Chapter 12 #2
"Huh." He doesn't sound like he cares, which is fair. I was just another tenant, just another check that sometimes came late. "Well, all right then. Make sure that place is spotless or I'm keeping the whole deposit. You know the drill."
"It will be. I promise."
"And get those keys back to me by the first. Don't make me chase you down."
"I won't."
I hang up and just sit there in the Florida heat, phone clutched in my hand, staring at nothing.
I did it.
Quit my job, ended my lease and officially closed the door on three years of hiding, three years of surviving, three years of being someone I'm not.
For what?
A guy I've known less than two weeks?
The panic starts to creep in—cold fingers wrapping around my chest, squeezing until I can't breathe properly.
What if he changes his mind?
What if the war changes him and he comes back different, distant, not wanting the future we talked about?
What if he doesn't come back at all?
What if I just burned my entire life down for nothing but ashes and broken promises?
I lean forward, head in my hands, trying to breathe through it.
But then I think about the way he looks at me.
Like I'm the only person in the room.
Like I matter more than anything else in his world.
Like he sees me—really sees me—not the girl who betrayed her club, not the racer hiding behind a nickname, not the bartender surviving day to day.
Just me. Helle.
The person I actually am underneath all the armor.
I think about how he followed me into a Los Coyotes safehouse without hesitation.
How he fought beside me like we'd been doing it for years.
How he held me in the woods while dawn broke around us and told me he loved me like it was the most important thing he'd ever said.
And I realize something.
I'm not doing this for him.
I'm doing it for me.
Because that life in Austin was half-lived.
Survival mode.
Hiding behind fake names and shitty apartments and underground racing circuits where I risked my life for money instead of joy.
I deserve more than that.
I deserve hope. I deserve a future. I deserve to stop running and start living.
Even if it's terrifying.
Especially because it's terrifying.
Elfe finds me, still sitting by the fence.
"You look like you're having a crisis," she says, dropping down beside me on the grass.
"I just quit my job and ended my lease."
Her eyebrows shoot up. "Okay. That's... decisive."
"Am I insane?"
"Probably." She bumps her shoulder against mine. "But when has that stopped you? You've always been the crazy one. Climbing too high, riding too fast, feeling too much."
Despite everything, I laugh. It comes out shaky but real.
"Talk to me," Elfe says, voice gentler now. "What's going on in that head?"
So, I tell her everything.
The fear that I'm making a mistake, the terror that I'll lose him, the uncertainty of burning down one life to build another with no guarantee it'll work.
The panic that I'm being stupid, that I'm moving too fast, that I barely know him and I'm risking everything on a maybe.
"Do you love him?" she asks when I finish.
"Yes."
"Does he love you?"
"He says he does."
"Then what's the problem?"
"What if it's not enough?" The question breaks open something in my chest. "What if love isn't enough to survive this? What if I gave up everything and it still falls apart?"
Elfe takes my hand, squeezes hard. "Then you rebuild.
Again. Like you've done before. You rebuilt after Andrés, after the betrayal, after three years alone in Austin working shit jobs and racing for money instead of joy.
You're good at rebuilding, Helle. It's basically your superpower at this point. "
I want to laugh but it comes out as a sob.
"But here's the thing," Elfe continues, turning to face me fully. "You can't live your life afraid of what might go wrong. You can't let fear make all your decisions. Sometimes you have to jump and trust that you'll land—or that if you don't, you'll survive the fall."
"And if I don't?"
"Then I'll be there to help you get back up.
Like always. That's what sisters do." She wipes a tear off my cheek with her thumb.
"But Helle? I've seen the way he looks at you.
That's not going anywhere. That's not a maybe or a probably.
That's a definitely. He loves you. Really loves you. The kind that lasts."
"You think?"
"I know." She pulls me into a hug. "Now stop being scared and go get your fucking life."
We head inside and Mom corners me in the kitchen.
I'm making coffee—or trying to, hands still shaky from the phone calls and the conversation with Elfe.
"You're leaving soon," she says quietly. Not a question. An observation.
I nod, not trusting my voice.
"To Texas. To him. Dad told me he was good, that I could go… and I feel like I settled things here with everyone."
"Yeah." The word comes out rough.
She's quiet for a moment, leaning against the counter, arms crossed, face thoughtful.
She looks tired—the kind of tired that comes from weeks of being stressed.
"I knew your father for years before we got together," she says finally. "Did you know that?"
I shake my head, turning to face her fully.
"He picked me up on the side of the road, beaten and broken, and I became a hora for the club. I needed the protection." She smiles, but it's distant, nostalgic. "I can’t remember exactly what changed, but something shifted between us. We weren’t just friends anymore, and we wanted more."
"You don’t know what happened?"
"I fell in love with him." She laughs softly. "Some of my friends told me I was crazy, that an officer would never settle down with a hora."
My chest tightens. "Were there times where you thought they’d be right?"
"Several times." She looks at me, eyes serious. "But they were also wrong. Because I gave up one life and built something better. Harder, scarier, more dangerous—but better. In the end, I realized they were jealous because they wanted what I had."
"Wow."
Her voice is fierce now. "Even with everything we've been through—the club, the violence, the fear, watching your father almost die more times than I can count, raising two daughters in a world that wanted to destroy them—I'd choose him again. Every single time."
Tears burn in my eyes. "What if Bravos dies in the attack? What if I go to him and he's just—gone?"
Mom's face softens with understanding and pain.
She moves closer, takes my hands in hers.
"Then you'll grieve. You'll hurt worse than you've ever hurt before.
You'll probably want to die too. I know I did, these past few weeks when I thought I'd lost your father.
" Her voice breaks. "But Helle, at least you'll have loved him.
At least you'll have tried. At least you'll have had those moments of happiness, however brief. "
"That's not very comforting."
She squeezes my hands. "Don't let fear stop you. Don't let the possibility of pain keep you from the possibility of joy."
I'm crying now—full-on sobbing—and Mom pulls me into her arms like I'm five years old again.
"You've spent three years surviving," she whispers into my hair. "It's time to start living."
Two days later, I'm on my bike heading to Austin.
I need to pack up my apartment, clean it out, officially close that chapter before I can start the next one.
Elfe offered to come—offered to rent a truck and help me move everything—but I said no.
This is something I need to do alone.
One last goodbye to the girl I was before I become whoever comes next.
The ride helps clear my head.
Wind in my face, engine vibrating between my thighs, highway stretching endlessly ahead like possibility itself.
This is who I am—a rider.
Fast and free and unafraid of the road.
Bravos gets that. Encourages it. Doesn't want to cage me or change me or make me smaller.
Maybe this really could work.
My apartment looks exactly like I left it—which is to say, depressing.
A small studio in a shitty complex where the AC barely works and the neighbors fight at three AM.
Barely furnished with things I found on the street or bought at Goodwill.
Racing posters on the walls—advertisements for underground circuits, photos of bikes I'll never own.
Everything sparse and temporary, like I never planned to stay.
Because I didn't.
This was a place to sleep between shifts.
Not a home. Never a home.
I start packing methodically.
Clothes go into a duffel bag—mostly jeans and tank tops.
Books go into a box—nothing sentimental, just cheap paperbacks from used bookstores to fill the silence.
A few photos—me and Elfe as kids, my parents on their wedding day, one of me winning a race where you can see the joy on my face.
Most of the furniture can stay.
The lumpy mattress, the card table I used as a desk, the folding chair that wobbles.
None of it's worth keeping. None of it means anything.
In the back of the closet, I find my racing leathers.
The ones I wore as "Hell" for three years.
Black leather worn soft from use, scratched from crashes I barely survived, the smell of gasoline and victory and fear embedded in the fabric.
I hold them for a long moment, remembering.
The rush of winning. The terror of almost dying.
The way it felt to be someone else, someone fearless, someone who couldn't be hurt because she'd already lost everything that mattered.
I pack them carefully.
Not because I'm done racing—I'll never be done racing, because I'm going to do it right this time.
Legal tracks. Real competitions. My real name.
Helle. Not Hell. Not Bailey. Just me.
At the bottom of my underwear drawer, hidden beneath bras and socks, I find something I forgot I kept.
A photo. Me and Andrés.
We're at a beach somewhere, both smiling, his arm around my shoulders, my head tilted toward him like he's the center of my universe.
We look young. Happy. Stupid.
I stare at it for a long time.
This is the boy who used me.
Who pretended to love me while gathering intelligence for Los Coyotes.
Who nearly destroyed my family.