Chapter One
Echo
MOTION SICKNESS - PHOEBE brIDGERS
She was my mom too.
I keep saying it in my head, like if I repeat it enough, maybe it’ll hurt less.
But it doesn’t.
Helmet snug, visor down, and tears spilling down my cheeks anyway, I peel through downtown Tampa like the road owes me something. Like the roar of my engine can outpace the ache splitting me open from the inside out.
The wind smacks against me, sharp and salty, cutting through the swelter still hanging in the air even after sundown. Neon reflections shimmer off the wet pavement—bars, strip clubs, shitty smoke shops, and I blur right past them, too wired to stop, and too wrecked to go home.
Home.
I’m not even sure I have one of those to go back to without her.
I barely remember the turns I’m taking, just know that I’m getting farther from that beach house, and from the two men who stared at me like I was a fucking ghost.
Granted, I’m a complete stranger who just showed up at their house and dropped a massive fucking bombshell on them, but I can’t say I expected the coldness.
Truthfully, I don’t even know what I expected.
Sayshen at least looked like he maybe believed me.
Compassion flickering in his eyes behind the confusion, and pain.
He’d looked at me like maybe, just maybe, he could understand.
But Talon?
He looked like I’d ripped out the floorboards beneath his feet. Like I wasn’t just a stranger, but an unwanted complication standing in his driveway. Like I was a ticking bomb that dropped out of the sky and called myself his sister.
I bite the inside of my cheek, hard.
I shouldn’t have been the one to tell them.
It wasn’t my secret to tell. I didn’t even want it. I never asked to be born on the wrong side of a lie. To find out at twenty-two that the mom I barely got to keep had abandoned her two sons and husband. That she had a whole family, my family, that she never told me about.
My vision blurs anyway. Hot, useless tears streak down my cheeks, soaking into the padding of my helmet. I grit my teeth, breathing through it, refusing to slow. I don’t cry. Not like this. But I also don’t usually get screamed at by a brother I never knew I had either.
I swing left, tires skidding just slightly, and ease up on the throttle. The city’s starting to settle down, traffic thinning out the deeper I get toward the oceanfront.
I don’t have a plan. I just need to find somewhere to sleep. Some way to make this feeling disappear.
The engine hums beneath me like it’s the only thing left holding me together.
I turn off the main drag and dip into Ybor City, Tampa’s historic, chaotic little heartbeat.
The brick streets are slick from the earlier rain, glowing under the neon of cigar bars, tattoo parlors, and rooftop clubs with sweaty tourists spilling onto balconies.
I shouldn’t be here.
Not after tonight. Not after what Talon said, and the way Sayshen looked at me like I was some glitch in his world.
But my brain’s running on memory now, not logic.
Back in college, me and a few friends made the dumb decision to drive down for spring break.
We couldn’t afford Clearwater, so we crashed in the city.
Danced until dawn on these exact sidewalks.
Got matching piercings we swore we wouldn’t tell our moms about, and hooked up with bartenders who probably couldn’t even spell our names.
It was chaos, freedom, and it was here.
I remember this one little motel tucked just off the strip—cheap, rundown, but smack in the middle of everything.
We stayed there because it was walking distance from the clubs and had a pool that technically didn’t close.
It was a total fucking dive, but it was ours for that week, and back then, that was all that mattered.
I cut down a side street, gravel crunching under my tires. My pulse slows a little when I see the sign.
The Mango Tide Inn.
Same flickering orange script as I remember, still missing the G in “Mango.” A peeling sunset mural wraps around the office wall, and there’s a busted coconut-shaped trash can leaning sideways by the door. Classic Tampa grime.
It’ll do.
I pull into the cracked lot and kill the engine, pulling off my helmet with a sigh. My dark hair’s stuck to my neck, sweat plastering my tank top to my back. It’s not even that hot. It’s just me. All wound up and still vibrating from the conversation that blew my life apart for the second time.
I pull my helmet free and settle the weight of my backpack against my spine, adjusting the guitar on my back and wiping the tears from my cheeks before heading toward the office.
Inside, I’m surprised to find nothing’s really changed—same wood-paneled walls, and dusty candy display.
The guy at the front desk is maybe sixty, watching Jeopardy on an ancient box TV sitting on a shelf in the corner. He doesn’t look up as I walk in, he just holds out a pen and clipboard.
“Need a room?”
“Yeah. Just one night,” I say, voice hoarse from yelling earlier.
He finally pulls his eyes from the tv, and takes me in, probably thinking, Biker girl. Looks like trouble. Honestly, I don’t care. All I care about is getting in that room, and away from everything that feels too loud.
“Eighty-five with the key deposit. Cash or card.”
“Card.”
I slide it over. The process is quick. No questions, no bullshit. Just a key card and a low-effort smile.
“Room seven. Second floor, end of the balcony. No smoking inside.”
“Got it.”
I pocket the key and grab my bag. The Inn is everything I expected—chipped paint, fake palm trees in big blue pots, a soda machine that probably hasn't worked since 2009. But the balcony’s empty, and the night air smells like salt and wet pavement.
Room seven’s got one bed, a creaky AC unit, and a view of a dumpster. But the sheets look clean and the door locks. That’s enough.
I dump my bag on the chair, strip off my boots, and sit on the edge of the bed for a second, staring at the tacky 70s red carpet.
What the fuck am I doing?
No one wants me here.
The thought hits hard enough to steal my breath, settles in my chest like a weight I can’t shake no matter how many times I shift.
Coming here was a mistake. A big fucking mistake.
I should’ve stayed in Miami—stayed ignorant, and out of whatever mess my mother left behind—instead of ripping it open and bleeding all over it.
Why did she have to wait until she was dying to tell me?
That’s the part that hurts the most. The timing of it.
Like after I’d already spent months watching her fade, sitting beside hospital beds and listening to machines breathe for her, with no one to help me through it.
With no one to lean on when it got hard, she decided the very last few minutes were the right time to drop it on me.
That I had brothers. A dad. A whole family who had no idea I even existed.
She could’ve given me a lifetime of knowing them.
Instead, she handed me a bomb and then closed her eyes forever so she wouldn’t have to watch it explode.
I don’t know if she thought she was being kind, or if she was just tired of carrying it alone. Maybe it was easier to confess when there were no consequences left for her.
Either way, thanks to Evelyn Cooper, I’m the one left holding it now.
I can’t un-know it.
I can’t un-hear it.
I lean forward, elbows braced on my knees, fingers laced so tight my hands ache.
My breath is shallow, thoughts piling up faster than I can sort through them.
Did their dad know? My dad. Did he not want me, or did she never even give him the choice?
Why did she run the way she did. How could she just, leave?
I’d looked them up before I ever came here.
I tried not to, but that didn’t last long.
I saw him first—my father—old photos from his racing days, all leather and grit, then later standing trackside, coaching like he never really stepped away from it.
I saw how Talon and Sayshen followed the same path, how both of them were signed to the Speed Demons the second they were old enough, like it was always a given.
I saw the team too. All of them. The way they joke, fight and show up for each other like family, no explanations needed.
I saw all the posts after Cruz died—the silence between updates, the forced smiles, and the grief they didn’t know how to hide.
I remember sitting there with my phone in my hand, wishing I could’ve been there for them, for all of them.
But I was dealing with my own shit. Grieving in private and alone while they all leaned on each other.
And yet, I followed the team anyway. I envied every one of them, their inside jokes and loyalty, the family I was born into but never given the chance to have, and had no idea how to get back.
Or if it was even possible.
Their dad couldn’t have known and done nothing, right?
Will they tell him I’m here?
Would he look at me the same way they did when he found out?
Anger flares then—hot and ugly and aimed squarely at the woman who’s not here to answer for any of it. You should’ve told them, I think bitterly. You should’ve told me. Instead, you dropped this on me like a last confession and left me to clean up the mess.
My throat burns and my eyes sting.Everything feels too full, too loud, like my own head is closing in on me.
“Fuck this,” I mutter, pushing to my feet.
God I was stupid for thinking I could just show up and everything would make sense. Thinking blood would mean something. I mean, it's not like I had any say in any of it. I was lied to, and kept from the truth just as much as they were.
I strip out of my clothes, open my backpack and pull on an outfit that makes me feel like myself instead of someone’s unwanted secret.
An olive crop top that bares my stomach, and some denim shorts that fit like armor.
I slide on my wedge heels I bought at a cute thrift shop back home.
They’re nothing fancy but I don’t care, they’re comfortable and I’m not much of a stiletto girl.
In the mirror, I do my makeup fast and heavy enough to feel like a shield. Dark liner and my favorite cherry gloss. I shake my hair loose and let it fall around my shoulders, wild and familiar. The girl staring back at me looks confident. Defiant. Like she doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks.
Good.
I grab my keys and head for the door, heart pounding, and emotions buzzing under my skin like exposed wire. There’s a bar down the street. Close enough to walk to and the type of place where one can disappear into dim lights, loud music and strangers won’t ask me where I’m from or why I’m here.
I don’t want to think anymore tonight.
I want a beer, noise, and someone else’s body close enough to drown out the regret and leave me numb.