Chapter 1 #3
Dane and Greer have their backs to us, and Greer is standing statue-still with his arms crossed tight over his chest, shoulders hunched, teeth chattering loudly enough that I can hear them from across the room.
“What did they say?” Dane’s signature Crews intensity is locked in, drilling into Finn like he’s trying to extract the truth by force. “Why didn’t you call soo—”
“How is he?” Luc asks, cutting Dane off as he steps into the room.
I follow right behind him.
Dane turns around and glares at us. “What the fuck are you two idiots doing here?”
Luc just crosses his arms over his chest. “I asked you a question.”
“I don’t fucking know. I just got here too,” Dane snaps, jerking his chin toward Greer. “Finn flew in with Al.”
My head whips toward Greer. He had already finished his race, so how the hell did he get back up the mountain that fast?
What the fuck?
A nurse steps into the room, clipboard in hand, eyes sweeping across the four of us. “For Crews?”
“Yes.” Dane stomps toward her.
The nurse’s eyes widen as she takes him in, and then the rest of us.
“Who’s family?”
Finn steps up beside Dane without hesitation, but Dane doesn’t spare him a glance as he says, “I’m Dane Crews. I’m her brother.”
Her?
“Is there news?”
Brother.
Suddenly, I’m not standing in the sterile, too-bright waiting room. I’m back at yesterday in that pocket of trees where Mini Crews cried into my shoulder, telling me Greer acts like a second big brother.
The nurse shakes her head. “That would be for the doctor to tell you, but your sister is awake. You can go to her room now, and the doctor will meet you there.”
“Your sister?” Luc hisses at Dane.
It hits me hard all at once. The realization is like a freight train to the skull.
Weeks of moments collide into something new in the span of seconds.
Dane Crews’ sister.
Allen. Al.
Alaina.
Every inch of my body goes still and cold, everything inside me crashing and malfunctioning as the realization slams through me.
The short kid with a strange voice that never quite fit the bravado.
Too-long lashes, wide brown eyes, that impossibly pretty face that always looked like it belonged somewhere gentler than this brutal sport.
The way he flinched when I got too close, the tension in his body when my hand got near his chest.
His obsession over his bike, trusting me with his pain before I even earned it, and looking at me like I wasn’t poison.
That kid.
Alaina.
She’s a girl. A Crews. That Crews.
It’s a sickening kind of clarity when it all slots together.
The crash.
Her crash.
The one that ended her career and erased her from the circuit.
I never put it together, not even with her face, her pain, right in front of me.
Now I can’t stop seeing it.
The fierce way she rode, like every second on that track was a fight for her right to be there. The way she made the bike dance under her like it was part of her body. That riding style—reckless, fearless, too beautiful to be real.
And I didn’t see it.
I ignored every weird feeling because I wanted to be around her so badly to have her kindness and friendship.
My knees almost buckle.
How could I have been so blind?
“Somebody talk the fuck now! Did she just say sister?” Luc bellows, loud enough to snap me out of my trance.
“Go,” Greer tells Dane. “I’ll take care of this.” Dane looks a little pale around the nose, but nods at him before he leaves with the nurse. Luc steps forward to follow, but Greer blocks him. “No. We have to talk about this first.”
Luc clenches his fists, and I’m still just standing there, staring at the spot where Dane disappeared, everything in me burning with the weight of what I just realized.
“Sister?” Luc snarls.
“Calm the fuck down, Delacroix,” Greer says, unflinching.
“Non.” Luc shakes his head, his voice rising. “Tell me what the fuck is going on here, or I’ll go and find out myself.”
“This is all…” Greer pinches the bridge of his nose, looking like he’s aged ten years in thirty seconds. “This is so fucking secret, okay? If you like her as much as you always say you do, you’ll keep your damn mouth shut.”
I finally find my voice. “It’s Alaina?”
Luc whips toward me, but I don’t look at him as Greer nods slowly, watching me for a reaction, bracing for impact.
Inside, I’m screaming, spiraling, and probably close to bleeding out. Outside, I give him nothing.
Because the guy I’ve been obsessing over, my only real friend after I swore I wouldn’t trust anyone again, lied to me for weeks.
Lied to my face.
Knowing that my entire life was fucked by a lie.
“Alaina?” Luc says her name like he’s trying to make sense of it, to see how it feels around his mouth. “That’s her name?”
“Alaina Crews,” I say quietly.
The girl I never talked to all those years ago but always watched too much.
Greer crosses his arms and looks between us. “You guys have to keep it quiet.”
“And why is that? Give us something here, Papi,” Luc says, blowing up again. “Why is she lying?”
“She’s not lying, she’s—”
“Fuck this!” Luc shoves Greer out of the way and charges past him into the hallway.
I don’t think as I follow right after him, because yeah, fuck this.