Chapter 30 #4
My eyes drift down, and fuck. It’s there, too, smeared across my dick. As if my body is moving in slow motion, I glance up at her.
She’s still flushed, lips parted from everything we just did, but her eyes are different now as they’re locked in on my hands, too wide, glassy. Afraid.
What the fuck?
My brain grasps for the easy explanation. “Are you still bleeding? Don’t worry, I don’t care if you’re on your period.”
She just stares at me, cheeks darkening, that damn flower peeking out between the fingers of her clenched fist, a couple of petals falling to the floor as she starts to tremble.
My stomach clenches, and a cold sweat breaks out on the back of my neck.
No.
“You’re…” My throat closes around the word. “You’re a virgin?”
Her silence says everything.
Fuck. What the fuck did I just do?
I didn’t ask. I didn’t check. For all those words I spewed, I didn’t ask the important thing, and now I’ve taken something from her, something she’ll never get back, while standing in a goddamn gondola with a clock hanging over us.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Alaina…” It’s all I can manage.
Because fuck, this wasn’t what she deserved, not what she would’ve ever dreamed about.
She trusted me with something that mattered, and I treated it like it didn’t. I just took what she gave me and ran with it like some starving idiot with no sense of what it meant.
No prep, no softness, and no idea what this moment was for her.
Another goddamn point for the scoreboard.
Finn Greer: Wrecking shit since 2009.
Jesus-fucking-Christ.
“Fuck, I shouldn’t have done that.”
The words come out flat, too small for what I mean.
I open my eyes to face what I’ve done, only to find her gaze already on me, and it bleeds with hurt. A hurt so visceral it hits me straight in the chest.
My gut twists so violently I almost stagger back, and that’s when the gondola jerks against the dock. The world hasn’t stopped, even if everything inside me has.
Alaina grabs her helmet with jerky, shaky movements, then pauses, eyes fixed on the crushed cornflower. She stares at it for a heartbeat longer, then looks up at me, eyes glassy and shining with unshed tears.
She throws it at me, and it hits me square in the chest, broken petals sticking to my jersey like an accusation I can’t outrun.
One I don’t deserve to outrun.
“Fuck… no!” I breathe, everything slamming into place at once.
What I said.
What she thinks I meant.
“I didn’t mean…”
But she’s already out of the gondola and hauling her bike from the rack.
“Alai…” I start, panic climbing up my throat, but I manage to cut myself off just in time, following after her. “Al!”
I jump out of the gondola station, and the rain slams into me, but I barely feel it.
An official runs up to Alaina ahead of me, waving frantically. “Come on! You have one minute!”
She nods, mounting her bike in one fluid motion, riding off toward the gate without a backward glance. Wheels slicing through the mud, she has barely made it to the starting gate when the timer begins to count down, giving her no time to prepare or get her head in it.
A screen is mounted under the race tent near me with a few officials crowded around it. I approach it quietly, and we all watch as the last beep rings out and Alaina barrels out of the start gate like a bullet.
Too fast, baby girl.
Way too fast for these conditions.
Mud flies from her tires in bursts as rain slices sideways across the camera’s lens. She’s attacking the course, not riding it, not dancing with it the way she usually does. She’s way out of rhythm, and it’s my fault.
The first split time flashes on screen.
Green.
She’s ahead.
Of course, she is, even in pain.
Then the camera feed switches, repositioned to catch her when she rounds the next corner. Any second, she’ll be leaning into the berm, carving time out of the clock like she always does. I hold my breath for it, but she doesn’t come. The seconds tick by, five, ten, fifteen…
The trail remains hauntingly empty.
The tension in the tent spikes until someone near me curses under their breath. The feed shifts to drone footage, scanning the narrow section of track carved out of the hillside before the corner. Mud is churned deep, the roots look like veins under the earth.
And then I see it. Her bike.
Alaina’s blue frame is just lying there in the mud, halfway toward the edge of a steep drop-off. The front wheel is still spinning slightly, like it hasn’t realized she’s no longer on it.
My blood goes cold.
“Shit,” someone says behind me, but the sound barely even reaches my ears.
No.
I’m moving before my mind can catch up, boots skidding in the sludge and branches slapping my arms and face as I run as fast as I can, veering off the trail and down the mountain. Course tape rips across my chest, and someone yells behind me, but I’m not listening. I can’t.
My fault, my fault, my brain chants as I replay her riding too fast.
I pushed her. I touched her. I…
“Al!” I shout into the storm, my voice raw as I tear down the course. My legs threaten to give, but I don’t allow it. I can’t.
I have to get to her.
Please, baby girl, be okay.
Give me the chance to make this right.