. “Besides, if anything went wrong, the bike you’d have to peel out on could be as big as mine. The circumstances won’t be ideal, so I’d rather you practice in realistic conditions.”
I nodded, hovering on an invisible perimeter my mind had formed around the bike. This couldn’t be real.
But Dom leaned forward, resting one hand on the handlebar and the other on the bike’s seat as she nodded for me to come closer. “It’s just a bike. It won’t bite.”
Hearing the thinning patience in her voice, I stepped forward, taking her hand as she guided me onto the hulking vehicle.
It wasn’t so tall that I couldn’t touch the ground, but it bordered on it.
And fuck was it heavy — I could hold it up for now, but a few hours like this, and I knew my joints would ache.
I reached forward, resting my palms against the smooth handlebar and feeling a ripple of apprehension tense my shoulders.
There’s no way I can do this.
I had half a mind to hop off of the bike, but before I could, two muscular thighs bracketed mine from behind. The bike shook as Dom settled her weight behind me, using her ropey arms to grip the handlebar and keep her weight from crushing me.
With my back pressed to her chest, Dom’s voice rolled from her chest and straight through mine. “How much of this do you remember?”
“Not much…basic bike parts?” When I was a kid, Brennan would take me on short laps around this very driveway. Despite his insistence that I keep off of the damn things, he also knew that mystifying them would only make me more curious.
“Like keeping a firearm out of a safe,” he would mutter before taking me out to show me the basics. I was sure that some of the info was still rattling around in my brain somewhere, but the memories had grown fuzzy from disuse.
“I doubt I could make it down the drive in one piece,” I shook my head.
“Alright, that’s what I’m here for,” Dom adjusted her grip on the handlebars. “We’ll start nice and slow. I’m going to take care of the handlebars until you get used to the footing.”
It was impossible to focus with Dom so close. Her heat against my back, the tickle of her husky voice against my neck: all of it flustered me more than I could have predicted.
Dom had been fully inside of me, and somehow, this still felt more intimate. Possibly because when we fucked, Dom devolved into a true monster.
Right now, though, she just had her arms braced around me, keeping her voice low and her energy steady as she walked me through the bike’s basic controls. I didn’t know what to make of her kindness.
At least it’s distracting me from being afraid of the bike.
“For this first lap, we’re really going to crawl,” she grumbled. “Your feet aren’t even leaving the ground yet. I just want to walk you through getting the bike moving and let you get a feel for the weight of it.”
“How am I supposed to drive with my feet on the ground?” I tilted my head.
“Just trust me. Watch my left hand. You see this?” She squeezed a lever jutting out from the handlebar — the clutch? It was hard to dig up the name in my memory as I watched the tendons shifting beneath her tattooed skin.
“First, you’re always gonna want to squeeze this all the way down.”
I knew that wouldn’t be a challenge for Dom — I’d felt first hand exactly how tight her grip could get.
“Now that I’ve got the clutch, you wanna drop into first gear. Pick up your left foot and put it on that little lever.”
“I thought you said my feet would stay on the ground.”
“Just for a second. Pick it up, and press down on the lever.”
I did as she said, nervous about the weight of the bike with Dom on it but relieved to find that she was helping to hold us up. At first, my pressing was timid, but as Dom growled, “harder,” I sunk my full force into the movement, shocked when the lever clicked.
“Good girl, Viper.” Dom purred, and I was glad she couldn’t see the heat rising to my cheeks from behind me. “I’m going to loosen my grip on the clutch until…”
Suddenly, the bike crept forward, dragging my feet slightly against the stones of the driveway.
“Walk,” Dom said. “The bike still needs your support to balance at this speed.”
I lifted my right foot and then my left, shocked by how much ground passed in between each step. According to the speedometer, we were only going about five miles per hour, but it felt like we were flying.
“Eyes up,” Dom commanded. The last thing I wanted was to look away from my feet, but I did as she said, feeling a thrill course through my veins as nearby trees started to float past us.
At the end of the driveway, the horizon glowed orange and pink.
It felt like with enough speed, we could cruise right into it, chasing the clouds.
“Feet on the pegs,” Dom ordered.
“But you said—”
“Now,” she cut me off. “Feet up.”
I glanced down just long enough to lift my feet, trusting Dom to steer the death trap. And once my feet had lifted, her right hand shifted on the handlebar, making something in the bike roar to life.
We picked up speed — only another three miles per hour — but it was enough to make my head spin.
“Help me steer,” Dom said next. “I’ll keep my hands here in case you need me to take over. But do your best.”
Swallowing hard, I slotted my hands in beside hers, feeling her ease off the handles and cede more control of the bike to me. It wasn’t until we were within 100 feet of the driveway’s end that she took over again.
“Alright. I’ve got the front brake. You’re going to handle the rear. Press down with your right foot.”
And as I did, I was relieved to see the bike slowing without any major catastrophe. Once we came to a full stop, I drew in as much air as I could, unaware that I’d been holding my breath up until now.
“Not so bad, is it?” Dom clapped my shoulder as she leaned back on the rear of the bike.
“I think I’m going to puke,” I grumbled, but that just made her chuckle.
“No you’re not. You’ve got this. Ready for another go?”
With each lap we took, Dom let me control more and more of the bike until I felt confident enough to try a solo trip. “You don’t even have to use the throttle. Straddle it in first to the end of the driveway, and I’ll be happy.”
“Oh, well as long as you’ll be happy.” I rolled my eyes. But there was a part of me that wanted to pull it off to prove something to her — to myself, too.
Once Dom gave me the go ahead, I squeezed the clutch and used my left foot to drop into first gear, surprised by the way that muscle memory was already kicking in. My chest tightened as the bike began to roll, and for a second, I worried I would lose my balance and my leg to the bike.
She’s walking alongside me. She’ll catch it before it comes to that. Hell, she’ll throw herself under the bike before she lets it crush me.
But thankfully, it didn’t come to that. I was able to right my footing quickly, getting the bike up to seven miles per hour before lifting my feet. I was riding at seven miles per hour.
Oh my god, I’m actually riding it!
My heart raced with each inch of ground covered, anxiety and excitement warring in my chest. I’d backpacked plenty, but there was something different about being in control of the vehicle. I’d never felt more terrified, but I’d never felt more free.
“Alright, speed demon. Time for the brakes,” Dom called.
“Left foot?” I shouted.
“No! Right!” Her face paled until she heard my laugh ring out across the lawn.
“I’m just fucking with you,” I laughed, pressing down my right foot and squeezing on the front brake until the bike crawled to a stop.
I did it?
“I did it!” I dropped the kickstand before hopping down, running a victory lap of my own around the bike. “I did it, I did it!”
Electricity coursed through my veins, sending a dizzying mix of signals through my body. I could cry, I could scream, I could dance with joy. I wanted to throw up, and still I wanted to go all over again.
Dom stood off to the side with her back to the house. In her shadow, I thought I saw a second figure too. The illusion disappeared quickly, but the warmth in the air and the soft chuckle drifting through the breeze didn’t.
I wasn’t much for spirituality, but somehow, I could feel my father’s presence in the air. Somewhere out there, he knew everything that I’d become. And Viv had been right; he was proud of me.
Though Dom’s arms were crossed over her chest, a rare, genuine smile pulled at her lips. She didn’t have to say it for me to know that she was proud of me too.
At the sight of that smile, another urge rose to the surface: I wanted to kiss her.
I forced down the impulse, but wasn’t fast enough to stop my feet from running toward her. With a warm breeze at my back, I flung my arms open wide and clasped them around her neck, jumping into her arms as I squealed in victory. “I fucking did it!”
My excitement certainly caught her off guard — I could feel the heat rising to her cheek as it pressed against mine. But to my surprise, Dom didn’t reject the gesture. She held me, spinning to catch her footing as she squeezed me tighter. “That’s right, Viper. You fucking did it.”